A Kenyan court has ruled that Facebook’s owner, Meta, can face a $2.4 billion lawsuit in the East African country for allegedly promoting hate speech which fueled an ethnic war in neighboring Ethiopia, a group that filed the case has announced.
The decision by Kenya’s High Court on Thursday comes more than two years after a group of Ethiopian researchers, along with Kenyan human rights campaigners, launched the lawsuit against the American tech giant.
The petitioners argue that Facebook’s recommendation algorithm amplified violent posts and contributed to the two-year conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which ended in November 2022. Maereg Amare, a chemistry professor, was killed during the conflict after his home address and posts calling for his murder were published on Facebook, according to his son, Abrham Meareg, one of the plaintiffs.
Fisseha Tekle, a former researcher at Amnesty International and claimant in the case who published reports on crimes committed during the Tigray war, also allegedly received death threats on the Meta platform. The other petitioner is the Katiba Institute (KI), a Kenya-based legal non-profit organization.
The plaintiffs are demanding that Meta hire more content moderators in Africa, with better pay and working conditions, as well as establish a $2.4 billion restitution fund for the victims of hate and violence incited on the platform. The petition also asks the firm to alter its algorithm to stop promoting “viral hate” and formally apologize for the murder of Professor Meareg.
However, Meta argues that Kenyan courts lack jurisdiction to hear cases against it because it is not registered as a company in the African country.
In a statement on Thursday, the KI said the high court in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, rejected the US-based company’s argument in its latest ruling.
“The ruling shows that the harmful impact of big tech’s discriminatory policies in the African context can be rightfully challenged in our own Kenyan courts,” the institute’s executive director, Nora Mbagathi, stated.
The bloody battle between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopia’s federal government has been named the world’s deadliest conflict in 2022 by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, with over 100,000 people killed. Recent attacks by a faction of the troubled state’s main political party against the interim administration established in 2023 as part of the African Union-mediated Pretoria Agreement that ended the two-year violence have sparked fears of an outbreak of another civil war.
[…]
Via https://www.rt.com/africa/615238-meta-ethiopian-war-content-suit-kenya/
The Most Revolutionary Act 
I have a relative that has a Facebook account. (I don’t, so no loss …) Well, he hardly use it anymore, as the activity of his close to sixty [genuine] friends don’t show up in the feed, except for two persons, despite most of them publish stuff now and then. Instead nonsense stuff and propaganda appears. Not the latest stuff either and it’s usually too old for any additional comments. What’s wrong with showing stuff in reversed time order? (Newest at the top.)
Facebook is also one of many places on the Internet, who doesn’t comprehend the word ‘relevant’. (They are using the word from the wrong perspective …) They share this problem with most search engines.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I used to use a Facebook business page to promote a free clinic I helped start, Sasjal. Since no one reads newspapers any more, we couldn’t think of any other way to inform people will there. They shut down our page (and my personal page) about two months ago, along with the page of a similar clinic on New Zealand’s east coast (we’re part of a national organization). Neither of us got any warning. Personally I ended up feeling quite happy about it. I hated dealing with them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I suspect the key word is free. The pharmacy industry don’t like that at all, as you probably would not push expensive junk …
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can only hope that Mother Nature wrecks the process by which this technology works, so bad, that it becomes more cost efficient to stop attempting to get it up and running again, after Mother Nature has destroyed it which is also why “cash will always be king.” Tornadoes and other ferocious storms are wreaking havoc over here. Folks’ vehicles are sitting upside down in their destroyed homes all across the country. FEMA has been damn near dismantled and so there is no help coming from that agency. Folks don’t know what to do, and so it is my most fervent dream that the likes of Facebook, Twitter and the like will go the route of the dinosaurs, soon!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope so, too, Shelby. These pipe dreams pursued by these megalomaniac billionaires are incredibly destructive to ordinary people.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pingback: Facebook faces $2.4 billion legal action in Kenya for inciting violence | Worldtruth
Sasjal and Shelby, Watched a programme recently which showed how the algorithm for certain click bait operations is written in such a way that it finds out what presses your buttons then uses that information to incite anger and hatred in the recipients and they do it deliberately as in the case of Myanmar. It’s just another means of regime change, colour revolutions and interfering in other countries to bring about a desired outcome.
It’s insidious and malicious and being used more as a behind the scenes “fake” news meant to misinform affording opportunity and means for whatever the user wants to achieve. I suspect it was used in Iran and probably in other areas of conflict or desired upheaval, possibly in Tibet and parts of India, EU countries and South America(Bolivia comes to mind).
If you think I sound like a “conspiracy theory” nutter, then you fall into the trap of the over arching use of the term to describe any and all dissent from the prevailing “consensus” put out by the supposed “woke” puppeteers, bought and paid for in many cases.
LikeLike
There’s no doubt there’s stuff like that. Divide and conquer …
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have no doubt whatsoever this is true. The guy the CIA got to lead the 2011 Arab Spring color revolution in Egypt got leave from Facebook to complete this assignment.
LikeLiked by 1 person