Earlier this year, Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Gothenburg Posten published a joint investigation that revealed that contract workers in Kenya were forced to view sensitive personal footage captured on Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, including footage of them using the toilet, changing clothes, and having sex.
In April, Meta responded by terminating the contracts with the companies for which the contractors worked, rather than providing new protections or implementing new safety features to reduce the amount of inappropriate material filmed, reducing the exposure of these workers to disturbing footage. The Guardian first reported that more than 1,000 employees employed by a Kenyan company called Sama had been made redundant as a result of the severing of ties with Meta. So nothing was fixed, but at least the meta doesn’t have to hear about it now.
If you recall, the contractors working at Sama primarily worked as data annotators. They were tasked with reviewing footage shot by Meta smart glasses users and labeling things to help the AI system better identify them. This is a very tedious and labor-intensive role that requires close attention to every detail on screen. The footage they were shown made the job even more dire for the workers. A Swedish investigation found instances in which contractors witnessed people using the toilet, taking off their clothes, looking at pornography, and having sex.
According to the Guardian, Meta blamed the situation on its contracted company, Sama. In a statement to the publication, the company said: “Photos and videos are private to users. Humans review the AI content to improve the performance of our products, and we have obtained explicit consent from our users to do this. We have also decided to end our cooperation with Sama because they do not meet our standards.” (It’s not entirely clear what responsibility Sama was in this whole situation, other than the fact that the contractor blew the whistle; this is clearly a bigger violation than collecting confidential material and sharing it with a third party that doesn’t meet its own standards.)
Of course, it is the workers who are paying the highest price for this whole situation. The Guardian newspaper, citing Oversight Lab, an organization that advocates for workers’ rights in Africa’s high-tech industries, said the laid-off contractors were given a full six days’ notice that their jobs would be eliminated. The organization reportedly helps workers explore legal options, but it’s not exactly a replacement for income.
