A French judge will decide this week if Twitter must hand over the identities of users sending anti-Semitic tweets. The case, brought against Twitter by a Jewish student organization, pits America's free speech guarantees against Europe's laws banning hate speech.
The controversy began in October, when the French Union of Jewish Students threatened to sue Twitter to get the names of people posting anti-Semitic tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif, or "a good Jew."
"If I type 'un bon Juif' ... I can see it was full of tweets against Jews," says Eli Petit, vice president of the Jewish student organization. "It was written, for example, 'A good Jew is a dead Jew,' 'A good Jew is a burned Jew.'"
For Christopher Mesnooh, an American lawyer who practices in France, the case is a "classic example of a clash of cultures that shows up in the way different legal systems deal with the same issue.... In the United States, we give virtually absolute protection to free speech — even if it's offensive to different minorities," he says.
"Europe, France and Germany in particular have taken a different direction. What they have decided is that because of what happened during the Holocaust and World War II more generally, that certain kinds of speech, when directed at minorities, has to be circumscribed or even prevented," he says.
Do you think what Twitter did was reasonable or is this hate speech that requires identifying the culprits?
4 comments:
Personally, I would agree with what Europe, France and Germany are doing because of the Holocaust. I would agree that it is hate speech that needs to be taken down.
I have been bullied because of my religious beliefs, and I would certainly take it offensively and be upset if someone posted something negative about what I believe in.
I understand that there is a right to free speech and everyone has a right to express their own opinions, but I also believe that there comes a point where it is taken too far. Even if it is a Jewish person making fun of his or her own religion, it's wrong. That just makes it ok for other people to make fun of the religion too.
This subject of freedom of speech is an extremely touchy topic. We can all agree that hate speech and bullying is wrong but where do you draw the line? I could be posting about my political beliefs or my opinions on environmental control and someone somewhere will find it offensive.
We can't just limit speech because someone somewhere may find it offensive. If we start doing that then english literature will be shut down because people may find books like Beloved by Toni Morrison or even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain offensive because of the racism in it.
The problem with globalization is that something that is legal in one country my not be legal in another. Especially if an American is posting something, which is legal here, but illegal in another part of the world. Twitter should not be responsible for censoring posts for each country, and they should not be responsible for what their users post.
I think what Twitter did was reasonable. They should set the rules for what speech is and is not acceptable within the use of their application. Once the government starts to force companies such as Twitter to ban certain forms of speech, the door is open for them to start to ban speech that is simply unpopular, rather than hateful.
In the U.S., the laws are different. I agree that you can't police speech that others find offensive. Geez, there is a slew of hate speech online (white supremacists to name one extreme group, but there are many others). Most speech is free here, and the Supreme Court is a strong believer of those rights. (We'll talk more about this in class.)
But in Europe, the history that allowed hate to happen created laws to make hate speech illegal, as a way to prevent such atrocities from happening again. So, it's a much more sensitive topic there. And to add to this point, other countries don't allow any free speech at all.
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