• Meta can indeed be sued in Kenya after a desperate appeal failed dismally.
• Last year, a company Meta contracted to employ African Facebook moderators was taken to court for allegedly unfairly firing a team of 260 after they tried to form a union.
• A trial will likely continue after settlement talks collapsed last year in October.

A long, drawn-out legal brawl between Kenya and Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram owner Meta is set to get even worse, as Kenyan lawmakers have ruled that the country can sue Meta over what it terms the unfair dismissal of social media moderators working for the US firm.

Last week Friday, Kenya’s Court of Appeal upheld a ruling by the Kenyan labour court in April 2023 that Meta could face a trial in Kenya for terminating the contract of the group of moderators. Meta had appealed this ruling, unsuccessfully, at the Court of Appeal.

Meta is now fair game for the Kenyan government to go after if it so wishes. Meta’s appeal failed so dismally, it will now have to pay court costs as well.

“The upshot of our above findings is that [Meta’s] appeals … are devoid of merit and both appeals are hereby dismissed with costs to the respondents,” said the judges at the Court of Appeal, according to the East African.

In April 2023, a team of 260 moderators of Meta’s platforms sued the company in Kenya’s Labour Court, alleging that they had been unfairly fired after spending years sifting through traumatic and psychologically damaging content on these same platforms.

The team was fired from Sama, a Kenyan firm contracted by Meta to have people moderate African content on Facebook. Sama allegedly fired the 260 moderators for attempting to form a union. Sama also failed to issue notice periods to the fired employees.

Meta had appealed that since Sama and Majorel are companies that are not situated in Kenya, the Kenyan government had no jurisdiction over what they were doing. The courts argued that since the moderators were working in Kenya, though remotely, that it did have jurisdiction.

The moderators then alleged that Meta had blacklisted them from applying for other jobs in the industry at another contracted firm, Majorel. Out of courts settlement talks apparently collapsed as of October last year

It is likely that the fired moderators will resume the trial against Meta, Sama and Majorel in Kenya’s Labour Court following this ruling.

[Image – Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash]