Former US president Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against tech titans Google, Twitter and Facebook, as well as their chief executives, alleging censorship of conservative viewpoints, Reuters reported.
This is the latest escalation that follows Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and a two-year suspension from Facebook and Instagram over public safety concerns in the wake of the US Capitol riots, led by his supporters, earlier this year.
The report said that Trump is seeking class-action status for the lawsuits filed in federal court in Miami, which would allow him to sue the tech CEOs on behalf of a larger group of people who he claims have been unfairly silenced.
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He further argued that these suspensions violated the right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, all three California-based social media platforms are private and therefore subject to different rules.
Trump announced in a press conference that he is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit being filed with the Southern District of Florida. The filing seeks immediate restoration of his social media accounts as well as seeks to prevent any similar censorship of his activities in the future. Trump also said he is asking the court to impose "punitive damages" on Google, Twitter and Facebook.
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Trump's legal effort is reportedly supported by the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit created by former Trump officials and is focused on perpetuating Trump's populist policies.
None of the tech companies named have yet responded to the lawsuit. But experts argued that the lawsuit is “meritless” since the principal argument citing the first amendment does not restrict private sector corporations from regulating content on their platforms. They said it’s possible Trump is instead pursuing the suits to garner attention.
And this makes complete sense. Ever since he lost access to his social media accounts, Trump’s popularity in the media has taken a huge toll. According to data from SocialFlow via Axios, clicks to Trump stories fell 81 per cent from January to February, another 56 per cent from February to March and 40 per cent from March to April.
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Trump knows that. A team led by his former spokesman, Jason Miller, launched a Twitter-clone, GETTR, last Sunday billing it as an alternative to Big Tech sites. But the social network has already run into problems as hackers scraped the email addresses of more than 85,000 of its users.
But that’s not the end of it. The social network, which is supposed to appeal to the anti-China Trump lobby, apparently backed by Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire, who is an ally of Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon.