Stop asking me to use WhatsApp

I’m not using WhatsApp thanks. It causes me loads of grief NOT using it, but this is why: META.

  1. Role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar (2017) — Meta's Free Basics program made Facebook the de facto internet in Myanmar. The UN's Fact-Finding Mission concluded social media played a significant role in the 2017 violence against the Rohingya, which the U.S. government has designated a genocide. Amnesty International found Meta's algorithms amplified hate speech and its moderation was inadequate; military-linked accounts remained active until August 2018, after mass displacement had already occurred.

  2. Youth mental health harms — Public health officials and courts have linked Meta's platforms to depression, anxiety, and body-image harm in young users. A March 2026 US jury ruled Meta designed addictive products that harmed young people, in a case involving a claimant who became addicted to Instagram at age nine and later developed self-harm, body dysmorphic disorder, and social phobia.

  3. Privacy and encryption rollback — As of May 2026, Meta ended end-to-end encryption for Instagram direct messages, meaning it can now access DMs including images, videos, and voice notes. Ethical Consumer gives Meta's platforms a privacy score of 0/100.

  4. Using AI chat data for ad targeting — Since December 2025, Meta has used data from conversations with its AI assistant to refine ad targeting and content recommendations, prompting privacy complaints to regulators.

  5. AI chatbot guidelines involving minors — Leaked internal guidelines reportedly permitted Meta's AI chatbots to have "romantic or sensual" conversations with children, a policy that passed through multiple internal review layers before being reported by Reuters.

  6. Content moderator working conditions — Contracted moderators have suffered severe psychological harm: one Cognizant employee died of a heart attack on the job (no defibrillator on site), others developed PTSD and sued, and in 2025 Meta's moderation contractors in Ghana filed legal action over similar issues.

  7. Reduced content moderation / fact-checking — In January 2025, Meta rolled back fact-checking and loosened moderation guidelines, raising concerns about increased hate speech and misinformation; critics have debated whether this reflected genuine principle or political appeasement.

  8. Arbitrary account bans via AI — In July 2025, the BBC reported Facebook and Instagram users had accounts arbitrarily banned, with allegations of AI mishandling both enforcement and appeals.

  9. Tax practices — Meta has subsidiaries in tax havens including Delaware and Ireland, and was named in the Fair Tax Foundation's 2025 "Silicon Six" report as having the second-worst tax conduct among major tech companies.

  10. Israel-Palestine content moderation — Meta has scored poorly in Ethical Consumer's Israel-Palestine rating, criticized for censoring and silencing Palestinian voices and narratives.

  11. Pattern of past privacy scandals — Current controversies follow a longer history including Cambridge Analytica and facial recognition missteps that have progressively eroded public trust.

Jim Cromwell
Addition to my T&Cs

If you are an employer of a deaf person procuring my services, you may wish for the deaf person to make an Access To Work (ATW) claim for my fee.

Please be aware that my contract and agreement is with you and not ATW, and you remain liable for my fee regardless of any ATW arrangements.

That agreement will be stated clearly on the Booking Form and/or the confirmation email.

Jim Cromwell
Language Line

Let’s be clear from the outset: Language Line give me work, I do the work, and they pay me promptly at the agreed fee. This is excellent. Other agencies have fallen at one of these basic expectations and I am very grateful.

However, the booking and billing process is so hilariously arduous that I feel the need to document it.

  • The Job Offer email is from a No Reply account and all offers are at ONE HALF of the average fee level for my region. You have to click the link to the portal where the only options are to decline, or accept at that fee level. To make an offer you have to email a completely separate account with your bid. That account is not listed on the email.

  • The email is not from Language Line. It is from “squidgeit.com”

  • The list of jobs on that email puts the date and the time at the far right, so it scrolls out of sight. This is the first thing you need to see to know if you are available. Not Language Line’s bloody job number!

  • You have to go to the portal and decline every offered job, giving a reason, or it will keep being sent to you. You can’t just ignore jobs you can’t do. You can’t click the job to go to the job page and decline it.

  • There are no timesheets. The job page on the portal says there are, but they aren’t available until after the job ends. And that’s what it says. In practice they are not available at all. I’ve been sent a blank one to fill in every time. Every. Time. More on those timesheets later…

  • The portal job page is comprehensively full of info. The first box is a fairly pointless map of the journey from your base, which is fine but is the first place your finger or mouse goes when you want to actually read the job details and that just scrolls the map. Grr.

  • The next box details the fee as agreed. Nice to have that, but not entirely reassuring when the portal controlled by the agency is the only record of that fee agreement. Were there to be a dispute, it is nice to have something - an email or a jobsheet - that doesn’t have the potential to be changed later. I’m not saying Language Line have done or would do this, but it contributes to the vulnerability.

  • The info you need as an interpreter for the job is in three separate boxes on the page. “Appointment Details” does not include the address, for example. And “Address” does not include where or to whom to report. You might think to screenshot the page for reference but you can’t. I have a FIFTY INCH MONITOR but the job page formatting is such that you have to shrink the zoom level considerably to squeeze it onto a single window. Let’s big up Clarion: They send you a job sheet with everything you need on it, and the person signs and dates it. Job done.

  • The blank jobsheet. You have to physically write in your name, your interpreter number (ie their interpreter number for you), the job number, the language used, the venue, the location, the date, the booked start time, the actual start time, the booked duration, the actual end time, the actual duration, your signature, and your name (again). And the date. The unlucky person at the job has to write in their name, their position, their signature, their name (again), and the date. Bloody hell!

  • Then you bring it home, go to the job page, copy the start and end times into a web form for some reason and upload the sheet from which you just copied that information, and you’ve completed the job.

  • Except you haven’t because you have to wait to be alerted to the fact that you must go back to the portal to accept the payment for it.

  • When you are paid, and this may be only for interpreters who renegotiate the fee, the remittance includes THREE or FOUR entries for each job, including an entry for each hour or part hour, maybe something for “travel time” even if you don’t include that in your offer, and an “adjustment for minimum cost” to bring the total up to your fee. Presumably this is a fudge in the system to enable a different fee to be paid, and they do pay, but goodness it’s just another straw on the back of this camel.

Clarion, them again, email the details and ask if you can do it. You reply(!) to say “yes, it will cost this much” they reply to say yes or no and send you a job sheet with all the information on it and a place for you and the other party to sign. Then you knock it into their portal and job’s a good ‘un. I know some folk have issues with them too, but just as a comparison to the Kafkaesque Language Line…..

Sheesh.

Jim Cromwell
My Position on Fees

Just to make this clear: I am a freelance interpreter that sets their own fees. My practice is to track the NUBSLI fees guidance.

Currently this means that I charge £160 per half day, not inclusive of travel.

Travel is charged on a per-city basis based approximately on 45ppm. I will be clear upon both the fee and the travel when agreeing the booking. I’m not calculating travel every time I bid for a job so I have a set amount per city. It isn’t mileage; it is travel.

There is no short booking fee because travel time, late starts and over-runs at the service always make it not short. I will not be the sort of interpreter who leaves before the end of an appointment because I have crammed too much in. My half day fee is my minimum charge and accounts for this level of professionalism. If your job is short it has cost you a bit more. If it is long, you got me cheap. If it runs from 11am to 2pm and effectively ruins my chance of finding a second job that day, I still charge half a day. You win.

I will not accept agency requests that expect lower fees.

There are not enough interpreters for the needs of the Deaf Community. Underpaying will result in fewer interpreters. Sufficiently paying for a skilled profession that takes years to train for and a lifetime to finesse will encourage more people to become interpreters.

If you are an agency I will not use your portal if it explicitly ties me in to your terms and your fees. I will email you my offer and you can take or leave it.

I hope we can work together like this.

Please feel free to share this if you wish.

Jim Cromwell
Protactile

I’m working through a course in Protactile Language Theory online and have been looking for a resource to share with people about PT that is both introductory and comprehensive (!) - This could be it!

The paper they refer to is amongst everything here, and is specifically located at this link.

It’s really really good.

Jim Cromwell