Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi (born 26 November) is a Nigerian clinical psychologist, AI workers' rights advocate, and leader of the Content Moderators Union Nigeria. She is one of the leading global voices on the rights of content moderators and AI data workers.

Malgwi was born in Borno State, northern Nigeria. When she began university, the terrorist group Boko Haram launched a major insurgency in the region, targeting Christian students and educational institutions. In 2012, she fled with her mother and aunt to Abuja.^[1] She completed her education in Kenya, obtaining a master's degree in clinical psychology from the United States International University Africa (USIU-A).^[2] She is currently a PhD student in psychology at Pan Africa Christian University, focusing on digital wellbeing and mental health.^[2]

In 2019, Malgwi began working for Sama, a tech contractor, in what she says she believed was a call centre role. She subsequently discovered the work involved moderating graphic content for Facebook, including videos of war atrocities, rapes, and suicides, to help train Meta's AI systems to detect similar material.^[1] In 2023, after a colleague exposed low pay and alleged union busting at Sama, the company ended its contract with Meta, making Malgwi and approximately 260 colleagues redundant without redundancy payments.^[1]

Malgwi became one of 185 former content moderators bringing a legal challenge against Meta and Sama in Kenyan courts. A Kenyan court ruled that Meta was the primary employer of the moderators, though Meta appealed the decision.^[3] In February 2024, she testified before the European Parliament in Brussels, describing the psychological effects of her work including insomnia and paranoia.^[1] Two months after her testimony, the European Parliament passed the Platform Work Directive, a law regularising the employment status and rights of platform workers across EU member states.^[1]

Malgwi leads the Nigeria chapter of the Content Moderators Union, working to ensure young people are aware of their rights when signing up to work for technology companies.^[1] She founded the Digital Rights and Mental Health Initiative Africa (DRMHIA), a non-profit advocating for online privacy, digital addiction awareness, and cyberbullying prevention.^[4]

In 2024, Malgwi was named to Time magazine's Time 100 AI list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.^[1] In the same year, she was included on the BBC 100 Women list.^[5]

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