On October 19, 2012, Twitter turned censor. In response to complaints from the Union of French Jewish Students, Twitter pulled tweets that used the hashtag #UnBonJuif, or “a good Jew,” which had been worked into slurs and jokes, some using concentration-camp photographs as illustrations. The student union asked Twitter to reveal information that could be used to identify the offending tweeters. Twitter refused; the social-media company prides itself on its protection of free speech, and argued that taking down the individual tweets was enough. The student group took the case to court.

This week, Twitter lost. The Tribunal de Grande Instance, a civil court in Paris, ruled on Thursday that the company must hand over the names, or other identifying information, of the users who had tweeted anti-Semitic content, so that they can be prosecuted. It also ordered the creation of a visible and efficient mechanism for users to alert Twitter to “illicit content” inciting racial hatred or excusing or encouraging crimes against humanity. (Twitter holds that it does not moderate content posted to its platform, though the company does, for instance, quickly take down images of child abuse.)

If Twitter does not hand over the information within two weeks, it will face a fine of a thousand euros (about thirteen hundred dollars) per day—not much for a company recently valued at over eleven billion dollars. And Twitter, from its perspective, does not have to comply anyway. Since its data is stored in the United States, and since the company neither operates an office nor has personnel in France, Twitter argues that it is not beholden to French laws. (It does, however, sell advertisements in France, which may become an issue; being constrained from ever hiring a resident of France might, too.) In a statement on Thursday, Twitter said that it was reviewing legal options, but earlier this month the company asserted that it would need an order from an American court before it would, or could, disclose personal details stored on servers here. (Twitter did not reply to requests for comment.)

But far bigger than the financial question is that of the First Amendment. Most of Twitter’s two hundred million users tweet from outside of the United States, and so the company bumps, uncomfortably and unavoidably, into other countries’ free-speech laws. Last January, Twitter announced a new “country-withheld content” policy, under which it will block an account at the request of a government, but only within that country’s borders, so the tweet could still be seen elsewhere around the world—an attempt to find a Bay Area–sunny middle ground between freedom of speech and compliance with local law.

But free speech means something very different abroad—even in friendly, seemingly similar-to-us countries like France. (This is true particularly when it comes to the kind of speech that just happens to be in question: anti-Semitic speech.) When Twitter instated its “country-withheld content” policy, it broke open the floodgates.

In October, a few hours before the French student group petitioned for action, the Twitter censors, at the order of the legislature of Lower Saxony, blocked access throughout Germany to the account of the Besseres Hannover, an outlawed anti-Semitic and xenophobic group known for harassing and attacking migrants. This was the first application of the new policy.

The #UnBonJuif tweets taken down in France that day were variations on a slur, and thousands of French users participated, racing in the viral style we all could do without. Some of the tweets might be called political (“A good Jew is a Non-Zionist Jew”). Others sound like the captions of Der Stürmer caricatures (“A good Jew can reinflate your tire with his nose”), or worse (“A good Jew is a Jew dead on the tiles”). Hatred as meme: #UnBonJuif was the third-most-popular trending term in France when it was taken down.

It spun off from the hashtag #LaRafle, which had been the most popular trending topic in France the Monday prior. On Sunday, October 14, the national French TV channel TF1, considered the most-watched channel in Europe, aired the movie “La Rafle,” a conscientious reënactment, starring Jean Reno and Mélanie Laurent, of the roundup and deportation of thirteen thousand Jews from Paris on July 16 and 17, 1942. (The Jews were kept for days without food and water in the Vélodrome d’Hiver bicycle arena, near the Eiffel Tower, before they were sent to Auschwitz. Only eight hundred and eleven returned.) Seven million French people watched the 2010 film, making it the most popular program that evening.

The broadcast was surely an attempt to educate the French public about the country’s role in the Nazi genocide. Three months before it aired, a study found that that a large majority of French people younger than thirty-five had never heard of the incident. When President François Hollande, whose predecessors for decades lay flowers on the grave of the Vichy leader Philippe Pétain, commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the roundup at the site of the since-demolished velodrome, he said, “We cannot tolerate the fact that two out of three young French people do not know what the Vel d’Hiv roundup was.”

Twitter’s removal of the #UnBonJuif tweets forces the Hollande government into a difficult position. Last spring, former President Nicolas Sarkozy made it illegal to frequent Web sites filled with hate speech. But so long as they tweet in a cloud governed by American law, French Twitter users are—or have been—protected. In the months since October, tweeters have developed a series of offensive hashtags, including #SiMaFilleRamèneUnNoir (“if my daughter brought home a black”), #SiMonFilsEstGay (“if my son is gay”), #UnBonMusulman (“a good Muslim”), and #UnBonNoir (“a good black”). In the first week of January, #SiJetaisNazi (“if I were a Nazi”) was one of the highest-ranked trending topics in the country.

(Incidentally, the same week, France’s official General Commission of Terminology and Neologism announced its decision to bar the Anglicism “hashtag” from the language in favor of “mot-dièse,” or “sharp word”—another difference in speech tactics.)

Four prominent anti-racism organizations in France joined the Union of French Jewish Students in its legal case, arguing that these hashtags violate French laws banning hate speech. The president of the student group, Jonathan Hayoun, said, “Because it does not take the necessary measures to identify where the tweets come from, Twitter is offering a platform to racism and anti-Semitism.”

And so Twitter finds itself with the ball, trying to dribble through diverging laws around the world, to kick away historical demons, and to hold onto its philosophical ideals—total, protected freedom of expression—as it holds onto its users and advertisers. If the company chooses not to comply with the French court’s decision, and the analogous ones that will surely follow, Twitter will have allowed millions of non-Americans who use the Web to benefit from America’s values of free speech—so quietly that it is almost secret.

Illustration by Jordan Awan