Meta Faces Suit Blaming Online Groups for Security Officer Death (1)

Meta Platforms Inc. faces a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that extremist groups on its social media platform Facebook played a role in the drive-by shooting of a federal security officer.

“The shooting was not a random act of violence,” according to the complaint filed Thursday in California Superior Court for Alameda County. “It was the culmination of an extremist plot hatched and planned on Facebook,” the complaint says, blaming the site’s groups infrastructure and recommendation algorithms.

Department of Homeland Security Officer Dave Patrick Underwood was fatally shot in May 2020 while providing security at a federal courthouse in California during ...