Meta, the American technology company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has ended its long-standing contract with Sama, a Kenyan outsourcing firm, resulting in the loss of more than 1,100 jobs. Sama confirmed the layoffs in a statement, marking the conclusion of a business relationship that began in 2019 and has been overshadowed for years by legal disputes, worker complaints, and questions about the human cost of content moderation.

Meta originally hired Sama to review and remove harmful, violent, or hateful content from Facebook across sub-Saharan Africa — a form of work known as content moderation, in which workers are exposed to large volumes of disturbing material on a daily basis. Current and former employees have long alleged that this exposure caused serious damage to their mental health, and that compensation was inadequate given the psychological risks involved. In 2022, a former South African employee filed a legal complaint, and in 2023 nearly 200 moderators who had already been dismissed by Sama sued for unfair dismissal, alleging inhumane working conditions, forced labour, and irregular pay. Sama denied the allegations, stating that employees received a living wage, full benefits, and access to professional counselling.

Meta said it ended the contract because Sama no longer met its standards, and indicated that content moderation work would increasingly be handled by artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Sama, for its part, had already shifted away from content moderation in recent years, pivoting toward AI data-labelling services — a related but distinct form of digital work that involves training AI models rather than reviewing social media posts.

The scale of the layoffs has renewed attention to the broader debate over how global technology companies manage outsourced labour in lower-income countries. Critics argue that firms like Meta have long relied on workers in Africa and Southeast Asia to perform psychologically gruelling tasks at relatively low cost, while offering insufficient protections. The transition to AI-based moderation, while framed by Meta as a technological upgrade, is also raising concerns about what happens to the tens of thousands of people worldwide whose livelihoods depend on these outsourced contracts. For the more than 1,100 workers in Kenya now facing unemployment, the end of the Meta deal represents an immediate and concrete hardship — one that courts and labour advocates are likely to continue scrutinising in the months ahead.