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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is again the subject of a complaint in Kenya. A Kenyan NGO and two Ethiopian individuals accuse him of helping to spread hate speech in Africa, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict since November 2020 in Tigray.
With our correspondent in Nairobi, Florence Morice
The first complainant is an Ethiopian academic, Abraham Meareg whose father, a chemistry professor at Bahir Dar University in northwestern Ethiopia, was shot and killed in 2021, after being targeted in a series of calls to the murder posted on Facebook, messages that he had reported to the platform several times in a failed attempt to have them removed. His son, now exiled to the United States, believes that if Facebook did its job of moderating hate speech properly, it would be “ father would still be alive ».
The second plaintiff, Fisseha Tekle, is an Ethiopian employee of Amnesty International who was the victim of an online harassment campaign as she worked to document human rights abuses committed by all parties to the conflict in Tigray.
Less moderation for content from Africa
Finally, the Katiba Institute, a Kenyan association for the defense of human rights, joins the complaint. Together, they ask Facebook to change the criteria of its algorithm. According to them, by highlighting the contents they arouse actions ” And “ reactions “, would help propagate and make violent and hateful speech viral.
The appellants also complain to facebook not investing enough in content moderation, which is handled by its Nairobi hub. They believe that in this regard, African users are ” discriminated against » compared to other regions of the world. For the moment the Meta company has not reacted to these accusations.
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