An American employee of TikTok drags parent company ByteDance to court. She would have mental health problems because she had to review shocking videos as a moderator, Bloomberg News Agency reports Friday.
These include images of child pornography, rapes, beheadings and mutilations of animals. There would also be regular videos of cannibalism, school shootings and suicide.
Candie Frazier states that TikTok requires its more than ten thousand content moderators to work at a lightning speed. They have to watch hundreds of videos during twelve-hour shifts. The breaks would also be too short.
“Due to the sheer amount of content on TikTok, moderators are not allowed to spend more than 25 seconds reviewing a video. This means that they have to watch three to ten videos at a time,” the lawyers write in the indictment that Bloomberg has seen.
According to the lawyers, TikTok is a member of a group of social media companies that are developing guidelines to help moderators deal with images of child abuse that they should view for their work. Frazier says that she did not receive psychological help and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to all the images.
The woman demands compensation. She also wants to enforce through the court that TikTok is obliged to provide psychological help to moderators. TikTok has not yet responded to the charges.