Rohingya refugees in the US and UK are suing Facebook for more than $150bn while accusing the social media giant of allowing the spread of hate speech and dangerous misinformation against the community.

On behalf of an estimated 10,000 Rohingya people in the US, the lawsuit was filed on Monday in San Francisco.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook allowed hate speech to fester in Myanmar for years, long after it was informed of the genocide perpetrated against the country’s persecuted minority.

The refugees are suing the social media company for “compensatory damages, in excess of $150bn, in addition to punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial” for promoting violence against the community. According to Reuters, lawyers in the UK have also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook’s London office in a coordinated effort.

While the Rohingya have long been persecuted in Myanmar, the lawsuit said the introduction of Facebook into the country in 2011 “contributed to the development and widespread dissemination of anti-Rohingya hate speech, misinformation, and incitement of violence.”

The refugees accused Facebook of “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in Southeast Asia.”

The lawsuit said Facebook Messenger was used for spreading similar but conflicting chain messages to Muslim and Buddhist communities, inciting communal violence in the region in early September 2017.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit cited several Facebook posts as early as 2013, that said, “We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews, damn Kalars [a derogatory term for Rohingya people].”

Another post in 2018, showed a photo of a boat full of Rohingya refugees, that said, “Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster.”

One of the most dangerous campaigns, according to the lawsuit, came in 2017 when “the military’s intelligence arm spread rumours on Facebook to both Muslim and Buddhist groups that an attack from the other side was imminent... (sic).”

In the aftermath of the online misinformation, over 10,000 people were killed and at least 725,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh by September 2018.

According to the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, during the course of the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing campaign, over 40 per cent of all villages in the northern Rakhine State were partially or totally destroyed.

It specifically alleged that Facebook had contributed to the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing operations.

The UN mission examined documents, Facebook posts and audio-visual materials that contributed to shaping public opinion on the Rohingya and confirmed that a “carefully crafted hate campaign” developed a negative perception of Muslims among the Myanmar population, stated the lawsuit.

“This discourse created a conducive environment for the 2012 and 2013 anti-Muslim violence in Rakhine State and beyond, without strong opposition from the general population. It also enabled the hardening of repressive measures against the Rohingya and Kaman in Rakhine State and subsequent waves of State-led violence in 2016 and 2017,” it noted.

The allegations made in the lawsuit centre around the claim that Facebook knew of the ground situation in Myanmar, but chose to ignore complaints of hate speech made on the platform.

The lawsuit said that as Facebook’s algorithms amplified hate speech against the Rohingya community, the social media giant failed to invest in local moderators and fact-checkers.

But responding to these allegations, Facebook said it employed a “comprehensive” strategy with the use of native speakers and third-party fact-checkers.

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