Pawan Kumar
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Ethiopia Conflict: A lawsuit has been filed in Kenya on Tuesday (December 13) by two Ethiopian researchers and the Kenyan rights group Katiba Institute on the Meta platform. In the lawsuit filed, the Meta platform is accused of promoting violent and hateful posts from Ethiopia. It has been said that promoting such posts by Facebook is taking the country towards a civil war. In this lawsuit, Facebook has been accused that this platform has increased violent posts in Ethiopia.
The lawsuit filed also said that the company had failed to further train its algorithms.
What the meta spokesperson said
Meta spokeswoman Erin McPike said hate speech and incitement to violence are against Facebook and Instagram’s rules. “We invest heavily in teams and technology to help us find and solve this,” he added, adding that “we hire people with local knowledge and expertise and We continue to develop our capabilities to catch infringing content in the most widely spoken languages in Ethiopia.”
What is the demand of the petitioners
The petitioners have asked the court to order Meta to take emergency steps to reduce violent content, increase moderation staff in Nairobi, and create a compensation fund of nearly $2 billion for victims of violence on Facebook. The lawsuit filed described a Facebook post published in October 2021, in which racial slurs were used to name the father of plaintiff Abraham Meireg. The post shared the address of the elderly person and called for his death.
