Recently, some groups in France brought a lawsuit against anti-Semitic users on Twitter. They demanded that anonymous users on Twitter who tweet anti-Semitic remarks broke French law and hence should be identified and executed for hate speech. The French judge has agreed on this and had ordered Twitter to reveal identities of such hate speech makers on Twitter.
However, Twitter is also bound by its privacy policy to protect the identity of its users. But, Twitter has said that it is reviewing this order by the French court. Being based in America, Twitter is bound by the American laws only and thus an order from an American court will not be under review, but will directly be followed. Since Twitter is not bound by the French laws, it can choose to ignore the French court’s order.
In the past, Twitter had blocked a neo-Nazi account when a request was made from Germany. Since Germany has had a history of Nazism, it now seriously dispels all things related to it. Most of the European countries feel much the same way about Jewish communities too, who have suffered at the hands of the Nazis. But the freedom of speech requires by its very essence, that a different point of view be tolerated.
Never the less, any incitement to hate speech and hate speech itself is an abuse of the freedom of speech, and thus should be taken action against. Twitter had received many such complaints regarding protecting the interests of the Jewish community from France too, but it had not complied with those so far. Twitter revealed that it complied with only 63% of the government requests made to it.