Elon Musk’s Twitter troubles continue, gets sued for failing to curb holocaust deniers, anti-Semitic speech

It seems that being a “free-speech absolutist” is doing Elon Musk no good. The Tesla CEO and Twitter owner is a fresh new lawsuit in Germany over how the platform deals with holocaust deniers and antisemitic hate speech, mainly for failure to remove such content from the platform.

The European Union of Jewish Students and the digital rights group HateAid launched the complaint, claiming the social media platform broke its own guidelines on the publication of antisemitic material.

The group asserts that Twitter received complaints about the allegedly offensive posts but did not remove them. Even one comment apparently tied to Holocaust denial, was allegedly denied to be deleted by the site.

The Holocaust is a very sensitive topic in Germany because of the nation’s past, and denying that the Holocaust never happened, are a serious offence and a crime in the nation. Germany also has severe rules forbidding antisemitic hate speech, making the Berlin court an appealing venue to consider such a claim. 

In an interview with Euronews, Avital Grinberg, the president of the European Union of Jewish Students, called these tweets “hugely upsetting.”

“The tweets are truly disgusting, very scary, and saddening to read. We are not just talking about discriminatory speech. We are talking about hate speech that is illegal by German law,” explained Grinberg.

The case will try to determine whether Twitter is legally obliged to remove such material.

According to Josephine Ballon, head of legal at HateAid, the case is special in that the organisation isn’t just suing Twitter under German law but rather under the terms of service and policies of the site.

“Although Twitter prohibits antisemitic hostilities in its Rules and Policies, the platform leaves a lot of such content online. Even if the platform is alerted about it by users,” the litigants argue. “Current studies prove that 84 per cent of posts containing antisemitic hate speech were not reviewed by social media platforms, as shown in a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. This means that Twitter knows Jews are being publicly attacked on the platform every day and that antisemitism is becoming a normality in our society. And that the platform’s response is by no means adequate,” said a statement issued by the European Union of Jewish Students.

“Every person that sets up a profile on Twitter has a sort of contract with Twitter. But no one is asking why Twitter is not sticking to the rules they gave themselves when it comes to the moderation policies on their platform,” Ballon told Euronews.

Twitter acted on just 11 per cent of antisemitic posts reported, the second lowest rate across major platforms.

If this lawsuit is successful, the organisation hopes it will become easier for users to uphold their digital rights all over the world.

“When we succeed with this case, we will have a meaningful tool to hold Twitter accountable and to increase the pressure on the platforms,” explained Ballon.

“This could enable groups to file lawsuits for their own communities and do this all over the world because the terms of service are the same everywhere.”

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