Class Action Alleges Facebook Has Aided Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar

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Meta Platforms faces a proposed class action that alleges the introduction of Facebook to Myanmar in 2011 has materially contributed to the development and spread of anti-Rohingya hate speech, misinformation and the incitement of extreme violence against the Muslim minority group. 

The lawsuit alleges that although the more than one million Rohingya in the country have long been victims of discrimination, persecution, violence and human rights abuses, Facebook has only made things worse, as the military in control of Myanmar has used the platform as a tool to “organize and spread terror, escalate[] their brutal crackdown [on the Rohingya]” and carry out “violent acts of ethnic cleansing that defy comprehension.” 

According to the lawsuit, Facebook has long been aware that “hateful, outraged, and politically extreme content (especially content attacking a perceived ‘out-group’) is oxygen to the company’s blood” given it generates more engagement among users. The plaintiff charges that it was “clearly foreseeable” to Facebook that the dangerous anti-Rohingya content found on the platform would radicalize Burmese users, causing many in the Buddhist-majority country to then “support or engage in dangerous or harmful conduct in the offline world.” 

Facebook’s apparent inaction with regard to addressing reams of anti-Rohingya hate speech and misinformation on its platform boils down to its willingness to “trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in Southeast Asia,” the lawsuit scathes. 

“As Facebook has determined through years of study and analysis: hate and toxicity fuel its growth far more effectively than updates about a user’s favorite type of latte,” the complaint reads, alleging Facebook has decided to “lean into the hate” with algorithms designed to exploit and prioritize divisive and polarizing content. 

In response to the wave of violence against the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands fled Myanmar and sought refuge in other countries, including Bangladesh and the United States, the lawsuit says. Those who are left in the country “live under constant threat of arrest, violence, abuse, and discrimination,” and those who made it out still live in fear, the case says. 

“Many Rohingya refugees around the world live in abject poverty and in highly unstable situations that could change at any time depending on the political climate of the country in which they now reside,” the case states. 

The lawsuit says that woven throughout the history of the tragedy against the Rohingya are both the resilience of the people and the “willingness” of Facebook to “knowingly facilitate” what the plaintiff calls “anti-Rohingya hate speech, misinformation and the widespread incitement of violence.” According to the case, Facebook penetrated so deeply into daily life in Myanmar that Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, described the company as having played a “determining role” in the Rohingya genocide. 

According to the lawsuit, Facebook in 2011 arranged for tens of millions of Myanmar residents to gain access to the internet for the first time, exclusively through Facebook. What ensued, the case says, was a “crisis of digital literacy” that left new users unable to decipher between real and false information online. 

“Facebook did nothing, however, to warn its Burmese users about the dangers of misinformation and fake accounts on its system or take any steps to restrict its vicious spread,” the suit alleges, claiming the Myanmar regime has since taken to employing hundreds of people to operate fake Facebook accounts to generate anti-Rohingya content. 

Between 2013 and 2017, Facebook “barely reacted” when it was repeatedly alerted of vast amounts of anti-Rohingya misinformation on its platform, the lawsuit goes on to allege. According to the complaint, the subsequent Facebook-driven, anti-Rohingya sentiment “motivated and enabled the military government of Myanmar to engage in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” who the case says were cast as “foreign invaders from which the military was protecting the Burmese people.” 

The lawsuit looks to represent all Rohingya who left Burma/Myanmar on or after June 1, 2012 and arrived in the United States under refugee status, or who sought asylum protection, and now reside in the U.S. 

In her 71-page complaint, the pseudonymous plaintiff, a Rohingya Muslim refugee, specifies in a footnote that mentions of Myanmar refer to the ruling military government, while mentions of Burma, the name recognized by the U.S. government, refer to the country itself. 

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