An Australian-Muslim rights group has lodged a complaint against Facebook under the Racial Discrimination Act, accusing the social media giant of failing to take down hate speech against minority groups.
The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network has and Islamophobia from the platform since the .
In the complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission, the group alleges Facebook is responsible for direct and indirect discrimination and liability for hate speech under section 9 and 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
They accuse Facebook of allowing pages that “superficially position themselves as ‘anti-Islam’” to remain live despite “routinely and dangerously” proliferating hate speech against Middle Eastern, African, South Asian, and Asian people.
The group has previously highlighted a lack of action from the platform against comments, such as, “Muslims are the only people on Earth who will earn their genocide", "Drown 'em at birth", and "Can we go kill these f***ers yet".
“Our concern is that Facebook only takes action when the community does the heavy-lifting in documenting the violations and is prepared to escalate through media,” AMAN advisor Rita Jabri-Markwell said on Thursday.
“This approach isn’t sustainable and places an unreasonable burden."
AMAN sent outlining their concerns and warning it could be liable under anti-discrimination legislation. It is understood AMAN has been providing feedback and engaging with Facebook over the past year.
“Australian communities have paid the price too long. We have no choice but to escalate this,” Ms Jabri-Markwell said.
“Our community has experienced many attacks on mosques, as well on individuals and families going about their lives.
“But it’s not only Muslims who are affected. Research has clearly shown anti-Muslim populist movements online have been the predominant force behind the growth in right-wing extremism.”
Following the Christchurch massacre, in which the murder of 51 Muslim worshippers was live-streamed on Facebook, the tech giant pledged to address the proliferation of extremist content online.
This included ramping up its rules against hateful content to enable the removal of posts supporting white nationalism and separatism.
In a statement to SBS News, a Facebook spokesperson told SBS News they have invested in AI technology to take down hate speech and were detecting 97 per cent of removed posts before they were reported by users.
"We do not allow hate speech on Facebook and regularly work with experts, non-profits, and stakeholders to help make sure Facebook is a safe place for everyone, recognising anti-Muslim rhetoric can take different forms," the spokesperson said.
In its most recent , Facebook said it had increased the volume of hate speech they took action on by almost 400 per cent between December 2019 and 2020.
The platform’s hate speech policy defines it as a direct attack on people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease.
It does, however, allow “commentary and criticism” of immigration policies and institutions, ideas, and concepts, such as religions. This means users are not allowed to attack a group of people on the basis of their religeous belief, but can criticise a religious institution.
