Judge says Zuckerberg, contractors not in court contempt

A Nairobi court yesterday said  Facebook’s parent company Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and two contractors are not in contempt of court for failing to pay dozens of content moderators that a contractor laid off.

In his ruling, Justice Mathews Nduma Nderi of the Employment and Labour Relations Court said Meta did not “deliberately and contemptuously” breach a court order requiring it to pay the wages of hundreds of Facebook content moderators.

“They did various things which they thought were lawful in trying to deal with their situation but we did not find that what they did amounted to contempt,” Nderi said.

While dismissing the plea by the moderators, Justice Nduma said the request to summon Zuckerberg is wholly incompetent, bad in law and without merit.

“ The Applicants have not demonstrated to the court that there was willful and deliberate disobedience of a court order that Meta were aware of,” the judge said

The over 180 content moderators wanted Facebook parent company Meta boss Zuckerbeg summoned to appear in court for contempt of court and compelled to pay over Sh1 billion being total amount of Sh10 million a day since March 20 when he disobeyed courts barring him together with content moderating partner Samasource Kenya EPZ Limited(Sama).