"Neglect of Rohingya Hate Posts" Facebook Faces 177 Trillion Won Lawsuit Battle

Photo by Reuters

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Dozens of Rohingya people living in the United States and the United Kingdom have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, demanding $150 billion (approximately 177 trillion KRW), claiming that the company neglected hateful and dangerous information about them.

According to CNN Business on the 7th (local time), Edelson, a U.S. law firm representing the plaintiffs, announced on Twitter that they had filed the class-action lawsuit against Meta on that day.

The UK law firm McCue Jury & Partners also separately filed a damages claim lawsuit in a UK court. The UK plaintiffs stated that Facebook's algorithm spread incitement to violence and hateful speech against the Rohingya, and that Facebook did not make efforts to correct false information, explaining the background of the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages exceeding $150 billion as well as punitive damages.

In 2017, the Myanmar military committed mass killings and gang rapes with the intent of ethnic cleansing during their crackdown on the Rohingya. More than 10,000 people were killed, and 740,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the Myanmar military.

Facebook is a social media platform used by half of Myanmar's 54 million population. It has been argued that hateful posts about the Rohingya flooded Facebook, which is Myanmar's only source of information access, fueling the horrific ethnic cleansing.

Ultimately, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, admitted and publicly apologized for not making sufficient efforts to prevent incitement to violence and hateful speech targeting the Rohingya.

BBC UK reported that this statement effectively acknowledges that Zuckerberg and Facebook could have taken adequate measures, making this lawsuit even more interesting.

However, it remains uncertain whether Facebook can be held legally responsible through this lawsuit. Professor Josh Davis of the University of San Francisco said, "It will be difficult to prove specific facts that the Myanmar Rohingya suffered harm from Facebook posts, and it will not be easy to secure a guilty verdict against Facebook, which is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, granting immunity to social media companies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.