can and should do more.’ I quickly realized that the company was
giving a PR response to a genocide that they accommodated—that,
I, working for Facebook, had been a party to genocide. This is
what prompted me to look for another job. 189
1
2
3
143.
Facebook’s subsequent actions prove that, for an investment amounting to a
4
miniscule portion of the company’s vast resources, 190 the company could have blocked much of
5
the hate speech against the Rohingya. In August 2018, Facebook posted on its website:
6
The ethnic violence in Myanmar has been truly horrific…. While
we were too slow to act, we’re now making progress—with better
technology to identify hate speech, improved reporting tools, and
more people to review content.
7
8
Today, we are taking more action in Myanmar, removing a total of
18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook
Pages, followed by almost 12 million people. We are preserving
data, including content, on the accounts and Pages we have
removed.191
9
10
11
12
144.
In December 2018, Facebook updated its blog to report that it removed an
13
additional “425 Facebook Pages, 17 Facebook Groups, 135 Facebook accounts and 15 Instagram
14
accounts in Myanmar for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook…. [W]e
15
discovered that these seemingly independent news, entertainment, beauty and lifestyle Pages
16
were linked to the Myanmar military.”192
17
145.
Rosa Birch, head of Facebook’s Strategic Response Team, told NBC in 2019 that
18
“the team worked on a new tool that allows approved non-governmental organizations to flag
19
problematic material they see on Facebook in a way that is seen more quickly by the company
20
than if a regular user reported the material. ‘It sounds relatively simple, and something that we
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
189
Emphasis added.
190
Between 2011 and 2017, Facebook reported revenues of $115,357,000,000 and net
income of $34,893,000,000. Facebook: annual revenue and net income 2007-2020, STATISTICA
RESEARCH DEPARTMENT (Feb. 5, 2021), https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooksannual-revenue-and-net-income/.
191
Removing Myanmar Military Officials From Facebook, FACEBOOK NEWSROOM (Aug. 28,
2018), https://about.fb.com/news/2018/08/removing-myanmar-officials/ (emphasis added).
192
Id.
CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT
61
Case No. __________________