Trump Challenges Big Tech on Free Speech Grounds

Trump Challenges Big Tech on Free Speech Grounds

Former President Donald Trump is taking legal action against Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube after he was banned from each platform following the January 6 Capitol riots. Trump announced that he’s filing class-action lawsuits against each platform and their respective CEOs, arguing that he was wrongfully censored on these social networks.

Trump Is Suing Big Tech for Alleged Censorship

At a press conference in New Jersey, Trump told his audience that he’s suing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for allegedly infringing on his right to free speech. Trump’s filing seeks punitive damages, as well as the reinstatement of his accounts on each social network.

“Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s completely un-American,” Trump stated at the press conference. “It will be a pivotal battle in the history of the First Amendment.”

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act cites that social networks have the right to remove content that’s seen as “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,” as long as the platform does so in “good faith.”

Trump has long criticized big tech for allegedly censoring certain points of view. He even signed an executive order during his presidency (which has since been revoked by President Joe Biden ) to limit the legal protections that this law grants to social networks.

Trump’s war against big tech largely began after his posts were repeatedly removed for violating Twitter and Facebook’s terms of use. The final nail in the coffin was Trump’s eventual ban from the mainstream social media sphere.

Twitter was the first social platform to ban Trump following the protests at Capitol Hill due to “the risk of further incitement of violence.” Facebook shortly followed suit, and its Oversight Board upheld the platform’s decision to ban Trump until at least January 2023 .

YouTube also suspended Trump in January, and only plans to lift the ban once “the risk of violence has decreased .”

What About Trump’s New Social Network?

To counteract his bans from the most popular social platforms, Trump has created his own: GETTR. GETTR prides itself on “rejecting political censorship and ‘cancel culture,’” which is a policy that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube allegedly don’t have.

But now that Trump has a platform that he’ll never be banned from, it’s surprising that his lawsuit seeks to restore his Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. Would Trump really want to make a return to the sites that supposedly wronged him?

Image Credit: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/Wikimedia Commons