More than 1,000 workers in Nairobi learned this week they no longer had jobs. Six days’ notice. No safety net. Their employer, Sama, lost its contract with Meta, and the axe fell immediately.

Sama, which handled content moderation and AI training work outsourced by Meta, announced the layoffs on Thursday after the tech giant terminated the contract. The trigger: allegations last month that Kenyan data annotation workers were asked to review footage from Meta’s Ray-Ban AI smart glasses — footage showing wearers using the toilet or having sex.

Meta’s response was clinical. “Photos and videos are private to users,” the company said, adding that it had “also decided to end our work with Sama because they don’t meet our standards.” Accountability traveled fast and far from Menlo Park.

This is the second mass termination of Sama workers in recent years. A 2024 civil lawsuit alleged severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety among 140 former content moderators forced to watch horrific material as part of their work for Meta. Sama has maintained that its teams receive “living wages and full benefits” with access to “comprehensive wellness resources.”

Former Sama worker Kauna Malgwi called the pattern structural. “Power sits with large technology companies,” she said. “Risk flows downward, affecting outsourced workers, often in the global south, who have the least protection and highest exposure.”

The Oversight Lab, which advocates for fair technology regulation across Africa, is advising sacked workers on legal options. It called the layoffs devastating and warned that current strategies were “harming our youth, hurting our economy and in no way advance Kenya’s participation in the AI ecosystem.”

The layoffs follow a period of restructuring at Meta that has cut jobs worldwide — but the consequences are not distributed equally. Nairobi’s displaced workers face thin social protections and a local market with few comparable employers. In the AI supply chain, the people who label data and train models are contractors of contractors: first in line when contracts end, last in line when protections are discussed. The technology runs on their labor. The risk runs to them.

Sources