Trump files class action lawsuit against Big Tech!

Well in my opinion like most things assbook/tawitter was a good idea right up till the sold influence to ads and then politicos Now that's all they push the narrative of the day which again for super rich elites is them controlling everything ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So maybe this lawsuit will expose the blithering Hypocrisy

Facebook looks scared lmfao

Orange man not on Twitter still lol

MB = the fascist DPST's do love their censorship, cancel culture, and AOC re-education camps.


and when they came for me - there was n One to speak for me.

Donald J. Trump: Why I’m Suing Big Tech

If Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can censor me, they can censor you—and believe me, they are.

By Donald J. Trump
July 8, 2021 12:31 pm ET


One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it.

Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media—banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends.

No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence. They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself. Consider content that was censored in the past year. Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true. In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post—America’s oldest newspaper—for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden’s family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute.

Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social-media accounts of the sitting president. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you—and believe me, they are.

Jennifer Horton, a Michigan schoolteacher, was banned from Facebook for sharing an article questioning whether mandatory masks for young children are healthy. Later, when her brother went missing, she was unable to use Facebook to get the word out. Colorado physician Kelly Victory was deplatformed by YouTube after she made a video for her church explaining how to hold services safely. Kiyan Michael of Florida and her husband, Bobby, lost their 21-year-old son in a fatal collision caused by a twice-deported illegal alien. Facebook censored them after they posted on border security and immigration enforcement.

Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists and the Iranian dictator spew threats and hateful lies on these platforms with impunity.

This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country. That is why in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I filed class-action lawsuits to force Big Tech to stop censoring the American people. The suits seek damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts.

Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist.

Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party. As the cases of fellow plaintiffs Ms. Horton, Dr. Victory and the Michael family demonstrate, in practice this amounts to suppression of speech that those in power do not like.

Further, Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms according to the guidance of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Big Tech and traditional media entities formed the Trusted News Initiative, which essentially takes instructions from the CDC about what information they need to “combat.” The tech companies are doing the government’s bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas.

This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can’t use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful and un-American.

Through these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents. I will never stop fighting to defend the constitutional rights and sacred liberties of the American people.

Mr. Trump was the 45th president of the United States.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-...ch-11625761897

Trump Can Win His Case Against Tech Giants

The companies censor on the government’s behalf. There’s ample precedent for calling it state action.

By Vivek Ramaswamy
July 11, 2021 1:42 pm ET


The media has panned Donald Trump’s First Amendment lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: “sure to fail,” “as stupid as you’d think,” “ridiculous.” Mr. Trump’s complaint omits important precedents, facts and claims for relief, but there’s a strong case to be made that social-media censorship violates the Constitution. If his lawyers do better in court than in their initial filing, Mr. Trump can win.

It’s true that the First Amendment ordinarily applies to the government rather than private companies. But the central claim in Mr. Trump’s class-action lawsuit—that the defendants should be treated as state actors and are bound by the First Amendment when they engage in selective political censorship—has precedent to back it up. Their censorship constitutes state action because the government granted them immunity from legal liability, threatened to punish them if they allow disfavored speech, and colluded with them in choosing targets for censorship.

The Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973) that the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” As Jed Rubenfeld and I argued in these pages in January, that’s what Congress did by passing Section 230(c)(2) of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech and immunizes them from state liability if they do so.

The high court has repeatedly held that federal immunity pre-empting state law can transform a private party’s conduct into state action subject to constitutional scrutiny. In Railway Employees’ Department v. Hanson (1956), the justices found state action in union-employer agreements because Congress had passed a statute immunizing such agreements from liability under state law. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association (1989), the court again found state action in a private company’s conduct because federal laws immunized companies from liability if they tested employees for drugs.

Prominent congressional Democrats have also issued severe, explicit and repeated threats to retaliate against social-media giants if they fail to remove “hate speech” and “misinformation” that the government can’t directly censor under the Constitution. These threats have worked.

In an October 2020 hearing, as Mr. Trump’s lawsuits note, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CEOs Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook: “The president has used this microphone to spread vicious falsehoods and apparent attempt to overturn the will of the voters.” In the same hearing, he threatened “a breakup of the tech giants” and “Section 230 reform,” including “possible repeal.” Mr. Zuckerberg has called such regulations an “existential threat” to Facebook. In January both sites banned Mr. Trump.

The Supreme Court held in Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963) that the First Amendment was violated when a private bookstore stopped selling works after officials deemed them “objectionable” and threatened prosecution. In Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that a telephone company was acting as a state agent when it acceded to government threats to stop carrying offensive content on paid dial-in lines.

Even if Messrs. Zuckerberg and Dorsey didn’t fear these government threats, the Second Circuit held in Hammerhead Enterprises v. Brezenoff (1983) that if government officials’ comments “can be reasonably interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request,” that’s enough to constitute state action. The Ninth Circuit has held that it doesn’t matter if the threats were the “real motivating force” behind the private party’s conduct.

A growing body of evidence suggests that social media companies have voluntarily worked with Democratic officials to censor content the latter disfavor. In Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001), the high court held that state action exists if the private party’s conduct results from “significant encouragement, either overt or covert,” or if the private party is a “willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents.”

According to allegations in other pending lawsuits, Twitter formed “trusted partner” relationships with state officials to remove content identified by the officials as election misinformation—when in reality the content was simply critical of state policies.

In September 2020 Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook “works with” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove Covid-related content. The company’s official policy states that it is “advised” by public-health authorities about what Covid content should be blocked. For months, while officials including Anthony Fauci proclaimed that the Wuhan lab-leak theory was “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory,” Facebook blocked any mention of that theory as “misinformation.”

But after Dr. Fauci and the administration retreated from this position, Facebook almost immediately lifted its ban. Recently published email exchanges between Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Fauci reveal no evidence of direct instruction from the government on this point but make a case for Facebook’s willful participation in a joint activity with the government.

Mr. Trump’s lawsuits don’t go as far as they could have in establishing a pattern of willful participation, but their discovery phase will almost surely reveal additional examples. Social-media companies are privately owned, but when they collude with officials to block disfavored content, they are serving as the government’s censorship bureau and must answer to the First Amendment.

Mr. Trump has another path to legal victory even if he loses on the state-action claim. State legislatures, most recently in Florida, have begun to impose nondiscrimination and common-carrier requirements on Big Tech platforms. Opponents say these laws violate the companies’ First Amendment rights. But if so, how could similar nondiscrimination laws have been imposed for decades on telephone companies? Opponents also say these laws are pre-empted by Section 230. But as Justice Clarence Thomas observed in his concurrence in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute, Section 230 is arguably unconstitutional if interpreted to pre-empt state laws against viewpoint discrimination. Mr. Trump failed to assert this claim under Florida law, though he could amend his complaint before trial to do so.

Mr. Trump’s critics are mistaken to think the claims he raises are completely novel. But the case is unprecedented in another way—the staggering scale of Big Tech’s power to restrict speech. No company in U.S. history has so comprehensively silenced elected officials or prevented them from communicating with citizens. Worse, they did so at the behest of, and in careful coordination with, government leaders in the ascendant opposition party as it gained power.

In 1924 Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover warned against the concentration of corporate power in the radio industry: “We cannot allow any single person or group to place themselves in a position where they can censor the material which shall be broadcasted to the public.” Almost a century later, the danger he foretold has been realized. Mr. Trump’s case provides an opportunity to address it.

Mr. Ramaswamy is author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-c...ts-11626025357

The Constitution Can Crack Section 230

Tech companies think the statute allows them to censor with impunity. The law is seldom so simple.

By Philip Hamburger
Jan. 29, 2021 2:00 pm ET


Section numbers of federal statutes rarely stir the soul, but one of them, 230, stirs up much fear, for it has seemed to justify censorship. Relying on it, tech companies including Google and Twitter increasingly pull the plug on disfavored posts, websites and even people. Online moderation can be valuable, but this censorship is different. It harms Americans’ livelihoods, muzzles them in the increasingly electronic public square, distorts political and cultural conversations, influences elections, and limits our freedom to sort out the truth for ourselves.

But does the 1996 Communications Decency Act really justify Big Tech censorship? The key language, Section 230(c)(2), provides: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of . . . any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” The companies take this as a license to censor with impunity.

That understanding is questionable. Law is rarely as clear-cut as a binary switch. To be sure, courts emphasize the breadth of Section 230’s immunity for website operators. But there is little if any federal appellate precedent upholding censorship by the big tech companies. The question therefore comes down to the statute itself. The answers should give pause to the companies and courage to those they’ve censored.

The fundamental problems are constitutional—the first concerning the Commerce Clause. Congress’s authority to enact Section 230 may seem indisputable because the Supreme Court has, since the New Deal, adopted an almost open-ended view of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. Yet congressionally emboldened censorship poses unique questions.

Originally, the Constitution’s broadest protection for free expression lay in Congress’s limited power. James Wilson reassured Americans in 1787—four years before the First Amendment’s ratification—that “a power similar to that which has been granted for the regulation of commerce” was not “granted to regulate literary publications,” and thus “the proposed system possesses no influence whatever upon the press.”

The expansion of the commerce power to include regulation of speech is therefore worrisome. This is not to dispute whether communication and information are “commerce,” but rather to recognize the constitutional reality of lost freedom. The expansion of the commerce power endangers Americans’ liberty to speak and publish.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Section 230 is unconstitutional. But when a statute regulating speech rests on the power to regulate commerce, there are constitutional dangers, and ambiguities in the statute should be read narrowly.

A second constitutional question arises from the First Amendment. The companies brush this aside because they are private and the amendment prohibits only government censorship. Yet one must worry that the government has privatized censorship. If that sounds too dramatic, read Section 230(c)(2) again. It protects tech companies from liability for restricting various material “whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” Congress makes explicit that it is immunizing companies from liability for speech restrictions that would be unconstitutional if lawmakers themselves imposed them.

Seventeenth-century censorship, which the First Amendment clearly prohibited, was also imposed largely through private entities, such as universities and the Stationers’ Company, England’s printers trade guild. Whereas privatized censorship then was often mandatory, the contemporary version is voluntary. But the tech companies are protected for restricting Congress’s list of disfavored materials, and this means that the government still sets the censorship agenda.

Some of the material that can be restricted under Section 230 is clearly protected speech. Consider its enumeration of “objectionable” material. The vagueness of this term would be enough to make the restriction unconstitutional if Congress directly imposed it. That doesn’t mean the companies are violating the First Amendment, but it does suggest that the government, in working through private companies, is abridging the freedom of speech.

This constitutional concern doesn’t extend to ordinary websites that moderate commentary and comments; such controls are their right not only under Section 230 but also probably under the First Amendment. Instead, the danger lies in the statutory protection for massive companies that are akin to common carriers and that function as public forums. The First Amendment protects Americans even in privately owned public forums, such as company towns, and the law ordinarily obliges common carriers to serve all customers on terms that are fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory. Here, however, it is the reverse. Being unable to impose the full breadth of Section 230’s censorship, Congress protects the companies so they can do it.

Some Southern sheriffs, long ago, used to assure Klansmen that they would face no repercussions for suppressing the speech of civil-rights marchers. Under the Constitution, government cannot immunize powerful private parties in the hope that they will voluntarily carry out unconstitutional policy.

Perhaps judges can avoid the constitutional problem, but this will be more difficult if they read Section 230(c)(2) broadly. The tech companies can’t have it both ways. If the statute is constitutional, it can’t be as broad as they claim, and if it is that broad, it can’t be constitutional.

The statute itself also poses problems for Big Tech. The first question is what Section 230(c) means when it protects tech companies from being “held liable” for restricting various sorts of speech. This is widely assumed to mean they can’t be sued. But the word “liable” has two meanings.

In a civil suit, a court must first consider whether the defendant has violated a legal duty or someone else’s right and is therefore legally responsible. If the answer is yes, the court must decide on a remedy, which can include damages, injunctive relief and so forth. The term “held liable” as used in Section 230(c) can fall into either category. Thus, the protection of tech companies from being “held liable” may merely mean they can’t be made to pay damages, not that they can’t be held responsible and subjected to other remedies. The former interpretation seems more plausible, if only because a mere ambiguity seems a weak basis for barring a vast class of plaintiffs from recourse to the courts on a matter as central as their speech.

After protecting tech companies from being held liable, the statute recites: “No cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” This clause, Section 230(e), may seem to vindicate the companies, but it distinguishes between a “cause of action” and “liability” and thereby clarifies the ambiguity. Evidently, when Section 230(c) protects tech companies from being held liable, it does not generally immunize them from causes of action. It merely protects them from “liability” in the sense of damages.

To be sure, when a company is sued for damages, Section 230(e) bars not only the imposition of such liability but also the underlying cause of action. But the statute apparently protects tech companies only from being sued for damages, not for other remedies.

Another question concerns the “material” that the companies can restrict without fear of being sued for damages. Section 230(c) protects them for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material” of various sorts. Even before getting to the enumerated categories of material, it is important to recognize that the statute refers only to “material.” It says nothing about restricting persons or websites.

To be sure, the statute protects the companies for “any action” restricting the relevant material, and if taken literally “any action” could include various nuclear options, such as barring persons and demonetizing or shutting down websites. But the term “any action” can’t be taken to include actions that restrict not only the pertinent material but also other things. ”Any action” has to be focused on such material.

The statute, moreover, requires that such action be taken “in good faith.” At common law, that can mean not acting with the effect of destroying or injuring the rights of others and, more specifically, not acting disproportionately to terminate relations. The statute thus doesn’t protect the companies when they take disproportionate action against material, let alone when they unnecessarily restrict other things, such as websites and persons.

What is in good faith for a website may be different from what is in good faith for a tech company that operates like a common carrier or public forum. But at least for such tech companies, the statute’s focus on “material”—combined with the requirement of “good faith”—stands in the way of any categorical protection for suppressing websites, let alone demonetizing them or barring persons.

What does this mean in practice? Even if a company technically can’t bar some material without taking down the entire website, it at least must give the operators an opportunity to remove the objectionable material before suppressing the website altogether. As for demonetizing sites or barring persons, such actions will rarely if ever be necessary for restricting material.

Such is the statute’s text. If you nonetheless want large common-carrier-like companies to go beyond “good faith” actions against “material,” pause to consider a little history, if only as a reality check about the proportionality of your desires. Even the Inquisition gave heretics formal opportunities to recant. And even the Star Chamber required its private censors to bar offensive material, not authors.

The next question is viewpoint discrimination. Section 230(c) specifies protection for restricting “material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” The companies understand this to include nearly anything to which they object.

But Section 230(c) enumerates only categories of content, not viewpoints. The distinction between content and viewpoint is crucial in free-speech law: Government can’t discriminate against disfavored viewpoints even when regulating unprotected speech such as “fighting words.” It is therefore telling that the list focuses on content. One may protest that “otherwise objectionable” could include objectionable viewpoints. But it is obviously a catchall, and following a list of types of content, it would seem to refer only to additional objectionable content.

The tech companies could argue that the catchall is still ambiguous. But at stake is viewpoint discrimination by vast companies that are akin to common carriers, whose operations function as public forums, and that are carrying out government speech policy. Are we really to believe that a mere ambiguity should be interpreted to mean something so extraordinary?

Section 230’s text offers the tech companies less shelter than they think. It protects them only from damage claims and not at all when they go beyond a constitutional reading of the statute.

The implications are far-reaching. As litigation comes before the courts, they will have to decide the limits of Section 230 and the lawfulness of privatized censorship. In the meantime, some state legislatures will probably adopt civil-rights statutes protecting freedom of speech from the tech companies. Recognizing that such legislation isn’t barred by Section 230, lawmakers in several states are already contemplating it. One way or another, Section 230 does not, and will not, bar remedies for government privatization of censorship.

Mr. Hamburger is a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-con...0-11611946851?

Facebook is, obviously, private enterprise or private property and if it wants to ban all ugly people from posting pictures, it within its rights to do so. And if it wants to ban anything that offends its own moral or political philosophy it can do that as well. Just like if you are wearing a MAGA hat and show up to clean my pool, I will tell you to fuck off. The only reason fakebook, i mean facebook pretends to be fair is pure marketing bullshit, like when Trump says he "knows all the good words" or is the "king of the tax code and knows more than all the CPAs" . Trump files lawsuits because he thinks its intimidating, when actually, it just is another time he always loses. This lawsuit will be dismissed as without merits and will never be heard. Just like all his other lawsuits. If you think otherwise, your MAGA hat is too tight.

Facebook is, obviously, private enterprise or private property and if it wants to ban all ugly people from posting pictures, it within its rights to do so. And if it wants to ban anything that offends its own moral or political philosophy it can do that as well. Just like if you are wearing a MAGA hat and show up to clean my pool, I will tell you to fuck off. The only reason fakebook, i mean facebook pretends to be fair is pure marketing bullshit, like when Trump says he "knows all the good words" or is the "king of the tax code and knows more than all the CPAs" . Trump files lawsuits because he thinks its intimidating, when actually, it just is another time he always loses. This lawsuit will be dismissed as without merits and will never be heard. Just like all his other lawsuits. If you think otherwise, your MAGA hat is too tight. Originally Posted by greenbook

so if ECCIE a private website bans you then you are ok that they have the right to do that? do they have the right to target one type of poster vs. another who might be posting racist support for racist like BLM?


you do not seem to understand the arbitrary nature of big tech's control of what is considered free speech.


and i'll bet you that you will not fire your MAGA hat wearing pool guy because you pay that pool guy so you don't have to go out and clean your pool by yourself. i pay my pool guy and i don't care what hat he shows up wearing as long as he shows up and cleans my pool.


section 230 is NOT free reign to suppress free speech and promote an agenda .. left or right

Facebook is, obviously, private enterprise or private property and if it wants to ban all ugly people from posting pictures, it within its rights to do so. And if it wants to ban anything that offends its own moral or political philosophy it can do that as well. Just like if you are wearing a MAGA hat and show up to clean my pool, I will tell you to fuck off. The only reason fakebook, i mean facebook pretends to be fair is pure marketing bullshit, like when Trump says he "knows all the good words" or is the "king of the tax code and knows more than all the CPAs" . Trump files lawsuits because he thinks its intimidating, when actually, it just is another time he always loses. This lawsuit will be dismissed as without merits and will never be heard. Just like all his other lawsuits. If you think otherwise, your MAGA hat is too tight. Originally Posted by greenbook

you're misunderstanding the purpose of this lawsuit.


bug tech cos are censoring at the behest of 3rd parties, in this case, the govt. and political parties over speech they do not like.


they maybe private, but if they're doing it at govt. request. then that's illegal.

DHS " emergency " detention camps for those who don't comply ( that's the official name not re-education camps)

"so if ECCIE a private website bans you then you are ok that they have the right to do that? do they have the right to target one type of poster vs. another who might be posting racist support for racist like BLM?"

Yes and Yes. As do private forums that promote racist ideologies.

"they maybe private, but if they're doing it at govt. request. then that's illegal."

Not sure if legal or not, but perhaps what should be enacted is legislation prohibiting government interference instead of tinkering with the constitutional rights of the Press.

Private company can discriminate against stupid ideas at their leisure. Don’t like it, use a platform that agrees with your stupid ideas. Conservatives are the whiniest folks in the US.

The question really is who 's running the country Big Corporations or the government . I have no clear answer ?

"I have no clear answer ?"

I'll defer on this one....too easy.

Private company can discriminate against stupid ideas at their leisure. Don’t like it, use a platform that agrees with your stupid ideas. Conservatives are the whiniest folks in the US. Originally Posted by 1blackman1

Thank U - 1b1- for inflammatory attitude and name-calling of fellow human beings.

What would MLK Jr. comment about your post?

Let's debate issues - such as In reality - what the DPST LSM calls 'voter suppression ' - is "Karens' who think they speak for black people as to their ability to get an ID to vote. -Yet and consider the other requirements of an ID - such as driver's license, alcohol purchase, social security iD, medical care ID, and on and on.

Republicans /Conservatives endorse Election Integrity - preserving teh vote for all citizens as One man -One vote . The DPST are desperate to cover their voter fraud crimes with bill such as HR-1 that legalize Voter fraud procedures to the DPST party - thus usurping the right to representative democracy of over 75 million conservatives Voters.

DPST/LSM labels of 'Voter suppression - Are Hypocritical and 'r....t" Lies!



Insulting individuals of a different political point of view as 'stupid' - as substitute for cogent and constructive debate- indicates nothing more than One might well deserve One's own thrown epithet.


Be careful what One asks for

and they came for Me - there was no One to speak for me. ( 1b1 - Please consider that fromYour POV)