Facebook to pay $52 mn settlement for trauma to content reviewers

Facebook has agreed to a $52 million court settlement to compensate content moderators who suffered mental trauma from the graphic and violent images they were required to review, plaintiff lawyers said Tuesday.

The agreement submitted to a California state court will include payments to more than 10,000 current and former content moderators who worked for firms contracted by Facebook.

The class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 claimed that the content reviewers were subject to psychological trauma from repeated exposure to graphic content such as child sexual abuse, beheadings, terrorism, animal cruelty, rape and murder.

All of the plaintiffs in the class action will get at least $1,000 and those diagnosed with specific mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder will get additional compensation up to $50,000.