Another twist. A TikTok content moderator has filed a criminal complaint against Majorel SP Solutions, a subcontractor in Barcelona for the Chinese platform, and against its three direct managers in the company for the severe psychiatric damage caused by the job. She earned 1,430 gross euros per month. The complaint includes six documents and a video that accurately describe what moderators should remove and what they should let pass. The bar was very low.
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Moderators had instructions to tolerate videos of viral trends and challenges simulating suicides.
Filtering does not remove suicide simulation challenges, minors in sensual dances, or eating disorders
Those in which the user put themselves at risk of accident or death and in which self-mutilation was applied.
Those in which minors uploaded photos simulating hanging themselves.
Those in which they consumed or simulated consuming drugs, chemicals, objects, or alcohol.
They had to let pass those showing children and adolescents dancing sensually and/or with explicit texts. Those in which they were seen doing pole dancing , or in heels, or in fetishistic practices.
The sexual content platform Only Fans was covertly promoted.
Pornography videos were also published when the person – according to the subjective criterion of the moderator – appeared to be over 18 years old.
Those of violent sexual practices.
Those of child sexual harassment and child pornography.
Those of bullying, harassment, hate speech, or fights.
Those showing eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.
The complaint – filed by the law firm Espacio Jurídico Feliu Fins – details these examples, but has also managed to attach documents that corroborate these instructions. In the attached video, a young man is seen being decapitated.
The complainant is a 49-year-old woman who was assigned to the Portuguese-speaking market, mainly users from Brazil and Portugal. She no longer works there and is undergoing psychiatric treatment.
The complaint is directed against three people from the subcontractor in Barcelona: the head of TikTok’s moderation service at Majorel and those responsible for occupational risk prevention up to and since 2021. In addition to Majorel SP Solutions, TikTok Technology Limited, based in Ireland, and TikTok Information Technologies Spain, the Spanish subsidiary, are also named in the complaint.
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In addition to the subcontractor Majorel, TikTok Technology Limited, based in Ireland, and TikTok’s subsidiary in Spain are also named in the complaint
The complainant began working for Majorel in 2018 as a temporary employee. She was made permanent in 2021. The only requirement was proficiency in Portuguese, as it was the language to be moderated, and English, the working language of the company.
The complaint states that the worker received no training on occupational risks, nor information about the mental health damage or the risk of contracting mental illnesses that could result from the job of removing content related to sex, violence, and all kinds of crimes to prevent their publication. In reality, her contract was for a “teleoperator,” even though she did not perform that job.
“Before her hiring, the company never informed the complainant that she would have to view extremely violent content, much less constantly throughout her workday. Moreover, the company downplayed this aspect both in interviews and in subsequent training sessions conducted once hired,” the complaint states. “It was also concealed that the job was to moderate content for the TikTok platform,” it adds.
The workday was eight hours long. In her first contract, she had five minutes of rest every hour and 25 minutes for lunch. She could not get up for periods of 55 minutes. The five minutes of rest were timed to the second. She could not ask for an extra break if she had just seen a savage video and needed to recover.
The conditions for this person changed in 2025, with thirty minutes of assistance stipulated in the company’s so-called wellness services, with psychological support. In October 2023, La Vanguardia published a series of reports on the epidemic of mental illnesses affecting the workers of the subcontractor that moderated content for Meta in the Glòries tower in Barcelona; the headquarters of the two companies are barely 300 meters apart.
Many of the contents that the company considered “normal” and tolerated for publication “clashed with the moral and ethical sense” of the complainant, in addition to having caused her severe mental damage.
16 seconds per video
The lawsuit details stress as a trigger for psychological ailments. The content moderation algorithm used by the company imposed a maximum of 16 seconds on moderators to moderate each ticket. They had to do at least 1,200 per day. They were also forced to watch entire videos, with the paradox that many of them lasted longer, making it impossible to meet the objectives.
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