Dutch town Bodegraven-Reeuwijk sues Twitter to prevent spread of conspiracy theories claiming it was home to pedophile satanist cult

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Originally published at: Dutch town Bodegraven-Reeuwijk sues Twitter to prevent spread of conspiracy theories claiming it was home to pedophile satanist cult | Boing Boing

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If the suit is effective, and Twitter or the Twit who tweeted face repercussions, maybe that would be better? I mean, Streisand was trying to block knowledge of an actual beach, this is (AFAIK) a completely spurious account that has resulted in death threats, and could easily result in people being hurt. Should a town/person/business’s only response be to tweet back?

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I don’t know what the law is like in the Netherlands, but most countries have some sort of libel law that can be used against someone who is knowingly and maliciously saying untrue and damaging things. That seems appropriate in this situation to use against the tweeters. I’ll argue against holding Twitter itself liable, though. I don’t think that sets a very good precedent (whether or not they’re actually liable is of course a matter of Dutch law).

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Effective at what? “We got a tweet deleted, but now the tweet is a thousand news stories”

The point is that suing was the most effective action possible to spread the conspiracy theory to the largest possible audience. This is surely not what it wanted to accomplish. Before it sued, no-one outside of the Netherlands knew about Bodegraven-Reeuwijk. Now its known worldwide for this.

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They mentioned that there were already dozens of people coming into town based on fake pedophilia/murder claims. If they’re getting tourists before the suit, sounds like it was already famous.

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