A small Dutch town has sued Twitter to ask the giant to remove all messages about an alleged Satan-worshipping pedophile network that operated in the town in the 1980s, Reuters reports.
Bodegraven-Reuwijk, a town of around 35,000 in the central Netherlands, has been at the center of conspiracy theories on social media since 2020, when three men began spreading rumors of child abuse and murder, which they said had taken place in the town in the 1980s.
The lead author of stories about Satan-worshipping pedophiles said he witnessed gang violence in Bodegraven as a child.
The rumors spread by the three men caused much excitement in Bodegraven, as dozens of Dutch people who believed the information collected in the town cemetery laid flowers and wrote messages on the graves of dead children they claimed were victims of a satanic circle.
The men were forced to remove the content from Twitter
The Twitter giant’s lawyer, Jens van den Brink, declined to comment ahead of Friday’s hearing at the District Court in The Hague.
Last year, the same court ordered the men to immediately delete all of their tweets, threats and other online content related to the story and to ensure that none of it ever appears again.
But despite their beliefs, rumors about Bodegraven are still circulating on social media as other people continue to share them, prompting local authorities to even alert Twitter.
“If the conspiracy theorists do not remove their messages, then the platforms involved must act,” Bodegraven city attorney Sees van de Zanden was quoted as saying by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
The men who started the rumors are in prison for other crimes
Van de Zanden said the small town asked Twitter in July to find and remove all posts related to Bodegraven’s story, not just those posted by the three convicts, but he has yet to hear back from American.
The men behind the Bodegraven story are currently in prison after being convicted in other trials of inciting and threatening to kill several people, including Prime Minister Mark Rutte and former Health Minister Hugo de Jonge.
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Source: Hot News RO
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