French Court says Twitter must identify racist tweeters

Taken From: France 24

Date Published: January 24th, 2013

Summary: French court recently ruled on Thursday that Twitter, the giant online social networking, and microblogging service had to hand over data that would help identify the authors of racist and anti-Semetic tweets (posts). This ruling was because of France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) filing a legal complaint about some of the tweets they had been seeing recently online. Many of the tweets online breached French Law, which prohibits the provoking/incitement of racial hatred. 

An example of an anti-Semetic tweet.
Translation: #AGoodJew is a dead jew

Many of the anti-Semetic tweets were posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif. Which translates to #agoodjew. Twitter under the pressure of the union, removed some of the offending tweets. France's Union of Jewish Students took legal action against Twitter forcing them to identify or provide data to identify the authors of the tweets. 

Later, under the request from the government of Berlin, Twitter suspended the account of a neo-Nazi group in Germany. The tweets from the neo-Nazi groups were used under the hashtag #IfIwereANazi. 

Opinion: In my opinion, it was right of the UEJF, to step up and take legal action. When social media sites first became popular, they were used for their initial purpose. Twitter's purpose was to post/blog about what's happening. I think it's purpose is now veering off course. People are now using social media to post offending things like such. People nowadays think they are protected by some shield over the internet. People think they can put whatever they want onto the internet and get away with it. There are many things that people say over the internet, that they wouldn't dare say in real life. People should get over the fact that they are completely anonymous over the internet. I think it's outrageous people are posting racist comments, through the internet. I strongly believe that the people that are posting/tweeting offending or racist comments, through any social media medium, should be punished.