Former President Donald Trump this week announced class-action lawsuits targeting Facebook, Twitter, and Google over the platforms’ censorship of conservative content – including himself.
“There is no better evidence that Big Tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year,” said Trump on Wednesday. “If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.”
Facebook, Twitter, and Google banned Trump from their platforms in January following the riot at the US Capitol. Twitter’s ban is permanent, while YouTube says it will lift its ban on Trump “when it determines the risk of real-world violence has decreased.”
In June, Facebook executives said their ban on Trump would last for at least two years – meaning he is unable to use the site until after the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump’s lawsuits seek unspecified punitive damages, the reinstatement of his and other plaintiff’s’ accounts, the removal of fact-check labels and other warnings from conservative content, and the declaration of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional.
“While the social media companies are officially private entities, in recent years they have ceased to be private with the enactment and their historical use of Section 230, which profoundly protects them from liability,” argues Trump. “It is in effect a massive government subsidy, these companies have been co-opted, coerced, and weaponized by government actors to become the enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship.”
Trump signed an executive order targeting Section 230 in May 2020, but President Joe Biden revoked it this year.
Big Tech is guilty of censoring countless conservative voices (including this website) while at the same time hiding negative press about liberals. Do you remember last year when Facebook and Twitter blocked users from sharing a New York Post article about Hunter Biden?
More recently, Facebook was found to have suppressed vaccine hesitancy. As I wrote in a previous article (click here), internal documents shared with Project Veritas exposed an algorithm that identifies and demotes comments promoting vaccine hesitantly.
In late May, Facebook lifted a ban on posts suggesting COVID escaped from a lab as new evidence supporting the lab-leak theory emerged. The ban itself represents suppression of free 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,” said Trump. “We will prove that this censorship is unlawful, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s completely un-American.”
Sources:
Trump Announces Class-Action Suits Against Tech Giants Twitter, Facebook, Google
Donald Trump to sue Facebook, Twitter, Google over alleged censorship, says they’ve ‘ceased to be private’
Trump Joins Forces With a Cardi B-Hating Travel Agent to Take Down Big Tech