$1B Suit Against Facebook, Zuckerberg Says Page Pushing Violent Protest Wasn't Removed Fast Enough
An attorney is suing Facebook and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for not promptly shutting down an embattled page that sought to incite violence against Jews.
Larry Klayman, an American attorney and founder of the public interest group Judicial Watch, is seeking more than $1 billion in the suit filed in the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday, the New York Daily News reports. Klayman, who describes himself as “an American citizen of Jewish origin,” claims Facebook did not shut down the page swiftly enough, the paper notes. TechCrunch has the lawsuit and a partial screen shot of the page.
The controversial page called for a “Third Intifada” against Israel and proposed a May 15 uprising, the New York Daily News says. Facebook removed the page March 29, days after receiving complaints from several people, including Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein and the Anti-Defamation League, the paper says. The page had nearly 500,000 fans, AFP reports.
“After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the page,” Facebook said in a statement. A Facebook spokesman told AFP that the case is without merit.
This isn’t Klayman’s first prominent case. In fact, it arguably isn’t even his most high-profile legal battle to date. Klayman has sued Hillary Clinton, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury, the Ground Zero Mosque and his own mother, TechCrunch says. “Most of his high-profile lawsuits have been dismal failures, though,” the blog notes.
Other than awarding damages, the complaint asks the court to prohibit the social media site “from allowing the Facebook page titled ‘Third Palestinian Intifada,’ and other related and similar sites, which advocate violence and death to Jews,” AFP says.
