By Nick Clayton
It has been a difficult few days for Twitter. After being hailed for its role as a route round censorship in last year's "Arab Spring" the company is now confronting the rigorous anti-hate laws in Europe. These often date back to the aftermath of the Second World War and the determination that racist ideology should never be allowed to take root again.
At the same time as Twitter was complying with requests from German police to freeze an account used by a neo-Nazi group from Hanover, French anti-semitic tweets were trending under one hashtag. The German account was closed down using a feature called "Country Withheld Content" introduced earlier in 2012.
The BBC reports that the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) was planning to get a court order forcing Twitter to remove the offensive tweets, which were in French, but did not necessarily emanate from France. But the company voluntarily offered to remove the offensive messages.
The decision to remove the tweets emerged from a meeting between Twitter's senior management, the UEJF president Jonathan Hayoun and the group's legal representatives. During the meeting the UEJF handed over a list of the posts it wants removed…
The UEJF had scored an "important victory" over Twitter on the issue, Stephane Lilty, the student body's lawyer told AFP. It has also pressed Twitter to reveal the names of those abusing the hashtag. Twitter has yet to issue an official comment about the matter.
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