UPDATE — April 30, 2026: Meta is facing a growing international backlash after terminating its contract with Kenyan outsourcing firm Sama, a move that will eliminate 1,108 jobs—just weeks after workers publicly revealed they had been forced to review deeply personal and graphic footage captured by Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses.
The Revelations
In February 2026, Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten published a bombshell investigation based on interviews with unnamed Sama data annotators in Kenya. The workers described reviewing video content from Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses—footage that included users going to the toilet, having sex, and undressing.
“We see everything—from living rooms to naked bodies,” one worker told the Swedish journalists. In one particularly disturbing case, a worker described how a man’s glasses, left recording in a bedroom, later filmed a woman—apparently his wife—undressing without her knowledge or consent.
The Mass Layoffs
Less than two months after the Swedish investigation was published, Meta announced it was ending its contract with Sama. The Kenyan firm confirmed the decision would result in 1,108 workers being made redundant—effective immediately.
Meta’s official explanation is clinical: the company stated it “decided to end our work with Sama because they don’t meet our standards.” But Sama strongly disputes this claim, insisting it “has consistently met the operational, security and quality standards required across our client engagements, including with Meta.” The firm added: “At no point were we notified of any failure to meet those standards.”
Retaliation Allegations
Workers’ rights advocates and the Africa Tech Workers Movement are calling the layoffs retaliatory. Naftali Wambalo, a petitioner in ongoing legal action against Meta, told the BBC he believes the “standards” Meta cites are actually “standards of secrecy.”
“What I think are the standards they are talking about here are standards of secrecy,” Wambalo said. “They didn’t want workers speaking out about human workers sometimes reviewing content captured by the smart glasses.”
Mercy Mutemi, a lawyer representing petitioners and executive director of the Oversight Lab campaign group, called Meta’s actions a warning to the Kenyan government. “We’ve been told that this is our entry route into the AI ecosystem,” she told the BBC. “This is a very flimsy foundation to build your entire industry on.”
Regulatory Response
The revelations have triggered investigations on two continents. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) wrote to Meta shortly after the Swedish investigation, calling the reports “concerning.” In Kenya, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner announced its own investigation into privacy concerns raised by the smart glasses.
Meta maintains that users are made aware of the possibility of human review in its terms of service, and that the company gets “clear user consent” for human review of AI content. But privacy advocates argue that no reasonable user would expect their most intimate moments—captured in what appears to be private settings—to be reviewed by outsourced workers thousands of miles away.
Pattern of Exploitation?
This is not the first time Meta’s relationship with Sama has ended in controversy. A previous contract for Facebook content moderation attracted criticism and legal action from former employees who described being exposed to graphic, traumatizing content. Sama later said it regretted taking that work.
The current dispute raises broader questions about the human cost of AI development. As tech giants race to deploy ever-more-sophisticated AI systems, they rely heavily on armies of low-paid workers in the Global South to label, annotate, and moderate content. These workers—often invisible to the end user—are now speaking out about the psychological toll of reviewing graphic and intimate material, only to find themselves unemployed.
What Happens Next
The 1,108 Kenyan workers now face an uncertain future. Sama, which began as a non-profit organization aimed at increasing employment through tech jobs, has defended its record but must now absorb the loss of its largest contract. Meta says it has “paused” its work with Sama while investigating the claims, but the workers are already out of jobs.
For Meta, the scandal adds to growing scrutiny of its AI-powered smart glasses, which have faced criticism over privacy concerns since their launch in September 2025. While the glasses offer features like real-time translation and visual assistance for the blind, the revelation that intimate footage is being reviewed by human workers in Kenya has intensified calls for stronger privacy protections and greater transparency about how AI training data is handled.
Meta did not respond to specific questions about whether the layoffs were related to the workers speaking out. The company reiterated that it ended the contract due to Sama’s failure to meet standards.
