In a recent lawsuit, Facebook is accused of contributing to political unrest in the continent and is being held accountable by calling for more than $2 billion in restitution funds and significant improvements to the service’s content moderation procedures there.
It is the most recent instance to link the platform to racial violence in underdeveloped countries.
The class-action lawsuit, which was filed in Nairobi, Kenya, where Facebook established a significant content moderation hub for Eastern and Southern Africa in 2019, accuses the company of violating more than ten articles of Kenya’s Constitution by capitalising on the viral potential of hate and violence in conflict-torn Ethiopia.
Additionally, it claims that in comparison to the United States, the firm does not invest enough resources in content monitoring on the continent.
Abrham Meareg, an Ethiopian scholar who is looking for political asylum in the US, is one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs. He claims that last year, amid Ethiopia’s ongoing civil war, his father was murdered by extremists as a result of incitement that circulated on Facebook.
Meareg Amare Abrha, Meareg’s father, was a well-known chemistry professor and Tigrayan ethnicity. According to an affidavit Meareg submitted in the case, he was killed on November. 3, 2021, after a gang of individuals on motorbikes followed him from the university and shot him twice in front of his house. After extremists eventually took over the family house, Meareg’s mother escaped to Addis Ababa, the nation’s capital.
“My father didn’t get any chance to convince people that he was innocent,” Meareg said in an interview, from his home near Minneapolis, where he is now living. “He didn’t get the choice to clarify the hate speech and disinformation. They just shot him and killed him in a brutal way.”
The case follows criticism of Facebook usage during war in areas like Myanmar and India. The website received harsh criticism for allowing hate speech and incitement to violence to flourish on its platform in Myanmar, where state violence against the nation’s Muslim Rohingya minority has raged for years.
