Online Safety Team employees file lawsuit over PTSD

Jan 12, 2017 07:06 GMT  ·  By
Employees claim they were told to take smoke breaks instead of being enrolled in medical programs
   Employees claim they were told to take smoke breaks instead of being enrolled in medical programs

Working for Microsoft is for many people a dream that never comes true, but for Henry Soto and Greg Blauert it’s all just a nightmare that doesn’t seem to end.

The two, who were part of Redmond’s Online Safety Team, have decided to file a lawsuit against Microsoft after they were forced to look at photos and videos allegedly violating the company’s terms, including here child porn, bestiality, murders, and sexual assault.

The responsibility of the team was to determine which content had to be removed from Microsoft’s servers, after an automated technology previously flagged it as infringing. Workers had to manually check every little piece of content, including what they describe in the lawsuit as photos and videos “designed to entertain some of the most twisted and sick minded people in the world.”

Employees are now accusing Microsoft of negligence, disability discrimination, and violation of the Consumer Protection Act, saying that managers ignored all their complaints, eventually causing them to suffer from PTSD.

In lawsuit documents, Soto reveals that he was transferred to the Online Safety Team in 2008, but he wasn’t informed before about full responsibilities of the new role, instead being told that what he had to do was reviewing “terms of use violations.”

He eventually discovered that his new job involved watching “horrible brutality, murder, indescribable sexual assaults, videos of humans dying and, in general, videos and photographs designed to entertain the most twisted and sick-minded people in the world,” as explained in lawsuit docs.

Ignored by superiors, told to play games

Soto gradually started suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder with sleep disturbance and nightmares, with the suit pointing out that he suffered auditory hallucinations after watching abuse and murder of a child.

Microsoft does have a mental health program for members of the Digital Crimes Unit, but instead, Soto was enrolled in a so-called Wellness Program that got him diagnosed with compassion fatigue and which didn’t help him prevent PTSD. Instead, employees were told by their bosses to take walks and smoking breaks, but also to play video games and relax. Oddly enough, Bauert says that he even received a penalty for playing video games at work.

The two tried to report their problems to superiors several times, but all complaints were ignored, so they eventually ended up suffering from PTSD.

Soto was eventually transferred from the Online Safety Team, but was working in a department just next to this group, so new employees approached him with questions on a regular basis.

The two eventually left Microsoft, but were never offered compensation, so they decided to sue the company in what seems to be one of the most horrible cases brought forward by a Redmond employee.