Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Meta Platforms Inc, formerly Facebook, for US$150 billion, accusing the social media company of failing to take action against anti-Rohingya hate speech that leads to violence.
A U.S. class action lawsuit filed by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC in California on Monday (December 6) alleges that the company’s failure to regulate content and its platform design has caused the Rohingya community to face real-world challenges. Violence. In a coordinated action, the British lawyer also submitted a notification letter to Facebook’s London office.
Facebook did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on the lawsuit. The company stated that it was “too slow to prevent misinformation and hatred” in Myanmar, and that it has since taken measures to combat platform abuse in the region, including banning the military’s use of Facebook and Instagram after the February 1 coup.
Facebook has stated that it is protected by Article 230 of the U.S. Internet Act and is exempt from liability for content posted by users, which stipulates that online platforms are not responsible for content posted by third parties. The complaint stated that if Article 230 was raised as a defense, it would seek to apply Myanmar law to the claim.
Although U.S. courts can apply foreign laws to cases where the company’s alleged injuries and activities occurred in other countries, two legal experts interviewed by Reuters stated that they were unaware of the success of invoking foreign laws in lawsuits against social media companies. precedent. The protective measures of Article 230 may apply.
Anupam Chander, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that invoking Myanmar law is not “inappropriate”. But he predicted that “this is unlikely to succeed” and said that “Congress forecloses foreclosure actions under U.S. law, but allows them to proceed under foreign law, which is strange.”
In August 2017, more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State after military crackdowns, which refugees said included mass killings and rapes. Human rights organizations have documented killings of civilians and burning of villages.
The Myanmar authorities stated that they were fighting the insurgency and denied committing systematic brutality.
In 2018, UN human rights investigators stated that the use of Facebook has played a key role in spreading hate speech that fuels violence.A sort of Reuters investigation That year, cited in the US lawsuit, more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments, and pictures that attacked Rohingya and other Muslims were found on Facebook.
The International Criminal Court has filed criminal charges in the region. In September, a U.S. federal judge ordered Facebook to publish account records related to the anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar closed by the social media giant.
The new class action lawsuit quotes Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked an internal file cache this year, stating that the company will not supervise abusive content in countries where such remarks are likely to cause the most harm .
The complaint also cited recent media reports, including a report by Reuters last month that the Myanmar military was using fake social media accounts to conduct activities that the military widely referred to as “information warfare”.
