Meta’s Spanish-speaking moderators are working in unsafe conditions

Deepak Gupta
Deepak Gupta January 14, 2022
Updated 2022/01/14 at 1:07 AM

It’s no secret that Meta employs them to do much of the hard work of enforcing their content moderation policies. And despite helping one of the most valuable companies in the world, these workers often complain about their low-paying, anxiety-inducing jobs. Some are now also saying they are being treated worse than other workers.

According , Genpact, a Meta subcontractor who has already been accused of promoting bad working conditions, has required Spanish-speaking moderators at its Richardson, Texas office to report for face-to-face work since April 2021. These workers have had to put their health at risk against the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus, while their speaking colleagues English language were allowed to move around the office on three-month rotations.

News of the situation at Genpact comes just a week after workers at Accenture, another Meta subcontractor, successfully protested to force the company to get hundreds of Facebook moderators back to personal work on Jan.

Contractors who spoke with BuzzFeed News claim that Genpact also holds them to irrational patterns. They say they should make moderation decisions in about a minute while maintaining an 85% accuracy rate. To complicate matters, Meta reportedly does not release guidance on how to apply Facebook community standards in a language other than English, leaving these workers in a situation where they are forced to first translate this guidance before applying it.

And then there’s the scale of the problem the team has to face. Genpact’s Spanish moderation team is named after Mexico, but in addition to moderating content posted by people living in the North American country, they are also responsible for Facebook and Instagram posts from mostly Spanish-speaking users. of Latin American countries. In Mexico alone, Facebook has more than . On the other hand, Genpact’s Mexican market team is made up of approximately 50 people.

“We use the combination of technology and people to keep content that breaks our rules off our platform, and while AI has made strides in this space, people are a key part of our security efforts,” said a Meta spokesperson. to Ploonge. “We know these jobs can be difficult, which is why we work closely with our partners to constantly assess how best to support these teams.”

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