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These young Africans work for Sama, which calls itself an “ethical AI” outsourcing company and is headquartered in California. Sama says its mission is to provide people in places like Nairobi with “dignified digital work.” Its executives can often be heard saying that the best way to help poor countries is to “give work, not aid.” The company claims to have helped lift more than 50,000 people in the developing world out of poverty. ... Despite their importance to Facebook, the workers in this Nairobi office are among the lowest-paid workers for the platform anywhere in the world, with some of them taking home as little as $1.50 per hour, a TIME investigation found. The testimonies of Sama employees reveal a workplace culture characterized by mental trauma, intimidation, and alleged suppression of the right to unionize. The revelations raise serious questions about whether Facebook—which periodically sends its own employees to Nairobi to monitor Sama’s operations—is exploiting the very people upon whom it is depending to ensure its platform is safe in Ethiopia and across the continent. And just as Facebook needs them most, TIME can reveal that content moderators at Sama are leaving the company in droves due to poor pay and working conditions, with six Ethiopians resigning in a single week in January. ... “The work that we do is a kind of mental torture,” one employee, who currently works as a Facebook content moderator for Sama, told TIME. “Whatever I am living on is hand-to-mouth. I can’t save a cent. Sometimes I feel I want to resign. But then I ask myself: what will my baby eat?” ... https://time.com/6147458/facebook-africa-content-moderation-employee-treatment/ -- EN ===================================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Direttore Laboratorio Nazionale "Informatica e Scuola" del CINI Dipartimento di Matematica - Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: [email protected] home page: http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: http://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ ===================================================================== -- _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list [email protected] https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
