The World Hasn't Changed Tik Tok Tik Tok: TIKTOK Being Sued

"We would see death and graphic, graphic pornography. I would see nude underage children every day," Velez said in an interview. "I would see people get shot in the face, and another video of a kid getting beaten made me cry for two hours straight."

Velez worked for TikTok from May to November 2021, one of some 10,000 content moderators worldwide who police videos on the platform, making sure it remains an endless feed of lighthearted content, rather than a cesspool of violent and disturbing videos.

Now, Velez and another former TikTok moderator, Reece Young, have filed a federal lawsuit seeking class action status against the video-sharing app and its parent company, ByteDance.

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"Underage nude children was the plethora of what I saw," said Velez, who now works as an independent contractor for vacation-home rental site Boutiq. "People like us have to filter out the unsavory content. Somebody has to suffer and see this stuff so nobody else has to."

According to the suit, Young and Velez were exposed to an unsafe work environment because TikTok did not provide adequate mental health treatment to help deal with the anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress associated with reviewing graphic videos.