Ms Cori Crider:

I cannot overly speculate as to Facebook's motives, but I would respectfully suggest to the committee that, just as it is speaking to the Tánaiste shortly about these issues, it would be appropriate to invite the companies who are taking on this work and who host the public square to come and give the committee their perspective. We would absolutely welcome that. There seem to us to be two factors at play. One is, as Ms Plunkett has said, that she makes an absolute fraction of what a Facebook employee makes, including a relatively entry-level Facebook employee who is doing quality assurance on the same content. This employee is just a couple of rungs up the proverbial totem pole and would make an absolute multiple of what an outsourced content moderator earns, so there is that fact. There is also the fact there is greater ability to shift the workforce relatively rapidly, in that the companies can open up something and then lay off people en massewith what they consider to be a greater degree of flexibility. The final concern is to do with potential liability for people who contract very serious clinical PTSD as a result of exposure.

One of the documents we submitted in evidence to the committee is an acknowledgment used by one of the outsourcing firms that says in its terms that the moderator will understand that exposure to this content "could even lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder", and that the moderator will engage in the mandatory wellness coaching session. The moderator is to understand that those [coaches] are not clinicians and this may not be sufficient to prevent him or her contracting PTSD. We can see there, in black and white in the document we have submitted to this committee, that the companies are essentially asking the workers themselves to shoulder the burden and the responsibility for their own mental health. This seems to us to be the functional equivalent of an industrial factory saying to a worker building a car, for example, that "we have not put a guard on but make sure you keep your arm out of the machine". The fact this is mental health and therefore harder to see and that we are socially behind in our conversation about this does not mean it is not a real medical workplace health and safety issue; it is.