In February, numerous workers from a company that Meta contracted to perform data annotation for Ray-Ban Meta reported viewing sensitive, embarrassing, and seemingly private footage recorded by the smart glasses. About two months later, Meta ended its contract with the firm.
According to a BBC report today, “less than two months” after a report from Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten and Kenya-based freelance journalist Naipanoi Lepapa came out featuring Sama workers complaining about watching explicit footage shot from Ray-Ban Metas, “Meta ended its contract with Sama.”
Sama is a Kenya-headquartered firm that Meta contracted to perform data annotation work, including working with video, image, and speech annotation for Meta’s AI systems for Ray-Ban Metas. Sama claims that Meta’s cancellation of the contract affected 1,108 workers.
A Meta spokesperson told BBC that Meta “decided to end our work with Sama because they don’t meet our standards.” Ars Technica reached out to Meta asking how, specifically, Sama failed to meet Meta’s expectations and will update this article if we hear back. Ars has also reached out to Sama.
In a statement shared with BBC, Sama claimed that it was never notified of any failure to meet Meta’s standards.
BBC reported that Sama workers believe Meta ended the contract because workers spoke out about seeing Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people performing personal acts, like changing their clothes, having sex, and using the toilet.
In a statement shared with Ars, Sama said:
We do not comment on specific client processes or decisions, however, we can confirm that the engagement with Meta is ending. Sama has consistently met the operational, security, and quality standards required across all of our client engagements, and we stand behind the integrity of our work. Our focus is on supporting our employees during this transition while continuing to deliver for our clients.
In February’s report, an anonymous Sama employee was quoted as saying, per a machine translation, they “are just expected to carry out the work” even when viewing private footage.
After Sama workers told journalists that they had watched private footage that appeared to be recorded unbeknownst to glasses owners, Meta responded by halting business with Sama, a spokesperson said, per BBC’s report today.