District Court In The Hague Rejects Lawsuit By Bodegraven-Reeuwijk Residents To Twitter To Remove Fictitious Content

Bodegraven-Reeuwijk residents lost while suing Twitter. (photo: twitter @gem_BR)

JAKARTA - A court in the Netherlands on Tuesday, October 4, rejected a lawsuit that residents of the town of Bodegraven-Reeuwijk asked Twitter to do more to address posts about unsubstantiated allegations that a satanic pedophile network was active in the city in the 1980s.

The District Court in The Hague concluded the social media giant had "done enough to remove unlawful content about the 'Bodegraven story' from its platform." This refers, among other things, to the permanent suspension of a Twitter account containing defamatory and inflammatory tweets about the story.

The city of about 35,000 people last month took Twitter to court and demanded it remove all messages related to unsubstantiated stories about children being abused and killed in Bodegraven decades ago.

The stories have made Bodegraven the focus of conspiracy theories on social media since 2020. The fictional stories have foreigners flocking to local cemeteries to lay flowers and write messages on the graves of dead children.

The court said it would not order Twitter to remove other tweets relating to the story from other accounts, but asked the company to immediately respond to Bodegraven-Reeuwijk's concrete takedown request.

Twitter argues that it's impossible to create a good filter to find Bodegraven stories that won't affect legal content.

According to a Reuters report, three men accused of inciting Bodegraven's story are currently in prison after being found guilty in another court case of inciting and making death threats to people including Prime Minister Mark Rutte and former health minister Hugo de Jonge.