A small town in the Netherlands is suing Twitter

Directions Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, a small town of 35,000 inhabitants 1 hour from Amsterdam is lined with little red houses on the banks of the river. This seemingly quiet little town has been the victim of conspiracy theories on Twitter for 2 years.

It all starts in 2020, when a resident of Podgreven declares that he witnessed the murders of children by a satanic cult in the 80s… abused by the men of the town, especially the mayor. He is joined by two conspirators who say more or less the same thing as him. .

Because these fake messages can quickly spread across networks, especially in a Telegram messaging private group that had over 7500 people! All followers of conspiracy theories. As a result, some went straight to Podgrevan Cemetery, where children are said to have been cremated. So they gather there, lay flowers, and pay their respects to victims no one has ever heard of. While filming themselves and posting their videos on the internet to add a part to the machine.

Especially since the three people behind this fake news were punished for their comments, and the rituals have since been stopped. They are currently in jail and must pay $250,000 in restitution to the city. So, if you want to get into a little conspiracy theory, be careful, it could cost you dearly! But above all, the city has asked Twitter to remove all messages related to this satanic theory because it believes the network has not been cleaned up. The municipality of Podgrevan believes that Twitter is not doing its job, so it is suing the US company.

Here we are still on David against Goliath. Largest US company vs. A small provincial town in the Netherlands. At this point, Twitter has chosen not to even respond to the charges initiated by the city. But the news above all shows how outdated Twitter is in its content moderation, something it has been accused of for years. At the same time, it’s laughable when you know that there are less than 2000 moderators in the world for more than 200 million daily users.

Twitter’s former head of security also pointed to the social network’s security flaws, noting that Twitter did not protect its users from hacking and information manipulation. The allegations are denied by the company but the facts prove him wrong. An example is Elon Musk, the 106 million people who wanted to buy Twitter before following him, Tesla’s boss, who was sued for defamation for tweeting that a speleologist was a pedophile… and that’s how angry he was. Was with him! As we see with this tweet from what appears to be an angry teenager, as in the Podgrevan story, the consequences of a single tweet can be devastating.