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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Trump Sues Tech Giants for Booting Him From Their Sites

The former president claims in several class actions that Facebook, Twitter and Google illegally censored him when they suspended his accounts after the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

(CN) — Claiming he is the victim of unlawful censorship, former President Donald Trump filed four proposed class-action lawsuits in Florida federal court Wednesday against Google, Twitter, Facebook and their CEOs in a bid to challenge the suspension of his social media accounts.

Demanding unspecified damages and the restoration of his accounts, the lawsuits allege that banning or suspending Trump, as well as other named plaintiffs, is a violation of the First Amendment despite the fact the defendants are private companies.

The complaints claim that a law which gives internet companies civil immunity for content moderation decisions “has turned a handful of private behemoth companies into ‘ministries of truth’ and into the arbiters of what information and viewpoints can and cannot be uttered or heard by hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube removed Trump from their platforms following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, citing fears that he would incite further violence.

Both YouTube and Twitter indefinitely suspended the former president but Facebook has announced that Trump will be eligible for reinstatement in January 2023.

The former president announced the lawsuits during a press conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Wednesday morning, calling the litigation filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida “a very beautiful development for our freedom of speech.”

“We’re demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well,” Trump said.

The litigation paints Trump’s deplatforming as a blow to balanced public discourse: “With plaintiff now removed from YouTube and other social media platforms, it has ended balanced, direct public discussions between competing political views on national and local issues.”

Representatives for Google, Facebook and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services under current law. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act allows companies to remove posts that are obscene or violate their terms of services as long as they are acting in “good faith.” The law also generally exempts internet companies from liability for the posts users make on their networks.

Trump and other conservative politicians have railed against Section 230, arguing that Big Tech companies have abused the protection.

The lawsuits filed Wednesday request a declaration that Section 230 is unconstitutional, referring to the law as “a blank check issued to private companies holding unprecedented power over the content of public discourse to censor constitutionally protected speech with impunity, resulting in a grave threat to the freedom of expression and to democracy itself.”

Similar efforts to curb the power of social media companies have failed in court. Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked a Florida law that would have allowed politicians that have been suspended from social media platforms to sue those companies.

The proposed class is represented by lead attorney Matthew Baldwin of Vargas Gonzalez Baldwin Delomboard.

Class members who are named as plaintiffs include the American Conservative Union, which alleges that Twitter “purged” thousands of followers from its @CPAC Twitter account without explanation, and Austen Fletcher, who allegedly had multiple YouTube videos removed for violations of YouTube’s medical misinformation policy, including one discussing the “demonization of hydroxychloroquine," a drug Trump promoted as a Covid-19 cure despite a lack of medical evidence.

Follow Kayla Goggin on Twitter

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Categories / Media, National, Politics, Technology

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