Abraham Meareg and several other enraged Ethiopians are suing
Facebook for allegedly helping fuel the destructive war that ravaged Ethiopia's
Tigray region.
This group would be suing Meta for the sum of $2bn (£1.6bn)
and for the platform to change its algorithm.
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According to them, Facebook was a proponent of some of the
violence during the war. They alleged that if Facebook had been able to
moderate its content, some of the violence may have been prevented.
In the case of Abraham, he narrated that his father was shot
dead by armed men on bikes because of a post on Facebook that threatened to
harm anyone who came to his aid
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He also noted that before the attack, Facebook posts
slandered and revealed identifying information about Abraham’s father. And
despite reporting these issues, Facebook failed to address them and left
threatening posts up until the man was shot.
One of the posts was removed after his father was killed,
but another, which the platform had committed to removing, remained online up
until the 8th of December 2022.
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"If
Facebook had just stopped the spread of hate and moderated posts properly, my
father would still be alive," Abraham said.
Meta responded, telling the BBC, "We employ
staff with local knowledge and expertise and continue to develop our
capabilities to catch violating content in the most widely spoken languages in
the country, including Amharic, Oromo, Somali, and Tigrinya."
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A representative of Facebook also noted, "our
safety-and-integrity work in Ethiopia is guided by feedback from local civil
society organizations and international institutions."
The Tigray war, which lasted for over 2 years claimed the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the conflict between the Ethiopian
government and forces in the northern Tigray region, with 400,000 others living
in famine-like conditions
Source:Pulse.com.gh
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