By Elizabeth Culliford

(Reuters). Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have sued Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ) for $150 billion. They claim that the company failed to act against hate speech by anti-Rohingya that has contributed violence.

Edelson PC and Fields PLLC filed a U.S. class action complaint in California Monday. The suit claims that the platform’s failures and design to control content contributed to the real-world violence facing the Rohingya. British lawyers submitted an official notice to Facebook’s London headquarters in a coordinated effort.

Facebook has not yet responded to Reuters’s request for comment regarding the lawsuit. Facebook claimed it was too slow to protect misinformation in Myanmar. However, the company stated it has taken measures to combat abuses on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook baning military members after the coup of February 1.

Facebook claims it is not liable to users for any content they post. This protection comes from a U.S. internet law called Section 230. It states that websites aren’t liable for third-party content. If Section 230 is argued as defense, the complaint states that it will apply Burmese law.

Even though U.S. courts may apply foreign laws to cases in which the alleged harms or activities of companies occurred in another country, two Reuters experts have said that foreign law is not commonly used in litigations against social media firms where Section 230 protections might apply.

Anupam Chauder, an associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center said that it wasn’t inappropriate to invoke Burmese law. He said that it was not inappropriate to invoke Burmese law.

After a military crackdown, which refugees claimed included mass murders and rapes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State state of Myanmar, more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar in August 2017. Rights groups reported on the killings of civilians as well as burning villages.

Myanmar authorities deny that they committed systematic atrocities and claim they were fighting an insurgency.

U.N. investigators into human rights claimed that Facebook played an important role in the spread of hate speech and fueled violence. The Reuters investigation in that same year was cited by the U.S. lawsuit. It found more than 1000 examples of comments, posts, and images targeting the Rohingya Muslims and other Muslims via Facebook.

International Criminal Court opened an investigation into allegations of crime in this region. A U.S. federal judge ordered Facebook on September 1st to make public records that Facebook had closed down about accounts related to anti-Rohingya violence, Myanmar.

Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower, claims in the new class action lawsuit that Facebook doesn’t police abusive content in those countries.

A complaint was also made citing recent media reports including a Reuters Report last month that Myanmar’s military had been using fake social media accounts for what is often called “information combat” in military circles.