Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram has announced shutting down of its East African office in Nairobi, Kenya over high operational cost rendering at least 200 people jobless.
The move follows communication by its third party contractor, Sama announcement of changes in parts of its business operations which include ceasing to provide content moderation services for the social media giant from March 2023 alluding to have reached to the hard decision as a result of the “current economic climate” which it said requires more efficient and streamlined business operations during an earlier interview.
The move has seen the Nairobi-based office actualize its prior communication by letting go of around 3 per cent of its staff; roughly around 200 content moderators and left several employees without work permits even though it has encouraged them to apply for vacancies at its offices in Kenya or Uganda.
“The current economic climate requires more efficient and streamlined business operations,” argued Sama during the interview.
The firm has reiterated that Staff who have been affected will receive severance packages as well as wellbeing support for up to 12 months after their last day of working at the company.
The news comes two months after Meta announced it would be cutting its global headcount by 13 per cent or around 11,000 of its employees occasioned by falling revenue, a slump in digital advertising and fierce competition from rivals including TikTok.
However, the social media giant Facebook said it will continue facilitating Sama’s data labelling services, adding that a new content moderation partner is in place.
“We respect Sama’s decision to exit the content review services it provides to social media platforms… We will work with our partners during this transition to ensure there’s no impact on our ability to review content,” read part of Meta’s statement.
Facebook contracted Sama in 2007, hiring about 1,500 workers for data labelling, but their role was later changed to content moderation.
This saw many of the workers traumatised following exposure to harmful content on the social media platform as reported by one of Sama employee Daniel Motaung, South African based in Nairobi in May 2022, during the hearing of a lawsuit filed against Meta and Sama over poor working conditions including child sexual abuse, animal torture and beheadings with peanut pays of $2.20 per-hour.
The company has faced criticism varying from human trafficking, forced labour and union busting allegations.
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Facebook and Meta signs.