Telus Digital, the company responsible for content moderation for Facebook owner, Meta, informed its nearly 2,000 employees on Thursday that it is closing its centre in Barcelona.
Meta has reportedly decided to discontinue the subcontractor’s services as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to let users on Facebook and Instagram police the platforms’ content, in effect removing official fact-checkers and content moderators.
On Thursday, a manager from Telus told workers at the Torre Gloriès (main image) offices that they would be sent home, according to local media.
The announcement came after all internal communications had been suspended, including access to email accounts.
The company later said in a statement that it is ‘evolving and adapting the volume of its services to meet the needs and requirements of its clients’. It comes after the company notified its employees – approximately 2,000- of a redundancy plan (ERE), claiming that Meta is closing its operations in the Catalan capital, according to reports.
Telus said that its clients ‘are diversifying their presence and moving their services to other locations’ and that the ‘changes and readjustments’ are part of its ‘normal operations’, adding that it would provide comprehensive support for the transition to all affected team members.
Cancelling content moderation is widely reported as being part of Zuckerberg’s decision to align with Elon Musk (owner of social media platform X, formerly Twitter) with regards Donald Trump’s interpretation of ‘free speech’, and specifically to gain the US president’s favour as a result.
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