Back in February, we told you about a French court order, that required Twitter to hand over the real identity of users who had been posting anti-Semitic tweets. Apparently, the hashtag “#UnBonJuif” (a good Jew) became very popular last fall, and was used by many as an opportunity to make anti-Semitic statements, which happen to be illegal in that country. Twitter deleted these inappropriate tweets as it could, but has not identified the people responsible for them, and is now being sued by the Union Of French Jewish Students (UEJF), to the tune of $50 million.
In a statement, the President of the UEJF said (via Google translate):
“Twitter plays the card of indifference by not respecting the decision of 24 January… They have not done anything (…) By protecting the anonymity of the authors of these tweets, they are complicit and offer an avenue to racists and anti-Semites”
Techdirt observesan interesting paradox presented by this dispute:
What’s incredible, frankly, is that while Europe is known to have less respect for free speech principles than the US, it tends to have greater respect for privacy rights. Apparently not in this case, however.
Twitter is filing an appeal, and has accused UEJF of “grandstanding”. We’ll see how this proceeds – you may recall how much legal back-and-forth it took before Twitter revealed the identify of one user here in the U.S., so it might be a while.
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