Rohingya Refugees from Myanmar Sue Facebook Over Social Media Company Didn’t Do Anything Against Incendiary messages that have incited violence. They demand 150 billion dollars, about 133 billion euros.
Law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC claimed yesterday that Facebook did not control the content of messages on Facebook and thereby facilitated the genocide in Myanmar.
Lawyers for the minority Islamist group Rohingya say that “Facebook is trading the Rohingya’s lives for better market share in a small country in Southeast Asia”.
In addition to the claim in America, lawyers in the United Kingdom have also sent a reminder to Facebook’s London office, writes The Guardian:
“Despite Facebook’s admission of guilt and statements about its own role in the world, not a single cent in compensation, nor any other form of support has been offered to a single survivor.”
Facebook admitted guilt
Facebook said in 2018 that it had responded “too slowly” to prevent hate speech and stop the sharing of misinformation on its platform.
Since then, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been battling steps taken to address platform abuse in the region. This concerns, for example, the expulsion of the military regime in Myanmar from platforms Facebook and Instagram, after the coup in February.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also addressed incendiary messages in 2018 and wrote that the algorithms thatfeeds filtering and choosing posts for social media users can be a problem.
“One of the biggest problems social networks face is that people (…) will be disproportionately engaged in more sensational and provocative posts,” he said.
Section 230
Zuckerberg went on to say that this could be solved by “punishing certain messages so that it is spread less.”
According to human rights organization Global Witness, which researched the algorithms, “punishing” messages did not work. “With one click, Facebook’s algorithm took us from a page with no content violating their policies to pages with numerous policy violations.”
Facebook has always fought against the US internet law known as ‘section 230’. This law states that online platforms are not liable for content posted by third parties.
No successful precedent
In the class action it is stated that the Myanmar law must be applied if the internet law is invoked as a defence.
US courts can apply foreign law in cases where the damage was caused by companies in other countries. But two legal experts tell Reuters news agency they have no successful precedent in lawsuits against social media companies where the internet law may apply.