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Rohingya on the run: "Hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed"
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Rohingya refugees are asking for 150 billion dollars - the equivalent of around 133 billion euros - from Facebook.
The lawsuit, which was filed in a court in California on Monday, said the company's algorithms encouraged disinformation and extremist ideas that lead to violence in the real world.
This destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.
"Facebook is like a robot that has been programmed with a single task: to grow," says the court document.
The company was ready "to trade the life of the Rohingya for better market penetration in a small Southeast Asian country."
Further, "The undeniable reality is that the growth of Facebook, fueled by hatred, division, and misinformation, has left hundreds of thousands of ruined Rohingya lives."
In Great Britain, lawyers have sent Facebook a letter in which, according to the Guardian, it is said that their clients and their families had become victims of genocide “of violence, murder and / or other serious human rights violations”.
The majority Muslim ethnic group is viewed as an invader in Myanmar, although the Rohingya have lived in the country for generations. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were driven across the border into Bangladesh in a military campaign that, according to the UN, amounted to genocide. Since then, they have lived there in huge refugee camps under precarious conditions. Many Rohingya remaining in Myanmar are exposed to violence and state repression by the ruling military junta.
The lawsuit argues that Facebook's algorithms could trick vulnerable users into joining increasingly extreme groups.
This could be "exploited by autocratic politicians and regimes."
The company has not invested enough in local moderators and fact checks, it has not deleted content calling for acts of violence against the Rohingya, and it has not blocked groups and accounts from which such calls were made.
Civil rights movements have long accused Facebook of not doing enough to prevent the spread of disinformation and hatred on the internet.
The debate recently got a boost from the revelations by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.
Under US law, Facebook and its parent company Meta are largely protected from liability for the content posted by their users.
The Rohingya lawsuit, which anticipates this defense, argues that the laws of Myanmar - which do not recognize such a disclaimer - should take precedence in this case.
pbe / AFP
