Associations that accused Twitter of not doing enough against online hate are winning their showdown against the platform. The Court of Cassation on Thursday rejected the appeal of the social network against a decision of the Paris Court of Appeal and therefore requires the platform to detail its means against online hatred.
On January 20, 2022, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed a decision rendered in July 2021 by the judicial court which ordered the social network to detail its mechanisms for moderating and combating hateful and discriminatory comments. At the origin of this procedure, a summons in May 2020 from SOS Racisme and other organizations, which considered that the company was “old and persistent” in breach of its obligations of moderation. Twitter appealed.
Following this decision of the Court of Cassation, the social network at the blue bird will therefore have to communicate “any administrative, contractual, technical or commercial document relating to the material and human resources implemented” to “fight against the dissemination of offenses of ‘apology for crimes against humanity, incitement to racial hatred, hatred against people because of their sex’.
The company governed by Irish law must also detail “the number, location, nationality, language of the persons assigned to the processing of reports from users of the French platform”, “the number of reports”, “the criteria and the number of subsequent withdrawals” as well as “the number of information transmitted to the competent public authorities, in particular to the public prosecutor’s office”.
The associations welcome this decision
“As long as Twitter does not play transparency, it should be considered outlawed”, welcomed the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), SOS Racisme, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra), I accuse, SOS Homophobia and the Mrap (Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples), in a joint press release. “Twitter’s legal maneuvers to avoid providing this information are confirmation of what we see on a daily basis: Twitter refuses to participate in the effort to fight hate, which it actively facilitates the spread of,” said these organizations.
They based their request on the law for confidence in the digital economy (LCEN) of 2004, which requires platforms to “contribute to the fight” against online hatred and in particular to “make public the means they devote to the fight against these illicit activities”.