One Hundred Fifty Billion and a Shield Called 230
Rohingya refugees sued Meta for at least $150 billion, arguing Facebook's algorithms amplified hate that helped fuel Myanmar's genocide. In April 2026 a US appeals court held the claims barred by Section 230, the law that shields platforms from liability for what their users post.
A $150 billion claim over Myanmar
In December 2021, Rohingya refugees sued Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, accusing the social network of failing to curb hate speech and incitement that preceded violence against the mostly Muslim minority in Myanmar. Lawyers filed a class action in California state court seeking “at least $150 billion” in damages, according to the Ninth Circuit's later account of the case, Doe 1 v. Meta Platforms. Reuters reported at the time that the suit alleged Facebook's algorithms “amplified hate speech against the Rohingya people” and that the company had not spent enough to hire moderators and fact-checkers who spoke local languages, according to NBC News.
The allegations echoed earlier findings by international investigators. In 2018, a United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that Myanmar's military had acted with genocidal intent against the Rohingya, and a UN investigator said Facebook had played a “determining role” in the country, as Reuters reported. Meta later commissioned an independent human-rights assessment that found it had not done enough to prevent its platform being used to incite offline violence.
The shield of Section 230
Meta removed the case to federal court, where a district judge dismissed it. On April 28, 2026, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that dismissal, holding the claims barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, according to the court's opinion. The provision, the panel wrote, “protects Meta from claims that seek to treat it as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson concluded that each of the plaintiffs' claims sought to hold Meta responsible in its role as a publisher of third-party content. “Plaintiffs believe that Facebook's design, coupled with the darker elements of human nature, caused real-world harm,” he wrote. “But Section 230, as we have interpreted it, bars their claims, and we cannot hold Meta ‘responsible for the unfortunate realities of human nature.’” The ruling was reported by Courthouse News Service.
A court divided on its own precedent
Two of the three judges signaled unease with the result even as they joined it. In a concurrence joined by Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, Circuit Judge Marsha S. Berzon wrote that the court's precedent had “unduly expanded the scope of section 230 immunity” and had stretched the term “publisher” “past the point of recognition,” urging the full court to reconsider that line of cases, according to the opinion. Nelson filed a separate concurrence arguing the court had “over-read Section 230,” straying from the original meaning of the text and creating “an all-purpose liability shield for internet platforms.”
The panel nonetheless held it was bound by circuit precedent extending Section 230 to the way platforms recommend and rank content. The plaintiffs' lawyers asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case before a larger panel of judges, arguing the decision unduly expanded the statute's scope, as MediaPost reported.
What the case tests
The dispute sits at the center of a broader question about accountability for automated recommendation systems. Judges, regulators and researchers have increasingly asked whether ranking algorithms that decide what users see are a form of protected publishing or the platform's own conduct. Berzon pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Moody v. NetChoice, which recognized platforms' content curation as expressive activity, in arguing that algorithmic recommendations may fall outside Section 230's shield, according to the opinion as summarized by FindLaw. For now, the Ninth Circuit's ruling leaves the shield intact, and the Rohingya plaintiffs without a US remedy against the platform they blame.