Twitter has been sued for $50 million for hiding the identity of the people sending anti-Semitic messages that led to the #Unbonjuif Hashtag Controversy.
According to recent reports from leading tabloids, micro blogging giant Twitter has been sued in France for allegedly not disclosing the identities of a group of people who have been sending hateful anti-Semitic messages over the last five months.
It was previously reported that a group of unknown users were tweeting offensive photos and jokes with a hashtag #unbonjuif - which in English means "Good Jew." These tweets outraged users, who called these posts anti-Semitic and offensive to the Jewish community.
After being backslashed for months, Twitter finally removed these posts. However, this didn't stop the unknown users from posting more offensive posts. This led to more aggression from the people, who were offended by the posts and demanded that Twitter reveal the identity of users making these posts.
Twitter failed to respond to the request and so the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) filed a summons against Twitter in November 2012. This January a French court ordered the social media company to provide the identities of the users.
However, the two weeks that were given to Twitter to comply to the request are up and the social networking site has still not acted upon the court's order. Hence, the UEJF is now seeking to sue the company for $50 million for failure to adhere to the court order.
Union president Jonathan Hayoun said he and his organization filed their second lawsuit in six months because Twitter had "ignored" the previous ruling.
"Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling," Hayoun told AFP. "They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites."
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