Twitter was slapped with a $50 million lawsuit over claims that it failed to comply to a French court's order to disclose the identities of a group of users who posted anti-Semitic messages and hashtags.
France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) and other groups took legal action to combat the users that tweeted offensive jokes and photos along with a hashtag #unbonjuif, which in English means "#AGoodJew."
After a strong backlash Twitter ended up removing the offensive tweets, yet angry protesters demanded that Twitter release the identities of all the users that used the #unbonjuif hashtag, in the hope that they could be prosecuted under France's anti-hate speech laws.
After Twitter failed to respond, the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) filed a summons against Twitter in November 2012, and in January a French court ordered the social media company to provide the identities of the users.
However, Twitter's two weeks still has not complied with the order.
This week, UEJF president Jonathan Hayoun told the AFP the group was taking further legal action because "Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling. They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites."
On the other hand, on Thursday Twitter filed its appeal against the January ruling, a company spokesperson said. In a statement, Twitter defended its actions saying, "We've been in continual discussions with UEJF," Twitter spokesperson Jim Prosser said in a statement. "As this new filing shows, they are sadly more interested in grandstanding than taking the proper international legal path for this data. We filed our appeal yesterday, and would have filed it sooner if not for UEJF's intentional delay in processing the court's decision."
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