Lawyers representing Rohingya refugees brought a class-action lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta this week, seeking more than $150 billion in damages from the company by claiming that it bears responsibility for the violent and racist messaging on its platform that U.N. investigators have said contributed to a potential genocide in Myanmar.
Speaking to Rest of World, Richard Fields, founding partner of Fields PLLC, one of the two legal firms leading the suit, said that their case would involve challenging tech companies’ longstanding defense that they are not responsible for content published on their platforms, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That protection is weakening, he said, as lawmakers and regulators reexamine the role that social media platforms play in society.
Fields told Rest of World that the “ground has been shifting” on Section 230. “Social media platforms … basically have no guardrails, anything goes,” he said. “I don’t think anybody with a right mind believes that Congress intended for these kinds of things to be happening when 230 was written.”
[…]