Facebook Facing Lawsuit Over On-The-Job ‘Traumatization’

While Facebook continues to grow into an unwieldily beast of influence, some who’ve long worked on the inside of the social media giant are now claiming that their employment was “traumatizing”.

Facebook’s gargantuan user base has made the social media site a great place for some of the world’s less-savory online characters to hide.  And, with the capability of going live at just about any time, there is the need for a massive team of moderators eyeing all of the content that’s being sent to the world via Mark Zuckerberg’s creation.

Some of these moderators have now suggested that their time on the job was traumatizing, and they’re suing Facebook on account of it.

Dozens of Facebook moderators are suing the social media giant for severe mental trauma after being exposed to violent and sexually disturbing images at work.

The 30 staffers, whose job was to spot and remove harrowing material on the site, claim they were not given adequate training to deal with the content or access to doctors or psychiatrists while working for Facebook.

Their lawyers revealed that several have attempted suicide, while others have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), similar to the torment some soldiers suffer after returning from battlefields.

This has been a recurring issue for Facebook.

The court case is the biggest damages claim ever made against Facebook by staff in Europe, and the Silicon Valley giant could be forced to pay millions of pounds in damages if it loses the legal battle.

Last year, Facebook agreed to pay £37 million to former moderators in the US who brought a similar claim in a California court, blaming the horrific content for causing mental trauma.

Facebook has repeatedly claimed that their content moderators are adequately trained to handle these situations, but the multitude of lawsuits stating otherwise see to cast doubts on those declarations.