They have filed a million dollar lawsuit against Facebook in Kenya over its role in spreading violence in Africa.
Three parties have filed a nearly €2 billion lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of the social network Facebook, over the platform’s role in spreading violence in Africa.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in the Nairobi High Court, where Facebook opened a major content moderation center for sub-Saharan Africa in 2019.
One of the litigants is Abrham Meareg, an academic whose father, a chemistry professor from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, was the victim of a racist attack on Facebook and subsequently killed in November 2021.
The attack took place during a war between the Ethiopian government and the rebels of the Tigre that caused thousands of deaths, which ended with a peace agreement signed last November in South Africa.
Abrham tried to get Facebook to remove the defamatory posts, to no avail.
The second plaintiff is Fisseha Tekle, also an Ethiopian, a former researcher and legal adviser to the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI).
His reporting of violence on all sides in the Ethiopian war has made him the target of abuse on Facebook.
And the third is the Katiba Institute, a Kenyan organization set up to uphold the Kenyan constitution.
The litigants, who believe Meta may have violated the Kenyan constitution, are asking for recognition of 200,000 million Kenyan shillings (about 1,525 million euros) to create a restitution fund for African victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook .
They also claim another 50,000 million shillings (about 382 million euros) in similar damages from sponsored publications.
The lawsuit is supported by various organizations as stakeholders, including Amnesty International, the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Kenya Bar Association.
Despite the allegations, Meta claims it does not allow hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook and its Instagram photo service and is investing in human and technical resources to track such content.
