French court says Twitter must identify racist tweet authors
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A picture taken on Oct 23, 2012 shows the screen of a blackberry phone featuring a page with the adress of the US micro-blogging Twitter website. A French court ruled that Twitter, which has steadfastly refused calls to police its millions of users, must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets. -- PHOTO: AFP
PARIS (AFP) - A French court ruled that Twitter, which has steadfastly refused calls to police its millions of users, must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets.
The ruling follows a legal complaint lodged in October by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which argued that numerous tweets had breached French law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred.
The union had been pressing Twitter to exercise tighter control of what appeared on its site following a deluge of anti-Semitic messages posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew).
Twitter later removed some of the offending tweets.
