Between billion-dollar investments in AI, year-over-year increases in revenue, and an ever-expanding social media audience, Big Tech’s momentum shows no slowing in 2025. 

Amid this growth, one foundational element is often ignored: the invisible human labor sustaining Big Tech. Contract workers in the Global South are moderating harmful content on social media platforms and powering AI systems through data labeling and annotation, yet their rights, safety, and dignity remain alarmingly overlooked. 

The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently published a joint investigation that exposed “grueling conditions” for big tech contract workers in Accra, Ghana, including psychological distress from moderating disturbing content on social media, such as depictions of murders, extreme violence, and child sexual abuse. As a direct result of their work, these workers experienced depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicide attempts. 

Similar accounts were reported in Kenya, where over 140 workers were diagnosed with severe PTSD, and several workers were paid less than $2 a day to label toxic content in large language models. Content moderators in Colombia faced low wages, frequent exposure to violent and disturbing content, and little to no psychological support to cope with the resulting trauma. 

As a result, contract workers have begun to push back and advocate for their rights, forming unions and global alliances to demand better pay, working conditions, and psychological support. After all, innovation and workplace dignity are not mutually exclusive. 

To truly address the problem, we need stronger global and domestic regulations that hold tech companies accountable for protecting workers across their value chains. Companies must prioritize the health, safety, and well-being of all workers in their value chain, especially those in the Global South, where labour and human rights protections are lacking. To ensure responsible innovation, tech companies must:

• Pay fair and livable wages: Cheap labor should never be a justification for exploitation. Companies must recognize the time, skills, and experiences of workers, especially those labeling data, moderating content, or training AI, and ensure they are compensated fairly. Ethical labor practices benefit not only the company but also the communities in which they operate.
• Ensure safety and protections: Contract workers deserve access to benefits that safeguard their physical and mental health, including trauma-informed care, regular breaks, and access to medical and psychological services.
• Include the Global South in the future of tech: Workers in developing countries should not be relegated to invisible backend roles while facing disproportionate harm. Instead, they must be meaningfully included in conversations about the impact, direction, and governance of the technologies they help build.
• Adopt transparency initiatives that, at a minimum, proactively communicate their policy on outsourced labour and provide users with the quantum of labour sourced from the Global South within their value chain. The Transparency Index of the Center for Research and Foundation Models is a good template to adopt. 
• Support the unionisation of contract workers and provide financial and other support for the unions to facilitate access to legal advice for aggrieved workers. 

Technology is only as powerful as the workers and communities who build and sustain it. Big Tech must prioritize the protection and dignity of the very people shaping the next generation of innovation. Worker protections aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re a fundamental requirement for building a tech-enabled world that works for everyone.