Rohingya refugees in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) have sued Facebook for more than $150 billion, accusing it of allowing hate speech against them to prosper on the platform, Reuters reported.
A class action suit filed in a district court in San Francisco has claimed that Facebook was "willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in south-east Asia."
It was filed by the law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, while some British lawyers also issued a letter of notice to the London office of the social media giant.
A part of the letter reads, "Despite Facebook’s recognition of its culpability and its pronouncements about its role in the world, there has not been a single penny of compensation, nor any other form of reparations or support, offered to any survivor," BBC reported.
Facebook had acknowledged in November 2018 that it had not done enough to "foment division and incite offline violence" against the Rohingyas in Myanmar, The New York Times had reported.
Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager, had also written that "we agree that we can and should do more," referring to the company's employees.
Additionally, in March 2018, even the United Nations (UN) had pulled up Facebook for its "slow and ineffective" response in curtailing online hate speech against the Rohingyas.
'Pour Fuel and Set Fire'
The letter sent to the London office, a copy of which was accessed by the BBC, further asserted that Facebook failed to:
Fix the algorithms that "amplified hate speech against the Rohingya people"
Delete inflammatory posts
Take timely action despite warnings from NGOs and the media
Invest in fact checking with respect to Myanmar's ethnic tensions
In a country like Myanmar where, according to UN Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee, "everything is done through Facebook," the online platform with over 20 million users in the country, refused to take down posts that clearly crossed the threshold of hate speech.
Some of them, as reported by The Guardian, were:
"Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster."
"We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews."
More than 800,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar after violence erupted in Rakhine State in 2017.
A better understanding of the causes of the violence and the resulting exodus can be found here.
Facebook hasn't commented on the lawsuit yet. In the past, however, it has cited section 230 of the US Code of Laws, which protects the company from liability over whatever has been posted by its users.
(With inputs from Reuters, The Guardian, and BBC.)
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