Facebook was accused in court this week of misunderstanding basic human rights law after it tried to claim it wasn’t responsible for traumatising a content moderator who watched a beheading video.

Facebook is claiming immunity from Kenyan law in an attempt to avoid dealing with outsourced content moderators in the East African country who watch disturbing and harmful content as part of their jobs.

Daniel Motaung, who worked as a content moderator in Nairobi, is suing Sama, Facebook’s main outsourcing contractor in East Africa. Lawyers for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, argued in June that the Kenyan court has no jurisdiction over the company because it is “not resident, trading or domiciled in Kenya”.

At a court hearing in Nairobi on Wednesday, lawyers for Motaung asked the judge not to let Meta off the hook. Lead counsel Mercy Mutemi said Meta’s position was a “bold misapprehension of the constitution as well as fundamental principles of human rights law”.

Motaung sued both Facebook and the tech company Sama (specifically Samasource Kenya EPZ Ltd, the Kenyan branch of the California-based multinational) in May for forced labour, human trafficking and union-busting.

Earlier this year, Motaung came out as a whistleblower to say that content moderation work for Facebook – which included him watching at least one beheading – was hazardous to mental health and poorly paid, and that the psychological care provided by Sama was inadequate. His attempts to form a union, in...

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