Meta Cuts 1,100 Data Workers After Reports They Viewed Explicit Ray-Ban Meta Footage

Meta terminated its contract with Sama, a Kenya-headquartered data annotation firm, approximately two months after workers employed by the company reported viewing sensitive and seemingly private footage recorded by Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The contract cancellation affected roughly 1,108 workers, according to Sama. The decision marks a significant rupture in Meta's AI training pipeline and raises fresh scrutiny over how the company sources and manages outsourced labor for its most sensitive data operations.

The exposure originated from an investigation by Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten, in collaboration with Kenya-based freelance journalist Naipanoi Lepapa. Workers described encountering explicit and embarrassing content during routine annotation tasks—work that involves labeling video, image, and speech data to train Meta's AI systems for the Ray-Ban Meta product line. The footage, captured by wearers of the smart glasses, reportedly included intimate moments that workers described as distressing and beyond the scope of what they had been assigned to process. Sama, which maintains it provides ethical AI services, found itself at the center of a labor and privacy controversy that drew international attention before Meta moved to sever the relationship.

The case surfaces persistent tensions in the global data annotation industry, where low-wage contractors in regions like East Africa routinely handle content that major tech companies prefer to keep at arm's length. For Meta, the incident compounds pressure over its AI data practices, particularly concerning wearable devices that blur the line between public and private recording. The timing—less than two months between the published reports and the contract's end—suggests swift action by Meta, though the company has not publicly detailed the specific reasons for termination or what safeguards exist for remaining and future annotation workers.