u/Missionget

I work for an international AI company doing training/evaluation tasks, and my experience has made me question how these companies treat workers.
I completed tasks following their guidelines, but I was told I failed and would not be paid. Later, I noticed that some of the same reasoning, examples, or information I used appeared in their own materials or guidelines. That made me question whether the evaluation process is really about quality or whether some workers are being rejected after their work has already been useful.

What concerns me even more is hearing about situations where entire countries of workers were suddenly restricted or removed after payment disputes. For example, they’ll ban a whole country from working for them because the citizens are extremely efficient and they’ll have to pay them, instead they’ll ban them and accuse them of fraud(lies, they just don’t want to pay a lot of people). Instead of addressing concerns about compensation, it feels like some companies can simply cut off access to workers who are asking questions.

Has anyone else working in AI data annotation or model training experienced rejected work being reused, unfair evaluations, delayed payments, or entire regions being blocked?

What’s with the determination to stay, even when so many documented stories show both legal and undocumented African migrants being beaten, attacked, and sometimes killed? Even those who have the proper documentation are still harassed and abused.

One thing that frustrates me is what I see as a common mindset among many Africans: “If I’m not doing anything wrong” or “If it doesn’t personally affect me, then I don’t need to care.” Too many people only speak up once they’re the ones being targeted.

I see this same attitude when Africans move to Western countries. Many ignore or downplay racism as long as they have a job or aren’t personally experiencing the worst forms of discrimination. Some even laugh off racist incidents instead of recognizing the bigger issue.
For example, when the Senegal national football team was searched on the airport tarmac in the United States, some later defended it as “not a big deal.” Whether you agree with that specific incident or not, I think it reflects a broader tendency to normalize or dismiss discrimination rather than question it.

I think Africans need to do better at standing together. This is why I so much respect African Americans because most of them stand together. See Nigerians talking about the polygamist and playing amapiano when we’re supposed to be boycotting but many even defend it smh. I wish we were more like African Americans when it comes to social issues.
Waiting until something affects you personally only weakens us collectively. If we consistently spoke out against discrimination whether it happens in South Africa, Europe, America, or elsewhere we would be in a much stronger position to demand respect and accountability.

Call Africans whether documented or undocumented needs to leave South Africa.

I was a self-hating Nigerian. I was born, brought up, and still live in Nigeria. I hated everything about Nigeria and listened to people talk about how literally anywhere else was better than Nigeria. I would watch travel bloggers go to neighboring countries, show the best places, and I’d think that’s how it looked everywhere in those countries. I would go online and bash Nigeria at every opportunity, even taking sides with xenophobes and racists just to insult the country and its people.

This is the reality of so many Nigerians. They think bashing Nigeria and Nigerians will make people see them as “one of the good ones,” or that it will somehow pressure the government to improve. But instead, it does nothing except tarnish our image further.

Just look at the difference in comments between the Nigerian guys caught in the Thai condo incident versus Mexican drug dealers or the Chinese grandma caught at the airport. Everyone including, and most especially, other Africans and outright racists insults Nigerians, while the comments under posts about others are far more sympathetic or polite.

Recently, my job started requiring me to travel and meet international clients. My first trips were to other African countries, and honestly, it opened my eyes. I won’t mention names, but many West African countries I had assumed were far better than Nigeria simply weren’t. Some were the same, and some were even worse. Infrastructure-wise, economy-wise, and in many other ways too, except maybe fewer terrorism issues in some places. A lot of these countries are developed around just one city usually the capital and that’s it other places are severely underdeveloped.

I felt stupid afterward. I realized the major difference between us and many of them is not that they are necessarily better, but that they actually love and defend their countries. Many Africans, especially outside Nigeria, are nationalistic but when you insult your family, don’t be surprised when others join in insulting them too. You wonder why Nigeria diaspora usually love Nigeria more than Nigerians? It’s because the realization hits many of them. Nigerians, on the other hand, can be unbelievably self-hating.

In one Southern African country, i won’t mention names, I was robbed at gunpoint. I later found out robberies are extremely common there, yet nobody labels them thieves the way Nigerians are constantly stereotyped and insulted. One eastern African country is a hub for passport bros, yet no stereotypes of being prostitutes.

I really don’t know what I expected before these experiences, but they forced me to rethink a lot. Some countries that mocked Nigeria during Anthony Joshua’s ambulance incident don’t even have functioning ambulance systems themselves. I was shocked.

I’ve spent a lot of time undoing the self-hate I had about Nigeria. Nigeria absolutely can and should be better, but we are also extremely self-critical in ways that many other countries simply are not. We tear ourselves down publicly and allow foreigners to say anything about us without pushback, even agreeing with them. This is quite unfortunate.