Lawsuit Claims Twitter Failed to Remove Surge in Racist and Hate Speech During Lockdown

According to the plaintiffs, "hate speech has increased by 43% during the lockdown period." A study conducted by these associations, from March 17 to May 5, shows that "the number of racist content increased by 40.5%, that of anti-Semitic content by 20% and that of LGBT-phobic content by 48%." The associations claim to have reported to the social network "1,110 hateful tweets, mainly homophobic, racist or anti-Semitic insults without any ambiguity, and found that only 12% of them had been removed within a reasonable period of 3 to 5 days," reports France bleu.

The associations expect the court to order the appointment of an expert tasked with ascertaining the material and human resources deployed by Twitter "to fight against the dissemination of offenses of apology for crimes against humanity, incitement to racial hatred, hatred towards people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, incitement to sexual and sexist violence, as well as attacks on human dignity."

Regularly accused of hosting or contributing to the dissemination of hateful or violent content, major content platforms have been invited to implement filtering algorithms, reporting procedures and moderation teams. In France, the National Assembly is due to definitively adopt "a controversial bill to combat hate on the internet."

It is a law which, according to France bleu, "must establish the obligation for platforms and search engines to remove illegal content within 24 hours, under penalty of being fined up to 1.25 million euros." The deadline is reduced to one hour for terrorist or child pornography content, the same source specifies.