A small town in the Netherlands has taken Twitter to court, demanding that the social media platform remove all messages relating to a conspiracy theory that has plagued it since 2020.
At the time, three men began pushing a blood-chilling narrative, claiming that a ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles was allegedly active in the town in the Eighties.
"If conspiracy theorists don't remove their messages, then the platforms involved need to act," the town of Bodegraven's lawyer, Cees van de Zanden, was quoted as saying by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, ahead of the Friday hearing at The Hague district court.
Pedophiles & ‘Satanic Ring’
The entirely unfounded stories, about the abuse and murder of children that allegedly took place in Bodegraven-Reeuwijk - a town of about 35,000 inhabitants in the middle of the Netherlands - in the Eighties, spawned numerous conspiracy theories on social media.
According to the main instigator of the claims, he had childhood memories of witnessing the abuse by a group of people in Bodegraven, the Dutch newspaper added.
As the conspiracy theory gained impetus on social media, its proponents flocked to the local graveyard. Some would even lay flowers and tributes at the graves of dead children, believing them to be victims of the "satanic ring".
The Hague district court ordered the men to remove all their online content relating to the conspiracy in 2021.
The perpetrators have since been jailed and convicted in other court cases for incitement and making death threats to people ranging from Prime Minister Mark Rutte to former Health Minister Hugo de Jonge. But despite all this, the damning stories about Bodegraven still circulate on social media, prompting the town to take the matter to court.
According to Van de Sanden, in July the town asked Twitter to remove all messages relating to the Bodegraven story, but there has been no answer from the company.