Facebook and its parent company Meta have been sued for allowing toxic and violent content to flourish in communities in Ethiopia, where a civil war has killed hundreds of thousands in recent years.
The lawsuit, filed by two Ethiopian researchers, accuses the tech giant of helping to fuel violence in the region a lack of effective controls for content moderation. The lawsuit claims that the company‘S recommendation systems– use algorithms to encourage users to interact with certain types of content on others– Powered sharing of hateful posts regionally.
The lawsuit asked a court to force Meta to take action to stop the distribution of violent content, including hiring additional regional moderation staff, adjusting its algorithms for downgrading that content, and creating approximately 2 billion dollars of compensation funds to help victims of violence. . prodded on Facebook,” Reuters relationships.
“Facebook not only allows that content to be on the platform, but it prioritizes and monetizes that content. Why are they allowed to do that?” Mercy Mutemi, the researchers’ attorney, asked during a recent press conference.
One of the researchers behind the lawsuit, Abrham Meareg, has a personal connection to ethnic violence. In November 2021, Meareg’s father was killed, just a month after the old man man had been matter to death threats and ethnic slurs Facebook posts claiming a lawsuit. Meareg says he contacted Meta prior to the murder and asked the company to remove the content, but the company ultimately did not respond quickly, nor did it remove all posts about him being the father of him. The researcher now He says who holds Meta “directly responsible” for her father’s death.
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Meta’s lack of potency content moderation it is a source of ongoing litigation in East Africa and beyond. Facebook has been accused of allowing its more toxic content to flourish in Kenya later pro-genocide publicity approved, almost completely banning the social network from the country. Facebook too previously addressed a A $150 billion lawsuit presented by Rohingya war refugees who accused the tech giant of fueling genocide in Myanmar. Amnesty International has concluded that the company indeed contributed to the ethnic cleansing in the country. Also, the company has been blamed for a similar malfunction Villages such as Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Gizmodo has reached out to Meta for comment on the recent lawsuit and will update this story if they respond. in one expression Speaking to Reuters, company spokesperson Erin Pike defended the company, saying: “We are investing heavily in the team and technology to help us find and remove this content… We employ people with local knowledge and expertise and continue to develop the our capabilities to… Violations to detect content in the most widely spoken languages” in Ethiopia.
