Facebook just got 20,000 unlikes from Israelis who are suing the social network for not cracking down on “Palestinian terror” activities online.
Among the litigants is a US-born man who was critically wounded this month in a Jerusalem terror attack. Richard Lakin, a Boston native and former New Jersey school principal now living in Israel, was shot and stabbed on Oct. 13 when militants boarded a bus, killing two people and critically wounding 20.
He is one of the 20,000 people on whose behalf lawyers Robert Tolchin and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of the Israel Law Center (ILC), filed suit against Facebook in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday.
The 76-page complaint states that the plaintiffs “have been living in the cross hairs of a murderous terrorist rampage” and alleges Facebook is failing to meet its moral and legal obligations to monitor and restrict racist content.
“Facebook connects the whole world, and they need to be sensitive that their algorithms are spanning decades of hatred and murder, and connecting people who are not only interested in malicious activities, but are actually going through with these activities,” Tolchin, who is also the US counsel for the ILC, told The Post.
“Facebook needs to be sensitive to that, especially when it’s a call to murder.
“Many of these murderers were motivated to commit their heinous crimes by incitement to murder they read on Facebook — demagogues and leaders exhorting their followers to ‘slaughter the Jews,’ and offering instruction as to the best manner to do so, including even ‘anatomical charts showing the best places to stab a human being,’ ” the papers read.
The complaint — which does not single out a specific terror organization — seeks an injunction, but no damages.
A Facebook spokesperson told The Post, “We want people to feel safe when using Facebook. There is no place for content encouraging violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech on Facebook . . . This lawsuit is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves.”
In October alone, at least 10 Israelis have been murdered — and dozens more wounded — in attacks by Palestinian militants striking with knives, axes, screwdrivers and Molotov cocktails.