An ex-employee who worked as a former content moderator is now suing the Google-owed YouTube after she had allegedly gotten depression as well as symptoms that are related to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD from having to repeatedly watch certain videos of beheadings, shootings, child abuse, and also other disturbing content.
The lawsuit revealed her struggle
The lawsuit, which was recently filed in the California superior court on Monday, stated that she was experiencing problems sleeping as well as experiencing horrific nightmares. It was stated that she would even lay awake the whole night trying to sleep but the videos kept replaying in her mind.
It was also stated that the former moderator currently can't be in a crowded place since she's now afraid of mass shootings. She has also suffered from panic attacks and has already lost a number of friends due to her anxiety. She also reported having trouble being around kids and is currently frightened to have her own children.
The lawsuit was a proposed class-action lawsuit that actually accuses YouTube of actually violating certain California law just by failing to be able to provide a sort of safe workplace for the content moderators and also not being able to do enough to actually safeguard their own mental health.
YouTubes alleged failure to safeguard employees
Moderators are said to spend over four hours during a workday reviewing certain graphic video content just because YouTube is "chronically understaffed" according to the lawsuit. These really long hours also run afoul of YouTube's very own best practices according to the said lawsuit. Workers are being required to review about 100 to 300 pieces of content every single day with a given error rate of only two to five percent. This creates stress and also increases the risk that certain content moderators develop a sort of psychological trauma coming from this job.
The former moderator, who remains anonymous, is currently seeking medical treatment, which is compensation for the actual trauma she has suffered and also the creation of a YouTube-founded medical monitoring program that would actually screen, diagnose, and supposedly treat content moderators.
No comment from YouTube
It was said that she was able to work at YouTube through a particular staffing agency called Collabera inside an office located in Austin Texas from January 2018 all the way to August 2019. Both Collabera and YouTube have not given any immediate responses.
During the time she spent on the job, the worker was able to see thousands of different disturbing videos that even showed graphic images of people eating from a particularly smashed open skull, school shootings that contained dead children, a particular fox being skinned alive, and even a person's head being run over by an actual tank.
According to the lawsuit, she suffered psychological trauma from her job at YouTube and had to pay out of pocket in order to get the right treatment.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
