An anonymous former YouTube content moderator is suing the Google-owned video sharing platform, claiming she’s suffering depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being forced to watch “objectionable content such as child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide, and murder.”
According to the lawsuit, the former moderator “has trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares. She often lays awake at night trying to go to sleep, replaying videos that she has seen in her mind.” The woman she says she saw thousands of disturbing videos – including school shootings with dead children, a fox being skinned alive, a person’s head getting run over by a tank, and people eating from a smashed open skull.
As CNET notes, the woman also claims that she can’t be in crowded places due to fear over mass shootings, and has panic attacks and anxiety which has cost her friendships. She’s also frightened to have children and has trouble being around kids.
The proposed class-action lawsuit accuses YouTube of violating California law by failing to provide a safe workplace for content moderators and not doing enough to safeguard their mental health. Moderators spend more than four hours a day reviewing graphic video content because YouTube is “chronically understaffed,” the suit says. These long hours run afoul of YouTube’s best practices, according to the lawsuit. Workers are required to review “between 100 and 300 pieces of content per day with an error rate of two to five percent,” creating stress and increasing the risk that content moderators develop psychological trauma from the job, according to the lawsuit.
The former moderator, who isn’t named, is seeking medical treatment, compensation for the trauma she suffered and the creation of a YouTube-funded medical monitoring program that would screen, diagnose and treat content moderators. –CNET
What’s more, the woman complains that she’s been subject to “conspiracy theories, fringe beliefs, and political disinformation.” – READ MORE
Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below --