Facebook actively fueled ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s civil war by prioritizing hateful and dangerous content, then not moderating that content fast enough, or sometimes at all, says a new lawsuit filed against Meta, the social media giant’s parent company.
Two Ethiopian researchers and a Kenyan constitutional rights group are behind the legal action, which was filed this week in a High Court in Nairobi, Kenya. The city houses Facebook's East African content moderation hub, which opened in 2019.
The hub was too little, too late for the region, the lawsuit says. Facebook treated users in African countries differently than those in Western countries, fostering a "culture of disregard for human rights" that ultimately led to the murder of one of the plaintiffs' fathers, the suit alleges.
The plaintiffs are seeking a $1.6 billion victims' fund and a bigger and better-supported moderation team.
They're also asking the court to deliver what would be a legal first: forced changes to Facebook's algorithm, which has long been blamed for not doing enough to limit the reach of incendiary content.
A spokesperson for Meta said the company has "strict rules" about what's allowed on its platforms and is continuing to develop its capabilities to catch violating content.
"Hate speech and incitement to violence are against these rules, and we invest heavily in teams and technology to help us find and remove this content," the...
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