Former TikTok moderators sue over trauma from 'extremely disturbing' videos

Former moderators for TikTok sued the social media giant on Thursday over the emotional cost of the disturbing and graphic content they were exposed to on the job, reports NPR.

"Underage nude children was the plethora of what I saw," said Ashley Velez, one of the plaintiffs and mother of two. "People like us have to filter out the unsavory content. Somebody has to suffer and see this stuff so nobody else has to."

Velez and another former moderator, Reece Young, have filed a federal lawsuit seeking class action status against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, accusing it of negligence and saying it broke California labor laws by not protecting them from the emotional trauma caused by reviewing hundreds of “highly toxic and extremely disturbing” videos every week.

“Defendants have failed to provide a safe workplace for the thousands of contractors who are the gatekeepers between the unfiltered, disgusting and offensive content uploaded to the App and the hundreds of millions of people who use the App every day,” states the lawsuit.

The suit describes the “graphic and objectionable content” uploaded to TikTok included child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide and murder.

"We would see death and graphic, graphic pornography. I would see nude underage children every day," said Velez, who lives in Las Vegas. "I would see people get shot in the face, and another video of a kid getting beaten made me cry for two hours straight."

The plaintiffs claim that although they were contractors for two different companies, they were both subject to the same schedule and quotas set by TikTok and ByteDance. Moderators were expected to review videos within 25 seconds and decide with more than 80% accuracy whether they broke one of TikTok’s rules.

The suit alleges that moderators often watched multiple videos at once to meet quotas.

Velez and Young also accuse TikTok and ByteDance of creating an unsafe work environment by not providing adequate mental health treatment to help deal with the anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress associated with viewing disturbing videos.

TikTok told NPR that it “strives to promote a caring work environment for our employees and contractors” and that moderators are offered “a range of wellness services.”

The lawyers representing the TikTok moderators also sued Facebook on behalf of thousands of moderators who said they experienced emotional distress on the job. Facebook settled the class-action suit for $52 million in 2020.