Facebook sued over failure to police anti-Muslim hate speech

The non-profit group Muslim Advocates is suing Facebook, claiming the social media giant fails to police hate speech, especially ‘pervasive’ anti-Muslim attacks.

An advocacy group for Muslim Americans sued Facebook Inc., alleging that the company’s failure to enforce its own moderation policies has caused a wave of anti-Muslim abuse. The complaint, filed in superior court in Washington on Thursday, claims the world’s largest social network has failed to remove content that violates its rules against hate speech, despite assuring lawmakers and other government officials that it enforces those policies. Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have generally been able to dodge lawsuits faulting them for not removing abusive content, under a 1996 federal law that broadly protects internet platforms from liability for content posted by users.