LONDON — Rohingya refugees sued Facebook parent Meta Platforms for more than $150 billion over what they say was the company's failure to stop hateful posts that incited violence against the Muslim ethnic group by Myanmar's military rulers and their supporters.
A class-action lawsuit was filed in California on Monday, saying that Facebook arrived in Myanmar helped spread hate speech, misinformation and incitement to violence that amounted to a substantial cause, and eventual perpetuation of the Rohingya genocide. A lawyer in the United Kingdom has issued a notice of their intention to file a similar legal action. Facebook, which was recently renamed Meta, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
It is the latest in a series of accusations that the social media giant has fueled misinformation and political violence, outlined in redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
The combined legal claims from Rohingya refugees are being filed on behalf of anyone who survived the violence or had a relative who died from it.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group forced to flee violence and persecution in Myanmar starting in 2017 with an estimated 1 million living in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh. Some 10,000 people ended up in the United States.
In 2018, United Nations human rights experts investigating attacks against the Rohingya said Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech.
More than 10,000 Rohingya have been killed and more than 150,000 people have been subject to physical violence, according to the law firms who organized the cases.
The lawsuits claim that Facebook's algorithms exacerbated hate speech against the Rohingya people and that it didn't spend enough money to hire moderators and fact checkers who spoke the local languages or understood the political situation.
They say Facebook didn't take down accounts and pages or removed posts inciting violence or using hate speech directed at the ethnic group.
In 2011 Facebook arranged for millions of residents to access the internet for the first time, according to a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court for San Mateo County. The lawsuit states that the company did not warn people about the dangers of online misinformation and fake accounts, tactics used by the military in its campaign against the Rohingya.
The lawsuit says Facebook knew that rewarding users for posting dangerous content and allowing fake accounts to flourish would radicalize users.
The military government of Myanmar has been able to engage in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya because of the Facebook-fueled anti-Rohingya sentiment, the lawsuit says.