Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2011. It is a news piece from that month, and the events described were current then; it does not cover the outcome of the lawsuit.
News of another lawsuit involving Facebook has come in, although this time it isn’t Mark Zuckerberg who is filing it, but Larry Klayman, a Jewish activist known for taking legal action against the United States government.
This time the lawsuit is over a page created on Facebook that threatened Jews with death. The page called for a popular uprising in Palestine against the people of Israel, with comments along the lines of “let’s kill the Jews”.
Klayman’s lawyers contacted Facebook several times asking for the page to be taken down, and were turned down on several occasions, until the Israeli government stepped in and got the page shut down.
Even so, Klayman argues that the page was closed too late and the damage has already been done, so he is seeking 1 billion dollars in damages and calling on everyone affected to file their own complaint, with the aim of building a class action.
Klayman can’t understand why Zuckerberg tolerated this kind of page for so long when it puts every Jewish person in danger, including Zuckerberg himself, who is of Jewish descent.
At first glance it might seem that Facebook isn’t to blame, since it only provides the tool and users do the rest. However, under the new law, website and social network owners are now responsible for moderating the comments posted on their pages, and appropriate legal action can be taken if the content is racist or incites violence.
Further reading
- Who is behind Facebook
- The first baby girl named Facebook is born
Featured image: Anurag R Dubey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
