In January, a French court ruled that Twitter must hand over the details of people who had tweeted racist and anti-semitic remarks, and set up a system that would alert the police to any further such posts as they happen. Twitter has ignored that ruling, and now the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) is suing it for €38.5 million ($49.96 million) for its failure.
The case revolves around a hashtag—#unbonjuif ("a good Jew")—which became the third-most popular on the site in October 2012. The UEJF took Twitter to court, demanding that those who had tweeted anti-semitic remarks using the hashtag be named by Twitter so the police could prosecute them for hate speech.
Twitter refused, arguing it was based in the United States and thus protected by the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantees. A Parisian circuit court ruled against the social network, giving it two weeks to comply or face a fine of up to €1,000 ($1,298) for each day it doesn't. The UEJF want considerably more than that, says its president, Jonathan Hayoun, because the site "is making itself an accomplice and offering a highway for racists and anti-Semites".
"Twitter is playing the indifference card in not respecting the decision of 24 January," he added, when speaking to AFP. If the UEFJ wins its case, it plans to donate the money to the Shoah Memorial Fund. Twitter has said it will appeal the decision. It deleted many of the offensive tweets in January after the earlier court ruling, but has so far held back on using its country withheld content feature to pre-filter potentially offensive content, as it does with neo-Nazi posts in Germany.
This post originally appeared on Wired UK.
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