Trump is seeking class action status for the lawsuits,
meaning he would represent the interests of other users of Twitter, Facebook,
and Google's YouTube who allege they have been unfairly silenced. He filed
three lawsuits making similar allegations — one against Facebook and its CEO
Mark Zuckerberg, one against Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey, and one against
Google and its CEO Sundar Pichai.
"We will achieve a historic victory for American
freedom and at the same time, freedom of speech," Trump said at a news
conference at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. A Twitter
representative declined to comment. Representatives of Facebook and Google did
not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump lost his social media megaphone this year after the
companies said he violated their policies against glorifying violence. Hundreds
of his supporters launched a deadly assault on the US Capitol on Jan. 6 after a
Trump speech repeating his false claims that his election defeat was the result
of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts, state election
officials and members of his own administration.
The lawsuits ask a judge to invalidate Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, a law that has been called the backbone of the
internet because it provides websites with protections from liability over
content posted by users. Trump and others who have attacked Section 230 say it
has given big internet companies too much legal protection and allowed them to
escape responsibility for their actions.
"This complaint is hard to even make sense of,"
said Paul Gowder, a professor of law at Northwestern University. Trump sought
to portray the social media companies as subject to the same First Amendment
requirements as government entities when it comes to censorship, but Gowder
said nothing in the lawsuits "even comes close to turning social media
companies into government actors."
A federal judge in Florida last week blocked a recently
enacted state law that was meant to authorize the state to penalize social
media companies when they ban political candidates, with the judge saying the
law likely violated free speech rights.
The lawsuit said the bill signed by Florida's Republican
Governor Ron DeSantis in May was unconstitutional. It would have made Florida
the first state to regulate how social media companies moderate online speech. -Reuters
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