This lawsuit, a federal lawsuit seeking class action status, accuses TikTok of negligence and says it broke California labor laws by allegedly not protecting Velez and Young from the emotional trauma caused by reviewing hundreds of "highly toxic and extremely disturbing" videos every week, including videos of animal cruety, torture and even execution of children. "Underage nude children was the plethora of what I saw," said Velez (a mother of two boys).  The Chinese owned app is the envy of Silicon Valley social media giants and has more than 1billion monthly active users. Its success depends in no small part on the work of moderators like Velez who toil behind the scenes to scrub TikTok of distressing content before the masses see it. Before they could start work, moderators had to sign non-disclosure agreements, the suit said, preventing them from discussing what they saw with even their families. "There's a hope that artificial intelligence can do all of this work, but that hope is not yet realized, so now humans mostly do this work," lawyer Steve Williams of the Joseph Saveri Law Firm who filed the case said.  In the suit, lawyers of Young and Velez argue that their clients' psychological trauma stems not just from videos that are violent but also from those that spread conspiracy theories, including recordings suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic is a fraud or denying the holocaust ever happened. The same lawyers filed a similar suit against TikTok in Decenber on behalf of moderator Candie Frazier. It was dropped last month, before a settlement was reached, after her lawyers say she was fired.    Article by Bob Allyn - NPR