More than 100 Facebook content moderators have filed an application in court seeking to have a psychiatrist allowed to produce anonymized medical reports to support claims of exploitation that allegedly harmed their mental health.
The 185 in their amended petition state that they suffered mental health disorders due to the prolonged exposure of traumatizing content they were exposed to without psychiatric care while working for Meta.
To substantiate this claim, they seek to rely on medical reports following mental health evaluations carried out by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist is their expert witness in the case.
According to the court documents, the reports contain each of the petitioners symptoms, diagnosis, and prognosis for various mental health disorders they suffer.
"To protect and uphold the petitioners right to privacy and dignity, the expert witness has anonymized the medical reports so that they only refer to the petitioners in serial numbers, says their advocate, Mercy Mutemi.
This way, Mercy explains, a person reading the medical report will not be able to identify which petitioner it belongs to. And for purposes of full disclosure to the court and the respondents in the case, the witness has also developed a catalogue that matches each serial number to a specific petitioner.
"When the medical reports are read together with the catalogue, one is able to appreciate which medical report belongs to which petitioner,"
They want the court to also issue an order that access to the catalogue be restricted in order to uphold the privacy of the individual petitioners referenced in each medical report.
The petitioners state that keeping the catalogue under lock and key and limiting its circulation will achieve the purpose of protecting the petitioner's privacy.
"This application is therefore urgent, as without the courts permission, we will not be able to finalise the filing of our amended pleadings, which will in turn jeopardise the hearing of the case," they state.