Social media applications. Photo: Public Domain.

The European Union of Students (EUJS) and a German nonprofit, HateAid, are suing Twitter in Germany to contest the social media platform’s obligation to delete antisemitic tweets and others that promote Holocaust denial.

“Twitter has betrayed our trust. By allowing hateful content to spread, the company fails to protect users, and Jews in particular,” EUJS president Avital Grinberg, who filed the complaint, said on Wednesday. “If Jews are forced out of the virtual space due to antisemitism and digital violence, Jewish life will become invisible in a place that is relevant to society.”

EUJS and Hate Aid argue that Twitter’s own “Hateful Conduct Policy” contains a commitment to “combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance” and that its policies on “Abusive behavior” says that content denying that “mass murder or other mass casualty events took place” is prohibited. Because creating a Twitter account requires users to agree to the these rules, the groups continued, “the company guarantees adherence to these guidelines.”

Additionally, in Germany, publicly denying the Holocaust and distributing Nazi propaganda is illegal, making, they insisted, Twitter’s removal of posts committing those acts imperative.

EUJS added that the suit represents a “landmark case” that will yield a first ever ruling on whether social media companies must abide by the letter of their terms of service agreements, which, it noted, are not legally binding.

“We’ve put control over the public discourse on the internet into the hands of private companies and investors,” Josephine Ballon, Head of Legal at HateAid said. “Twitter assures it won’t tolerate violence on its platform. Users have to be able to rely on that. But in practice, we see the opposite happening: illegal content is at best removed in arbitrary and untransparent ways. This must finally change. Twitter owes us a communication platform where we can move freely and without fear of hatred and agitation.”

Antisemitism on Twitter is far more common than previously acknowledged, a study by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) revealed in September.

ISCA said it found that between 2019 and 2020, over two million tweets about Jews and Israel were antisemitic, with one being posted every twenty seconds in 2020. ISCA noted that such tweets proliferated “despite claims from Twitter that they were cracking down on antisemitism and Holocaust denial.”