Three lawsuits have been filed by the immediate past U.S. President Donald Trump against social media giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google, alongside their chief executives following his ban from the platforms on grounds of glorified violence meted by his supporters in the U.S. capitol.
According to the lawsuits which were filed in the U.S. District Court in Miami, Trump’s right to the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was unlawfully silenced by the platforms.
Recall that on Jan.6 hundreds of Trump’s supporters carried out a deadly assault in the U.S. Capitol which was triggered by Trump’s speech wherein he affirmed that he lost the election due to widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts, state election officials, and members of his own administration. This action didn’t sit well with the tech companies and was tagged as ‘glorifying violence’ which led to him being kicked out of the platforms.
Trump is pushing a class action for the lawsuits. He will be representing several other individuals who have been unfairly silenced by these platforms. He filed three lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, alongside their CEO’s namely Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai.
The lawsuit’s request is asking that a judge nullifies Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives websites protection from liability over content posted by users. According to Trump, it’s become leverage for social media owners to evade responsibility and for a fact gives them too much legal protection.
“We will achieve a historic victory for American freedom and at the same time, freedom of speech,” Trump said while speaking at a news conference at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Reacting to the lawsuits, Paul Gowder, a professor of law at Northwestern University said that Trump’s complaint is hard to even make sense of. From all indications, Trump intends to use the lawsuits to portray 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.”