The “Liability” Model and Causal Contributions to Structural Injustice

• In Event: Responding to Structural Injustice

Abstract

Is Facebook responsible for genocide in Burma/Myanmar? According to a whistleblower, UN investigative mission, and many other commentators, it is—at least to some extent. Yet, when Rohingya survivors brought a suit against Meta in California courts, the case was dismissed because the “causation allegations in the complaint [were] lacking.” On its face, this seems like a case-in-point for political theorists who argue that the “liability” model of responsibility is insufficient to the task of encouraging or assigning responsibility for structural injustice and mass violence.
In this paper, I explore the extent to which legal standards for causation are capable of capturing the sorts of contributions to harms that theorists of structural injustice describe. To do so, I analyze Facebook’s alleged responsibility for the genocidal violence perpetrated in 2017 against the Rohingya community in Myanmar, where security forces killed thousands, perpetrated mass rape and torture, and burnt down entire villages, sending over 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. After the country opened up its economy in 2011, vast swathes of the population were introduced to mobile phones, the internet, and Facebook simultaneously. During this time, anti-Rohingya and Islamophobic sentiment reached a fever pitch as Facebook’s algorithms prioritized inflammatory content, including calls for violence. Analyzing evidence collected by journalists, human rights organizations, and UN bodies, I assess the extent to which legal tests for “factual” and “proximate” cause capture Facebook’s alleged contributions to violence.
The point of undertaking this analysis is neither to vindicate nor to condemn the liability model, but rather to explore what answers existing legal standards provide. I expect to find that existing doctrines have more purchase on the question than might at first be apparent, but that the murkiness of these standards, long recognized by scholars, has the potential to provide cover for unarticulated biases, including ones against distant harms and “Third World”/foreign victims and in favor of “neutral” platforms and capitalist expansion. I plan to offer alternative standards for causation that would explicitly consider the capacity of the alleged tortfeasor to avoid contributing, the level of contribution, and the profitability of the harm.

Author

• Anjali Mohan, Stanford University