Twitter France and its director tried criminally in France, a (sad) first

This is a sad first: Twitter France and its director Damien Viel are judged this Tuesday, January 18 at the judicial court of Versailles. The charge is quite heavy since justice accuses Twitter France of having refused to respond to a requisition from the prosecutor, to which is added the “complicity in public insult”. Twitter France risks a fine of 3,750 euros and the note is even more salty for Damien Viel since the painful could climb to 75,000 euros. This maximum amount of fine was also requested by the prosecutor Philippe Toccanier.

Twitter France finds itself before the judges a bit by default. It is in fact the very operation of the moderation of Twitter Inc. and its management of the data which are found in the viewfinder of French justice. The case starts with insults of extreme violence addressed via Twitter to the prefect of Yvelines. The prefect is treated as a Nazi by an anonymous tweeter, who accompanies this sweet qualifier with a “We should hang him at the Liberation, that one”.

Following this major slippage (far from being the first of its kind on Twitter) the Versailles prosecutor’s office opened an investigation and asked Twitter for the data allowing it to find the authors of the offensive and defamatory tweets. Refusal by Twitter Inc., which hides behind the fact that the data in question is stored on servers located in Ireland, and therefore outside French “jurisdiction”. Will the pressure on Twitter France be of any use? Nothing is less certain, Twitter Inc. largely giving the impression of “sacrificing” its French branch in this thorny issue.