“It's heartening to know our voices are being heard and amplified.”
For the first time, social media content moderators from Kenya tell their own stories, unfiltered and raw. In our magazine's most recent issue, thirteen of them give us a glimpse into the harsh realities of their work.
To keep us safe, they act as buffers, filtering graphic, explicit content to protect our feeds, sacrificing their own safety and well-being. Despite precarious conditions and ongoing struggles, they refuse to see themselves as victims. Instead, they are organizing for better rights.
Their names are: Sonia, Koffi, Mojez, Kauna, Pacific, Mophat, Kings, Daniel, and Nathan.
"I watched these videos constantly until I could no longer bear it. [...] My attempts to describe how the videos affected my relationship with my children fell on deaf ears.” – A mother writes about how this job negatively affected her relationship with her children.
"AI cannot be ethical if it is trained immorally. Mophat Okinyi, a former content moderator for OpenAI, speaks about the human cost of AI.
“In countries like Kenya, where an educated workforce faces chronic unemployment [...] forcing many talented young graduates into the digital economy.” Martha Nerima Selina Wako, from the nonprofit Siasa Place, writes about the silence of Kenyan politicians about the risks and perils involved in digital work.
“And then you had women having miscarriages. Women started losing weight, becoming unkempt... so many things. For the most part, the violence we saw was against women – intimate partner violence, women being stabbed.” – Kauna Malgwi writes about the hidden toll on women in content moderation.
Big Tech's Success: The Untold Exploitation of African Workers.
Read their stories and share them widely: https://dingdingding.org/
This magazine is a collaboration between SUPERRR, Siasa Place, and Foxglove.