Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has filed a lawsuit on Monday against Facebook, which recently rebranded itself as Meta, alleging that in an effort to boost its stock and deceive shareholders, it lied claiming it implements internal controls and monitors the content that might be harmful to children.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) and Facebook investors against the company, its co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and others.
The plaintiffs, which jointly demanding $100 billion in damages, also urge Meta’s management to take measures to fix the flaws and not mislead its investors again.
According to the court documents, Facebook’s management violated federal securities law between April and October 2021 by deliberately misleading the public about its algorithms and the negative effects its products may have on minors and the steps the company has taken to protect them in order to boost profits.
The documents contend that by purposely misleading the public, Facebook and its senior executives violated federal securities laws.
Yost pointed that the truth began to emerge after the ‘The Facebook Files’ publication – based on internal documents unveiled by a whistleblower – earlier this year claimed that Facebook’s social networks’ algorithms promoted potentially dangerous content.
The publication gave as an example recommendation sent to girls with anorexia to subscribe to groups where weight loss was discussed and instances in which, due to flaws in the platform’s system, hate speech, radical and even extremist content was promoted or not filtered out.
In response to the court filing, Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne said the lawsuit is without merit- echoing Zuckerberg’s earlier claims that such accusations were libelous and Facebook has never prioritized profits over users – and stressed the company will defend itself vigorously.
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