Germany sues Twitter for not removing antisemitic posts – Times of India

Twitter may be facing a new lawsuit in Germany for not removing reported posts. The Elon Musk-owned social media platform has been reportedly sued by two groups who claim that Twitter has failed to remove six anti-semitic posts that were already reported. These posts allegedly attack Jewish people and even deny the Holocaust. According to a report by Bloomberg, these posts were published after the micro-blogging site was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in October 2022. Since Musk’s takeover, he has posted several tweets which represent most of the company’s communications output. However, none of these tweets mentioned the anti-semitic posts mentioned above. Twitter also hasn’t yet offered any official comment regarding this issue.
Why Twitter is being sued
Antisemitism and denial of the Holocaust are not only illegal in Germany, but they also violate Twitter’s terms and conditions as well. European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) along with HateAid has brought the alleged civil action against the social media platform.
Avital Grinberg, who is the president of the EUJS said that “Twitter has betrayed our trust by allowing hateful content to spread, the company fails to protect users – and Jews in particular.” This lawsuit will try to determine if the social media site is “contractually obliged” to remove such material.
Meanwhile, HateAid legal head Josephine Ballon said, “Twitter assures it won’t tolerate violence on its platform. Users have to be able to rely on that.”

How successful has Twitter been in removing hateful content
Twitter partnered with the Campaign Against Antisemitism in 2021, before the company was bought by Musk. The campaign claimed that Twitter’s policies were failing and the social media platform was able to remove only 400 of 1,000 tweets containing hateful content attacking Jews.
In 2022, Twitter was also criticised for being too slow to remove tweets by UK musician Wiley. He later apologised for the same and said that these tweets “were looked at as antisemitic”.
Moreover, former UK PM Boris Johnson also suggested that social networks have to “go further and faster to remove content like this”. This isn’t something new as other major social networking platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram have all faced similar situations.
UK’s Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan has said that the UK Online Safety Bill is expected to be passed into law this summer. With this bill becoming law, technology companies will face large penalties if they fail to remove hateful content quickly.
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