A $1.6 billion lawsuit alleges Facebook's inaction fueled violence in Ethiopia
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
