Ex-YouTube moderator sues company over ‘psychological trauma’ from videos she watched
A former content moderator for YouTube who would spend hours a day scrubbing disturbing footage from the website has sued the company, citing psychological trauma from exposure to graphic videos such as animal mutilations, mass shootings and child rapes.
The plaintiff, identifying herself as Jane Doe for anonymity, said she has developed anxiety, depression and symptoms of PTSD because of her job with the Google-owned company from January 2018 to August 2019 through a third-party agency called Collabera, according to the class action lawsuit filed Monday with the Superior Court of the State of California.
Her attorneys say YouTube failed to provide a safe workplace by ignoring its own safety standards, which violates California law, including obtaining informed consent during the initial employment process, providing “robust and mandatory” counseling and mental health support, and altering videos’ audio, size and color to reduce trauma experienced while analyzing content.
McClatchy contacted YouTube for comment and is waiting for a response.
“She 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,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed individually and on behalf of all other content moderators.
“She cannot be in crowded places, including concerts and events, because she fears mass shootings. She has severe and debilitating panic attacks. She has lost many friends because of her anxiety around people. She has trouble interacting and being around kids and is now scared to have children,” the lawsuit continued.
The document says the plaintiff had to watch a video of people eating from a smashed open skull, of a kidnapped woman being beheaded by a cartel, of a fox being skinned alive, of school shootings showing dead children, of a backyard abortion, and of several suicides including a politician shooting himself and another of a man falling to his death from a roof with graphic audio.
The firm behind the lawsuit, Joseph Saveri Law Firm, sued Facebook in 2018 for also failing to protect the mental health of its content moderators, resulting in a $52 million settlement, The Verge reported.
Content moderators are required to review between 100 and 300 videos per day while receiving low wages, according to the lawsuit. Short-term contracts coupled with “highly toxic and extremely disturbing images” lead many moderators to stay on the job for less than a year.
“Although these safety standards could not eliminate the risk that Content Moderators would develop negative psychological disorders after viewing graphic and disturbing content, these standards could have reduced the risk and mitigated the harm,” the lawsuit reads. “But YouTube failed to implement the workplace safety standards it helped create. Instead, the multibillion-dollar corporation affirmatively requires its Content Moderators to work under conditions it knows cause and exacerbate psychological trauma.”
The former employee is seeking medical treatment for the psychological trauma she has endured, compensatory damages for her injuries and an award of attorney’s fees, according to the lawsuit.
