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Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Seeking To Lift Twitter Ban (cnbc.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the quiet-place dept.
A judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by former President Donald Trump seeking to lift his ban from Twitter. But San Francisco federal district court Judge James Donato left the door open for Trump and other plaintiffs to file an amended complaint against Twitter that is consistent with his written decision Friday to toss the lawsuit in its entirety. CNBC reports: The social media giant had banned Trump on Jan. 8, 2021, citing the risk of the incitement of further violence on the heels of the Capitol riot by a mob of supporters of the then-president two days earlier. Trump, the American Conservative Union, and five individuals had sued Twitter and its co-founder Jack Dorsey last year on behalf of themselves and a class of other Twitter users who had been booted from the app. [...] His suit alleged that Twitter violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights to free speech, arguing that the bans were due to pressure on the company by Democratic members of Congress.

But in his 17-page ruling, Donato wrote that Trump and the other plaintiffs "are not starting from a position of strength" with their First Amendment claim. The judge noted, citing federal case law, that, "Twitter is a private company, and "the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.'" Donato rejected the notion that Twitter's ban of Trump and the others was attributable to the government's actions, which would be the only way to uphold the claim of a violation of the First Amendment. "Overall, the amended complaint does not plausibly allege that Twitter acted as a government entity when it closed plaintiffs' accounts," Donato wrote.

The suit also asked the judge to rule that the federal Communications Decency Act was unconstitutional. The CDA says online service providers such as Twitter cannot be held responsible for content posted by others. Donato dismissed that claim after finding that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge the CDA. The judge said the only way they could have such standing was to show that Twitter "would not have de-platformed the plaintiff" or others but for the legal immunity conferred by the CDA when it came to content. [...] Shortly after Twitter announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk, Trump told Fox News that he is "not going back to Twitter," adding: "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth."
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Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Seeking To Lift Twitter Ban More

Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Seeking To Lift Twitter Ban

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  • Twitter is fucked anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @06:30PM (#62510800)

    Trump is Emperor Palpatine, we knew that. But what is surprising is that Elon Musk is transforming from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. He’s forgotten how carbon credits, which were a gift from the left, got Tesla out of its darkest days. As did bailout money (which he paid back, but doesn’t change the fact he was given the money at the time he thought he needed it.) Nowadays he is so far gone to the right that he even seemingly pandered to climate change skeptics. He went from proclaiming himself a socialist as recently as 2016 to being a full-on right-wing extremist in 2022. Heck as recently as last year he even said he doesn’t want Trump back. But now he is in full right-wing appeasement mode. He claims he is center but if so, why isn’t he saying or doing things that anger the right wing? He is also displaying signs of paranoia common with right-wing nuts. I mean The Onion made one joke about him and he permanent-cancelled them. If this were truly about free speech, that would be cool. But realistically we know that right-wingers are the kings of censorship. I mean whenever I post comments on right winger websites like Alex Jones .. I get banned pretty quickly. Meanwhile he leaves whacko Sandy Hook denial comments on there saying he doesn't want to censor free speech, That's how Republicans operate. They want their own free speech, God forbid you try to counterpoint any of their misinformation. They claim counterpoints to their lies as "censorship" and remove those.They opposed net-neutrality, but wanted twitter declared an essential service and taken over. Meanwhile healthcare, food, and housing are not essential to those fuckers.

    • As did bailout money (which he paid back, but doesn’t change the fact he was given the money at the time he thought he needed it.)

      Or, to be more precise, bailout money he *accepted* -- he could have declined.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      > He claims he is center but if so, why isnâ(TM)t he saying or doing things that anger the right wing?

      A popular claim is that he's trying to rope-a-dope the right wing, given his past rhetoric. Maybe he swallowed a whole bottle of red pills, who knows, but he's also basically destroying both Gettr and Truth Social right now.

      But, regardless, if he demonstrates a true adherence to free speech and also holds right-wing positions, do you still have to make him your enemy because he's no longer a Social

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msk ( 6205 )

      Trump is Emperor Palpatine, we knew that.

      You give TFG too much credit.

      Palpatine makes TFG look like a Pakled.

    • He was always in it for himself (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:43PM (#62510906)
      At no time was he a socialist. His parents owned apartheid mines for Christ's sake. Look up pocket full of rubies sometime. Contrary to popular belief he wasn't abandoned by his parents. The point being he grew up privileged and when that's your life you tend to grow up expecting the world exists for you and only you. Everything else you said was a smoke screen while he was establishing his persona. Rich folk do it all the time you think we'd have figured it out have to watching the old CEO of Microsoft do it. I can't be the only one who remembers when he bought up all those old books that were not flattering.

    • Re:Twitter is fucked anyway. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:53PM (#62510930)

      Trump is Emperor Palpatine, we knew that. But what is surprising is that Elon Musk is transforming from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader.

      Aside from the fact that Musk is orders of magnitude more competent (and ethical) there's actually some overlap.

      They're both billionaires who love attention and are fascinated (and intimidated) by the mythology that's been built around them.

      This leads to a bit of a pattern where they find the community that most adores them, and then their beliefs start reforming to match that community.

      Trump used to be a lot more liberal as he tried to fit in with the NYC elites, but then he found his actual base in the reactionary wing of the GOP and now that's pretty much who he is.

      Musk has found the centre-right technocratic libertarian crowd. I don't think that leads him towards becoming anti gay rights or anti abortion, but he's likely to get deeper into some of the intellectual dark web stuff.

      • Re:Twitter is fucked anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @10:18PM (#62511200)

        Recently (a day or two ago) Elon Musk agreed with one of his followers that people clicking "like" versus the number of people placing negative comments was proof that more people agreed with him. He agreed with that logic without considering that there is no dislike button and most people aren't going to go through the hassle of typing a negative comment especially when it is already said. And that's without even accounting for follower bias. Now I assume Elon is a smart person, but clearly he has a some sort of logic wall when it comes to things that might be critical of him personally. He can't handle any sort of personal attack whatsoever.

      • Re:Twitter is fucked anyway. (Score:5, Informative)

        by gtall ( 79522 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @03:16AM (#62511434)

        The only "evidence" that the former alleged president is a billionaire is his say so. He claimed before the 2016 election that he was worth $10 billion and didn't need to be beholden to outside money. Then he went on to scoop up as much outside money as he could. He's a born liar.

        • Re:Twitter is fucked anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @06:18PM (#62512774)
          Even if he wasn't a billionaire before the presidency, he sure as fuck is now. He's grifted a fortune from his dumbshit followers and there were all sorts of scams to peddle influence and steal taxpayer money during his administration. Remember when they were hijacking PPE orders and handing them over to well connected companies with zero experience to auction back to the states at a profit? All that Saudi money flowing to Kushner? Beavis and Butthead's adventures in India? And you know he immediately fired the auditor for covid funds to set up the biggest theft of taxpayer money in history.

    • It seems Trump may be trying to take credit for Elon Musk taking over Twitter.

      https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]

      And this lawsuit is kind of stupid, when Trump supposedly claimed that he will never return to Twitter, even if unbanned.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • You know (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @06:45PM (#62510816)

    Those attorneys are going to get stiffed with the legal fees.

    • If they were expecting to be paid they would have gotten the money up front. But the orange one is the next president and they might be willing to work for free in exchange for access to a ex-president. Especially one that might get another shot at the White House. One whose is intensely corrupt as Mr Orange

      • Re:You know (Score:5, Insightful)

        by oblom ( 105 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @09:16AM (#62511786) Homepage

        Correct. By now anybody with a lick of common sense understands that Trump is a psychopathic conman and would avoid dealing with him. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, there's always somebody who'll believe the promises of a bright future.

  • As long as you stay on truth you gain no credibility ( not that you had any to start with ) no visibility but to your boot lickers and certainly won't be there to embarass yourself publically lying again and come up with your grotesque theories that are debunked daily ( see today's ny times for more debunking ) and really .. do nothing for you overall. Not on twitter ? Thank goodness :) Stay where you are. Im just glad all the lawsuits you launch always end in a lloss for you. At some point .. loosing so m

  • Technocracy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jlanzobr ( 9755720 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:17PM (#62510858)
    Social media companies sway public opinion and know more about citizens than their governments do. As said companies can afford to buy so many votes and the ties between them and government become more and more incestuous, the First Amendment becomes more and more irrelevant and the overall speech of the society becomes less and less free. People of the future won't even know what free speech was, when everything is written in corporate newspeak and run through HR/PR ministries of truth.

    • Re:Technocracy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by thaylin ( 555395 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:51PM (#62510922)

      We are living in a time with more speech options than ever, never in the us history has the country worked as you wish

    • Dominance of those corporations isn't a threat to freedom of speech. More like it bypasses the need to infringe upon freedom of speech to shape people's worldview. And would you want to let people like Elon Musk to shape humanity's worldview? Then nobody will be able to stop him if he'll do stunts like calling people "pedos" for silly reasons.

    • Re:Technocracy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @07:21AM (#62511650)

      Social media companies sway public opinion and know more about citizens than their governments do. As said companies can afford to buy so many votes and the ties between them and government become more and more incestuous, the First Amendment becomes more and more irrelevant and the overall speech of the society becomes less and less free. People of the future won't even know what free speech was, when everything is written in corporate newspeak and run through HR/PR ministries of truth.

      If only people had free speech like back in the days where the only mechanism you had to spread your speech was to convince the owner of a Newspaper, Book Publisher, Radio, or Television station to spread it!

      The actual freedom to say whatever you want has never been impaired.

      What's changed is the access to publishing.

      A few decades ago simply getting your words published to a local audience was a difficult undertaking. Now, getting your worlds published around the globe is so trivial from a technical perspective that people are publishing ordinary speech.

      This has lead people to confusing the freedom to say whatever you want with the ability to have someone publish whatever you say.

      Those are actually very different things. In 1980 if I thought Bob was a jerk I could tell whomever I wanted, but I'd be unlikely to get a Newspaper or Television station to publish those thoughts.

      Honestly our society is still learning how to deal with this vast expansion in publishing. Some of the outcomes have been quite good, #metoo and #blm are pretty clearly a result of voices that would never have been published in a previous era because the targets of #metoo particularly were often the people who owned the publishers. The expansion of publishing has also lead to wider adoptions of conspiracy theories like qanon and it seems to enable populists and extremists.

      I don't know how society will eventually come to terms with the new tech, but we're dealing with something very different than simple "free speech".

    • Americans are doomed because their god is mammon. They will never regulate the private sector enough to curb it's powers from overtaking the branches of government. The whole concept of separation of powers is LOST on these generations as they think it only applies to branches of government - if they even think about that anymore (with the exec branch grossly overpowered.)

      Oh, and hypocrisy is practically a virtue.

    • People of the future won't even know what free speech was

      I hope so. They may hang their heads in shame when we thought "free speech" was defence of outright lies, dangerous misinformation which gets people killed, and verbal assault on others.

      I for one look forward to that future where Free Speech actually means "freedom to express one's ideas" rather than the current definition of "I should be allowed to act like a fuckwit with impunity"

      Hint: Twitter, Facebook, et al do not ban left vs right views, so there's no need to worry about them "buying" votes though vio

  • > "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth."

    He's going back, isn't he?

  • Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Archangel_Azazel ( 707030 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:55PM (#62510934) Homepage Journal

    Republicans: DON'T YOU DARE FORCE A PRIVATE COMPANY TO DO WHAT YOU WANT, BIG BAD GOVERNMENT!!!

    Also Republicans: HEY GOVERNMENT, FORCE THIS PRIVATE COMPANY TO DO WHAT I WANT THEM TO!!!

    Idiots, charlatans, cons, and frauds. Hmm? No, I don't mean just Republicans....I'm referring to the entire political class at this point. They're just an extension of the will of the rich and it's so god damned obvious that it hurts.

  • Doesn't matter (Score:3)

    by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Friday May 06, 2022 @09:47PM (#62511156)
    Musk will probably lift the ban

    • I don't know did you see what Trump said about Musk? He called him "a good man". That's a pretty bad insult. Musk has come out against people for far less; something as simple as talking negatively about his cars. What do he would do when someone compares him to ruthless dictators, paedophiles, and right-wing terrorists?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Musk will probably lift the ban

      I hope he does... and Trump rage quits because very few people will follow him.

      People weren't following Trump before, they were following the flaming train wreck that he was in the middle of. Now that train wreck is a just a bunch of middle aged council workers leaning on shovels around a damp ash pile, no-one cares.

      Trump's had 3 abortive attempts at making his own social networks, not to mention non-Trump attempts at a right-wing social paradise like Parler... None of them had any measure of success.

  • That dude is a total loser.
  • And that's why you don't want to nationalize Twitter and Facebook. The First Amendment *would* apply in that case, and Trump would have a valid legal attack.

    • Mod parent up. This guy gets it. As technologists, we of all people should understand the importance of separation of concern.

  • "Donato rejected the notion that Twitter's ban of Trump and the others was attributable to the government's actions, which would be the only way to uphold the claim of a violation of the First Amendment."

    Why this statement would be true is not immediately obvious. Twitter is a private company, they aren't the government, so how could they violate someone's first amendment rights?

    The answer is when the government coerces the intermediary (Twitter) to censor them. In that case, the government is commandeering

  • The Legal Questions are Clear (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cyryathorn ( 6591 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @07:02AM (#62511634) Homepage

    In spite of all the heat generated online, all the relevant legal questions are clear cut and resolve solidly in Twitter's favor -- Twitter is not a state actor; it has the First Amendment right to disassociate with users by removing their accounts; and users have no recourse to the courts if Twitter fails to apply their TOS consistently. (And none of those things change whether Section 230 is repealed or remains in force.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xalqor ( 6762950 )

      And they were clear to many people before this silly lawsuit.

      The sad thing is the dismissal here changes nothing -- people whose accounts are suspended for violating the TOS on any platform will continue to complain they are being censored for having an opinion instead of the way they're behaving with that opinion.

  • I wonder where the Cheeto-man got that idea?

  • Is Trump's lawyer really so dumb that he thinks that the First Amendment applies to a private company such as Twitter, or does he know it's dumb but doesn't care because he still gets paid? I mean, I've seen his previous lawyers that called smart.

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