France launches Twitter probe in racism case
French Jewish body starts legal action against social network to force site to reveal details on people who posted slew of anti-Semitic hate messages
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The move follows a complaint lodged last month by an anti-racism organisation that numerous messages posted on the site had breached French law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred.
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Video courtesy of jn1.tv
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The police probe, which is still in a preliminary phase, will focus on one specific message with a view to pressing charges punishable by up to a year in prison, judicial sources said.
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France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) has been pressing Twitter to exercise tighter control of what appears on its site following a wave of anti-Semitic messages posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew).
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Examples included "#agoodjew is a dead Jew" and other offensive tweets were subsequently posted under #unjuifmort (#adeadjew).
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The UEJF on Tuesday began a legal action aimed at forcing Twitter to identify the authors of some of the posts. A hearing on the application has been scheduled for January 8.
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Twitter has refused to comment on the row, re-directing enquiries to its terms of service which state that it does not mediate content but may suspend accounts deemed to be producing illegal content.
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In October, the site suspended the account of a neo-Nazi group in Germany following a request from the government in Berlin. It was the first time Twitter had acted on a request of that nature from a government.
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