Twitter must identify the authors of racist tweets per French court order

A French court has ruled that Twitter must hand over user data to help identify the authors of tweets considered racist or anti-Semitic, reports the AFP. This comes after a request from France’s Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which claimed that many tweets were in violation of the French law against hate speech. Specifically, the UEJF was pressuring Twitter in light of a number of racist messages being posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew) — Twitter eventually removed some of the tweets, but the UEJF wanted authors of the tweets exposed.

Now, the French court has decided that Twitter must do so “within the framework of its French site.” It sounds like Twitter will only have to reveal users who are under the jurisdiction of France’s hate speech laws. It’s similar to how Twitter blocked a neo-Nazi account specifically in Germany last October, the first implementation of the service’s country-specific censorship policy that went into practice last January. While this case is a bit different, given that France is now interested in specific users rather than tweets, we’d be surprised if Twitter was forced to reveal users who didn’t fall under the French law.