Rohingya refugees have sued Facebook for over US$150 billion, claiming that the social media giant’s algorithms failed to take down inflammatory posts that fueled violence against the minority group, reported South China Morning Post.
The legal complaint is a new blow to Facebook, which suffered a setback a few months ago after a whistleblower turned over documents to the Wall Street Journal, which became the bedrock of the media outlet’s Facebook Files series.
Earlier in October, Facebook also suffered an outage that took down all its apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram, temporarily.
The complaint by the refugees, which was lodged in a California court, alleges that the company allowed the dissemination of hateful and dangerous misinformation to continue for years, despite the refugees having previously sent a notice to Facebook of the consequences of its inaction.
In a bid to verify online posts and remove those that are untrue, Facebook has forged partnerships with several media companies, including Agence France-Presse news agency.
See also: How social media app Lyka took the Philippines by storm
Editing by Collin Furtado and Jaclyn Tiu
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