Less than a week after Facebook removed a “cause” page calling for a “Third
Intifada,” the social networking website and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg were hit
with a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages, AFP reported
Saturday.
Facebook removed the page after the site’s monitors said
administrators of the page were found to be participating in calls for
violence.
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Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, the Zionist Organization of America, and
thousands of site users had requested both personally and online through
Facebook that site administrators take down what was described as a
violence-inciting, anti-Semitic page.
The suit, details of which AFP
acquired from technology blog “TechCrunch,” was filed in the Washington Superior
Court by Larry Klayman, a self-described “American citizen of Jewish origin” who
is “active with matters concerning the security of Israel and all people.”
Klayman claimed that Facebook showed “negligence” by not quickly responding to
the calls to shut down the “Third Intifada” page.
Klayman also called on
Facebook to comb its site for all pages under the title “Third Intifada” or any
other pages that incited violence toward Jews and remove them.
Facebook
has said it would fight the case, dismissing it as being “without merit,” AFP
cited a website spokesperson as saying. According to the social networking
website, the page was initially tolerated because it had begun by calling for a
“peaceful protest,” but breached the acceptable lines when posters and
eventually the site administrator made posts violating Facebook’s policies.