Candie Frazier, a content moderator for Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok, which recently surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the world, is suing the company, alleging that it did not provide a safe workplace environment and gave her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The class-action lawsuit accuses TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, of not implementing industry-standard safety protocols to shield moderators from graphic content that they do not need to see in order to do their jobs.
The suit, filed Thursday in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, said that Frazier’s job included spending 12 hours a day reviewing “disturbing” content. While on the job, Frazier witnessed “thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence,” including child rape, animal mutilation, sexual assault, and mass shootings, according to the suit.
Due to “the constant and unmitigated exposure to highly toxic” content, Frazier developed PTSD, anxiety, and
depression, the suit alleges.The suit also states that Frazier has “horrific nightmares” and often replays “videos that she has seen in her mind” while trying to sleep.
The lawsuit alleges that TikTok failed to implement standard industry practices to protect content moderators such as minimizing or blurring portions of disturbing content or disabling audio.
It is not the first time a tech company has been sued over claims that content moderating duties caused psychological trauma. Facebook faced a similar lawsuit in 2018, from a female content moderator who alleged that repeat exposure to graphic images caused her to develop PTSD.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.