Former President Donald Trump announced Wednesday a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google in the Southern District of Florida to “order an immediate halt to social media companies, illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”
The lawsuit in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, a group founded by Trump Administration alumnae Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon, will also demand an “end to the shadow banning,” Trump explained.
“Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s completely un-American,” Trump continued. “Our filing also seeks injunctive relief to allow prompt restitution… because it is destroying our country.”
“You just have to take a look at what happened in recent elections and add up the right numbers,” Trump said about big tech’s censorship in the 2020 election. “Social media has given extraordinary power to a group of big tech giants that are working with government, the mainstream media, and a large segment of a political party, to silence and suppress the views of the American people.”
Trump also pointed to how Facebook censored information concerning the Chinese coronavirus:
Until recently, Facebook had a policy to eliminate all posts sharing evidence that the horrible virus emerged from China. They said, “It didn’t emerge from the Chinese lab.” Remember, I said Wuhan, it was like a bomb went up. “It came from the Wuhan lab.”
“Of course there are body bags outside the lab, nobody ever mentions that. I wonder why?” Trump questioned. “It was finally revealed that this was most likely the truth, that it came from the lab.”
Breitbart News reported previous to the announcement that big tech will likely use Section 230 for their defense and that had “Florida passed a law regulating tech platforms as common carriers in the Sunshine State, then Trump as a Florida resident would be on a much stronger legal footing against the tech giants”:
Tech giants are likely to use Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to argue that they have a right to censor anyone, at any time, for any reason — an argument that courts have in the past accepted.
President Trump attempted a last-minute executive rulemaking change to Section 230 in his final months of office, but then-FCC chairman Ajit Pai killed the effort on the day after January 6, after previously voicing support for it.
Had Florida passed a law regulating tech platforms as common carriers in the Sunshine State, then Trump as a Florida resident would be on a much stronger legal footing against the tech giants. Florida Republicans did not pass such a bill — and the bill they did pass was blocked by a federal judge.
Breitbart News also reported U.S. congressional candidate and Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) has pledged to introduce a bill regulating tech companies like common carriers in a future legislative session.
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