Court sides with Jewish group against Twitter

AP

PARIS (AP) — A French court has sided with a Jewish group seeking to identify authors of anti-Semitic messages that circulated the social network Twitter last autumn.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to turn over to the French Union of Jewish Students whatever data it has that could help identify the account holders who posted the tweets. The court also ordered Twitter to make it easier for users of its French website to report "illicit content" such as apology for crimes against humanity and incitation to racial hatred.

Twitter is free to comply or not with the court order as the U.S. company has no personnel or offices in France.

Last October, the company bowed to complaints and agreed to pull the anti-Semitic tweets, which included slurs and photos evoking the Holocaust.