Meta faces $1.6bn lawsuit over Facebook posts inciting violence in Tigray war

Meta has been accused in a lawsuit of letting posts that inflamed the war in Tigray flourish on Facebook, after an Observer investigation in February revealed repeated inaction on posts that incited violence.

One of the petitioners said his father, an Ethiopian academic, was targeted with racist messages before his murder in November 2021, and that Facebook did not remove the posts despite complaints.

The case is asking for a compensation fund of 200bn Kenyan shillings (£1.3bn) to be established for victims of hate and violence on Facebook.

In February an analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Observer found that Facebook was letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation, despite being aware that it helped directly fuel tensions in Tigray, where thousands have died and millions been displaced since war broke out in late 2020.

Facebook has repeatedly come under fire for expanding into countries with low media literacy, rapidly growing to encompass a large fraction of internet traffic in the area, and failing to devote sufficient resources to moderation in the local languages. That describes its role in Myanmar, where the site faces compensation claims worth more than £150bn after legal action was launched in the UK and US last December.