The lawsuit, filed in Kenya on Tuesday, was brought by two Ethiopian researchers and a Kenyan human rights organisation, the Katiba Institute. It also has the support of the campaign group Foxglove.
It alleges Facebook's recommendations systems amplified violent posts in Ethiopia and identified several people as targets. The suit also said the company failed to exercise reasonable care in training its algorithms to identify dangerous posts and in hiring staff to police content for the languages covered by its regional moderation hub in Nairobi.
The lawsuit specifically pointed out several of the platform's posts, which directly preceded the murder of the father of one of the researchers. The posts were published in October 2021 and included the use of ethnic slurs to refer to Professor Meareg Amare Meareg. They included the man's address and called for his death.
At the time, his son reported the content, but the company "left these posts...