Confusion sets in as Meta content moderators go without payContent moderators under Sama, Meta’s content review sub-contractor in Africa, earlier today picketed at the company’s headquarters in Kenya demanding April salary, while urging it to observe the court orders that barred it from conducting mass layoffs.
The demonstrations came after Sama, in an email, instructed moderators to clear with the company by May 11, a move the employees say is against the existing court orders.
The 184 moderators sued Sama for allegedly laying them off unlawfully, after it wound down its content review arm in March, and Majorel, the social media giant’s new partner in Africa, for blacklisting on instruction by Meta.
The court issued a temporary injunction on March 21 barring Sama from effecting any form of redundancy, and Meta from engaging Majorel, which was also instructed to refrain from blacklisting the moderators. Sama was directed to continue reviewing content on Meta’s platforms, and to be its sole provider in Africa pending determination of the case. However, Sama sent the moderators on compulsory leave in April saying it had no work for them as its contract with Meta had expired.
Sama told TechCrunch that it had sent the notice “to staff whose contract had expired to go through our regular clearance process. This clearance process involves the return of company equipment to make sure that all final dues can be paid without deduction for that equipment, in accordance with Kenyan law.”
It said the moderators’ contracts had ended in March after its deal with Meta expired, saying that it was only processing the moderators final dues.
“We understand our former employees’ frustration because they were led by others to believe that they would all receive salary indefinitely while on leave, but that is not what the court dictated,” said Sama.
Yet, Sama’s VP of global service delivery, Annpeace Alwala, had in an affidavit dated April 12, and seen by TechCrunch, asked the court to set aside the temporary injunction saying that keeping the content moderators came “with a serious cost implication.” Alwala had outlined that it would cost about $90,000 monthly to keep the moderators, and a further $135,000 to process their work permits and security bond.
The moderators filed the suit alleging that Sama failed to issue redundancy notices, as required by Kenyan law. The suit also claims, among other issues, that the moderators were not issued with a 30-day termination notice, and that their terminal dues were pegged on their signing of non-disclosure documents. Sama says it observed the Kenyan law.
Sama, whose long list of clientele includes OpenAI, dropped Meta’s contract and content review services, laying off 260 people in the process, to concentrate on labeling work (computer vision data annotation), following the heat from a 2022 lawsuit in Kenya by its former content moderator, Daniel Motaung.
Motuang, a South African, had accused Sama and Meta of forced labor and human trafficking, unfair labor relations, union busting and failure to provide “adequate” mental health and psychosocial support. He was allegedly laid off for organizing a 2019 strike and trying to unionize Sama’s employees. Sama and Majorel moderators earlier this week voted to form a union.

Meta’s content review in Africa in limbo as moderation partners decry court restrictions

Meta can be sued in Kenya over alleged unlawful layoffs and blacklisting of moderators, court rules

Kenyan court paves way for lawsuit alleging Facebook played role in fueling Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict

Confusion sets in as Meta content moderators go without pay by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Dark Intervals Deep Blue DEEP BLUE is instrument based on lush and ambient sounding pads. All samples are made with hardware synths. Patches are programmed on synth, sampled, and mapped into Kontakt. ... Read More

Hal Leonard Releases Vocal Selections FoliosHal Leonard has released two vocal selections from a Tony-topping Broadway hit and a fan-favorite motion picture. Some Like It Hot has lit up Broadway this season and garnered the most Tony Award nominations of any show (13!), including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The official matching folio features 15 infectious songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman arranged with vocal line and piano accompaniment. It retails for $27.99.

The composer-approved Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile vocal selections folio features nine songs from the 2022 musical comedy starring Shawn Mendes as the voice of everyone's favorite singing crocodile. Featuring original songs by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Shawn Mendes, each song is arranged with vocal line and piano accompaniment. It retails for $22.99.

Booth books are available from music and bookstores everywhere or at halleonard.com.

Audioblast BreadSlicerPRO BreadSlicerPRO is an auto-slice effect : it takes the signal input, cut it into slices and re-arrange the slices, in sync with the DAW/host tempo. Some FX are randomly applied to slices... Read More

From Ed Sheeran’s court victory to Spotify deleting Boomy uploads… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest music biz headlines from the past week, all in one place
Source

Ginger Audio Releases GroundControl Sphere
Ginger Audio releases GroundControl Sphere, a multichannel audio routing app for macOS. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a few GroundControl releases from Ginger Audio, including Room and Caster. Sphere is the latest version of GroundControl, and it supports Dolby Atmos speaker layouts from 2.0 to 9.1.6, making it ideal for any surround sound [...]
View post: Ginger Audio Releases GroundControl Sphere

Ticketmaster sold 15,000 tickets per minute at ‘peak sale times’ in North America during Q1 2023Concerts giant Live Nation delivered record results across all its divisions in Q1 2023.
Source

Spotify to remove historical Artist data, Similar Artists analyticsSpotify has announced that Artist data will only be retained for the past two years plus the year to date across the Spotify for Artists analytics platform. Spotify is also. Continue reading
The post Spotify to remove historical Artist data, Similar Artists analytics appeared first on Hypebot.

Billboard re-adds controversial merch bundles to chart calculationsMerch bundles will again be part of the Billboard chart calculations. The trade magazine stopped including merch and album download bundles in July 2020. A 2019 New York Times story. Continue reading
The post Billboard re-adds controversial merch bundles to chart calculations appeared first on Hypebot.

DistroKid launches a mobile appD.I.Y. music distributor DistroKid has added a mobile app. Initially only available for iPhone, it makes DistroKid’s suite of tools available to artists on the go. Users can upload new releases,. Continue reading
The post DistroKid launches a mobile app appeared first on Hypebot.

MIDI Innovation Awards: Meet the Jury Music Hackspace, The MIDI Association and NAMM are excited to announce a stellar jury for this year’s MIDI Innovation Awards.

Zynaptiq announce Orange Vocoder IV & Zap III Bundle Zynaptiq have released a new version of their popular Orange Vocoder plug-in and launched the latest version of their flagship plug-in bundle. 

Montana governor signs pro-cryptocurrency mining bill into lawThe legislation includes revisions to laws aimed at prohibiting discriminatory electrical rates for mining firms and not allowing taxation for crypto used as a method of payment.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl join Board of Trustees at The Paley Center for MediaThe Paley Center is described as 'the entertainment industry's leading nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the cultural, creative, and social significance of media and its impact on society'
Source

Persona and Index Ventures talk identity, and identifying a good dealIdentity management used to mean making sure you had your driver’s license when you left the house, but these days it’s not so easy: Identity fundamentally underpins how we engage with the digital world, and identity services can take on many forms (and, unfortunately, abuses). I’m excited to host a TechCrunch Live event with Persona co-founder and CEO Rick Song, one of the early movers in the space, about how his company identified ID management as an opportunity.
This TechCrunch Live event takes place on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. PDT. Register here for Hopin access, where viewers can ask questions and network with other attendees.
Along with Rick, Index Venture’s Mark Goldberg is speaking at the event, too. Mark made a prescient move to spot and back Persona during its Series B fundraise and backed the company again for its $150 million Series C.
Rick Song co-founded Persona with Charles Yeh in 2018, and according to PitchBook, the company’s valuation is $1.5 billion as of Persona’s Series C in 2021. Since its founding, the company’s goal has remained the same: provide users with a verification system to protect and secure identity from theft and fraud. The company raised a Series B in 2021 after seeing revenues jump 20x while users increased 5x. In late 2022, Persona introduced new services, expanding beyond identify verification with the launch of à la carte tools, including a risk assessment engine, an identity workflow tool, a graph database aimed at link analysis and fraud detection, and a marketplace for external developers to help connect their business tools to Persona’s identity tools.
I hope you can join this TechCrunch Live event. Rick and Mark are set to provide actionable insights on how companies can better protect users, and how founders, building such services, can stand out among their competitors.
REGISTER HERE FOR FREE
Persona and Index Ventures talk identity, and identifying a good deal by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch