Meta, the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, has found itself facing more complaints from Kenyans who were hired to train its artificial intelligence (AI) from information captured through its Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
In the complaint filed by Oversight Lab Africa, the employees say that the video clips they were required to label included explicit sexual content, bank details, pornography and disturbing communication between users and Meta AI.
The complaint was sent to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, led by Dr Immaculate Kassait, who confirmed that she had received it but could not comment further as the matter is now under investigation.
Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Another case linked to the alleged use of Meta AI glasses is one that many Kenyans may be familiar with.
On February 14, videos began to surface of Kenyans, mostly women, who were recorded without their knowledge, sharing intimate moments with a Russian man who made Kenya his playground for content creation. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has since launched investigations into the man and his activities.
Meta AI glasses are able to record and store footage of people and places. They also have AI capabilities, allowing the wearer to communicate with them and ask the AI to identify various elements.
The logos of Facebook social network and its parent company Meta. Content moderators have filed a Sh25.9 billion class action lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta and its local agents.
Photo credit: File | AFP
“Whatever the Meta glasses are recording is being harvested by Meta themselves who send it back to data labelling and annotation centres, some of which are in Kenya, to train their AI systems to be smarter, using this content which was recorded without consent,” Mercy Mutemi, the executive director of Oversight Lab Africa, states in the complaint.
The concerns raised in the report are mass surveillance and recording of non-consensual intimate images and videos, unlawful processing of data to train Meta AI, unlawful processing of data at Sama premises in Kenya and an audit of historical processing of data.
The mention of Sama revives a similar case that was also filed against Meta in 2023. Sama is the company based in Kenya that was hired by Meta to moderate content. Kenyan content moderators recorded statements of being subjected to gruesome scenes including child molestation, bestiality, lynching incidents, among others, for little pay.
Naftali Wambalo, a former content moderator, was among the close to 200 workers who took Meta to court in 2023 for unfair dismissal after they complained about lack of support and unfavourable working conditions.
Digital civil rights attorney Mercy Mutemi (left), Content Moderators Representative Naftali Wambalo (center), and Data Labelers Association President Joan Kinyua address journalists at Siasa Place in Nairobi on August 12, 2025
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation
“When we started the training, we began to see signs, weird things, graphic images, sexual activity, child exploitation. After a day’s work, you begin to dream about the child who was molested or the person who was being slaughtered and you wake up in the middle of the night. At that time, we were working individually in hotel rooms because of Covid-19, so there was solitude even with these nightmares. We asked them if this what we will be doing, they said yes and told us we had already signed a non-disclosure agreement,” Naftali says.
The workers say that they were offered counselling but it was not provided for under their medical cover.
“When we tried to talk to the counsellors, they were even more traumatised than us, so we would become like their counsellors instead. There’s a time I told one to come to the floor to see what we do. He couldn’t take it. He actually resigned,” Naftali adds.
The workers continued to champion for better terms of service and a union that would ensure that their working conditions would improve.
“I think that’s when they crafted the plan to send us away because internal pressure was building,” Naftali says.
The big tech company used the argument of jurisdiction in fighting the case, stating that it did not have physical presence in Kenya and hence could not be sued. But the courts pronounced themselves on September 20, 2024, ruling that Meta could in fact be sued here in Kenya.
Not long after, in December 2024, President William Ruto held a townhall meeting in Nairobi. He waded into the court case.
“The law we have just passed in Parliament will encourage more companies. In our midst I am told we have Samasource,” the president stated. He then asked the representatives from Samasource to stand up.
“These people there were taken to court and they were in real trouble, they really troubled me, now I can report to you that we have changed the law and nobody will take you to court again on any matter,” President Ruto stated.
The Nation reached out to Meta about the matter. In its response, a spokesperson stated:“Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands free, to answer questions about the world around you. Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy.”
It added that they have been in touch with Sama, which hired the moderators on its behalf.
Sama said it is not aware of any workflows where sexual or objectionable content is present, or where faces or sensitive content is continually unblurred. It said it will continue to investigate the matter.
Both Meta and the Kenyan government have used the creation of thousands of jobs in the country to counter court cases against the tech giant.
“It’s a blinding metric when you say we have created 10,000 jobs but if you don’t do the assignment of opening up the blinds to question what is really happening behind the scenes, we are setting our young people up for more exploitation,” Ms Mutemi said.
“The government is focusing on the business side, they are focusing on saying they have partnered with Meta and another organisation and that has brought 5,000 jobs and it’s a good card especially when heading to elections but nobody asks hii ni kazi gani? (what kind of work is this?),” she added.
In 2023, Worldcoin, a crypto currency project , created one of Kenya’s most significant data privacy scandals after it harvested iris data from thousands of Kenyans eyeballs without due process.
