French Student Group Sues Twitter (Again) For $50 Million (Again) Over Tweets It Doesn't Like

from the how-do-you-say-publicity-stunt-in-french? dept

Three years ago, we wrote about a crazy story in which the Union of Jewish French Students (UEJF) was suing Twitter for $50 million, claiming that the fact that an anti-semitic hashtag started trendng violated some sort of anti-hate speech law in France. Twitter, somewhat ridiculously, actually agreed to remove the tweets in question, saying they were offensive. Even after that, UEJF demanded that Twitter also reveal the identities of everyone who tweeted the hashtag... and won (not the money, but Twitter was told to hand over the user info)! Yeah, France is not a big supporter of free speech, we get it, but this is still ridiculous.

At the time, Twitter claimed that the whole thing was really a publicity stunt for UEJF:

"We've been in continual discussions with UEJF," a Twitter spokesperson told CNET. "As yesterday's new filing shows, they are sadly more interested in grandstanding than taking the proper international legal path for this data."

Apparently, it's time to ramp up the grandstanding again, as reports are now spreading that the same group has now sued Twitter yet again, and once again for $50 million, and (somewhat incredibly) in all of the tech press coverage I'm reading of this, none seem to mention the lawsuit from three years ago. Of course, this time it's not just Twitter, but YouTube and Facebook that are also being sued for $50 million. And it's not over a trending hashtag, but rather just a bunch of obnoxious tweets:

In this "first mass test of social networks," the groups uncovered 586 instances of content that was "racist, anti-Semitic, denied the Holocaust, homophobic (or) defended terrorism or crimes against humanity," the joint statement said.

Only a fraction of these postings were deleted by the host organisations within a "reasonable time," as required under a 2004 French law: four percent on Twitter, seven percent on YouTube and 34 percent on Facebook.

Look, there are a lot of terrible people who say terrible stuff on the internet. That's kind of a thing that happens on the internet. And, no, it's not very nice. But it takes an incredible leap in logic to take that fact and say... "Hey, let's sue the internet companies for this." In the US, of course, such a lawsuit would be immediately laughed out of court for infringing on the First Amendment. You can say ignorant stuff in America and it won't lead to $50 million dollar lawsuits against the technology you used to say your ignorant stuff. Now, as we've discussed in the past, American companies should be protected from these kinds of ridiculous lawsuits by the SPEECH Act, which rejects foreign judgments that wouldn't survive First Amendment scrutiny in the US. But, of course, that won't do much good for internet giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube -- all of whom have a strong presence in France, including employees. The courts can still target all of that.

But, really, UEJF is being completely idiotic here:

"It's a mystery whether moderating teams in social media are actually working," said Sacha Reingewirtz, president of the UEJF.

Dominique Sopo, head of SOS-Racisme, said the social media giants were hypocritical.

"These platforms seem more shocked about content with bare breasts, which is swiftly censored, than about incitement to hatred," Sopo said.

"Our legal step aims at getting the authorities to apply the law so that these organisation submit to it in full."

First of all, the quote from Reingewirtz is ridiculous. It's something someone says when they have absolutely no sense of the sheer scale of what these companies deal with. They don't scan every new post or video because that's simply impossible. And while Sopo at least has a point about Facebook's prude sensibilities, that doesn't necessary apply to the other platforms... and also, is a very different thing. And, really, if you're trying to get platforms to broadly censor a class of content, it seems like a rather strange way to go about it by then mocking the very same companies for blocking a class of content that you don't happen to find offensive.

Who knows where this ends up, though given that France is the same country that once declared Yahoo's CEO to be a war criminal, because someone used Yahoo's auction service (yes, children, Yahoo once competed directly with eBay in auctions) to auction off some Nazi memorabilia, it may not end well for those companies. The whole thing is ridiculous though. Even if you think saying stupid, ignorant, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic things should be against the law, at the very least focus on the people who actually said that stuff, rather than the technologies people used to say them.

Filed Under: censorship, france, free speech, intermediary liability, publicity stunt, tweets, uejf
Companies: facebook, twitter, uejf, youtube

Twitter Sued For $50 Million In France For Protecting Identity Of Hateful Twitter Users (Even Though It Deleted The Tweets)

from the i-may-not-like-what-you-say,-but-i'll-fight-for-your-right-to-say-it dept

Last year the Union of Jewish French Students (UEJF) sued Twitter, because a bunch of people in France start tweeting ridiculous anti-semitic tweets as some sort of weird anti-semitic hashtag became popular in France:

Last October, the UEJF sued Twitter after the hashtag "#unBonJuif" (French for "#aGoodJew") became the third most popular trending topic on Twitter in France. With so many tweets indexed under that hashtag, many users took the opportunity to post Holocaust jokes, racially charged statements (e.g. "#aGoodJew is a dead jew"), photos of dustpans filled with dust, and even calls to kill more Jews.

Even though it's a strong defender of free speech, Twitter agreed to remove the tweets in question as offensive. As someone who is Jewish and who is quite offended by anti-semitism, I still think this was the wrong move. Censoring ignorant speech does nothing to fix things. Ignorant speech should be countered with non-ignorant speech. That said, Twitter made its decision and removed the tweets.

Turns out, that wasn't enough. The UEJF demanded the identities of everyone who tweeted such anti-semitic remarks. Twitter refused, but lost in court. Afterwards, it still refused to pass along the info, and so the UEJF has now filed a second lawsuit, seeking $50 million.

“Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling,” Hayoun told AFP. “They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites.”

Either that or they're pushing back against a lynchmob mentality, and protecting at least some precepts of free speech and an expectation of privacy. 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 has put out a statement suggesting that the UEJF is much more interested in using this for publicity purposes than anything else:

"We've been in continual discussions with UEJF," a Twitter spokesperson told CNET. "As yesterday's new filing shows, they are sadly more interested in grandstanding than taking the proper international legal path for this data. We are filing our appeal today, and would have filed it sooner if not for UEJF's intentional delay in processing the court's decision."

Even more ridiculous is that it appears that it's not just Twitter being sued, but Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. If this all sounds vaguely familiar, that may be because a decade ago, Yahoo faced a similar ridiculous situation, in which both the company and its CEO were charged as war criminals (no joke!) because Yahoo's non-France websites sold some Nazi memorabilia (they blocked it on Yahoo's French sites). At some point, people bringing these kinds of lawsuits have to realize how counterproductive they are. I'm extremely sympathetic to their offense at the ignorant tweets, but their legal actions take away all of that sympathy.

Filed Under: anti-semitism, france, free speech, lawsuits, privacy, uejf
Companies: twitter