Trump has filed a lawsuit to have his Twitter account restored
Trump has filed a lawsuit to have his Twitter account restored
Twitter has been ordered to reinstate the former president, according to the lawsuit, which claims the platform's ban violates both the First Amendment and Florida's new social media law. Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida seeking to have the platform ordered to reinstate him.
According to a complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida late Friday, Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction against Twitter's ban on him from using the social media platform. "Twitter has been coerced by members of the United States Congress," the former president claims, claiming that the social media platform is "a major avenue of public discourse." He describes Twitter as "a major avenue of public discourse." Trump is attempting to have his Twitter account temporarily reinstated while he continues his efforts to have his account permanently reinstated.
"Twitter wields an unprecedented level of power and control over political discourse in this country," according to the complaint. "This is a level of power and control that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate." In addition to announcing policy and personnel decisions (often to the surprise of the agencies and people involved), the former president used his @RealDonaldTrump account to criticize political opponents and spread misinformation about election results.
Pro-Trump supporters staged a deadly riot at the Capitol building on January 6th, seeking to prevent Joe Biden's nomination for president of the United States in the 2020 presidential election. Twitter permanently banned @RealDonaldTrump two days later, on January 7. A 12-hour ban was initially placed on the former president's account after he posted tweets repeating lies about the election being stolen. Twitter later lifted the ban after finding "repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy." The platform made the ban permanent two days after it was initially implemented. Following the riots on January 6th, other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube, also banned the former president from their platforms. The decision of Facebook's Oversight Board was later upheld by the social media platform.
When it was banned, the @REALDONALDTRUMP TWITTER ACCOUNT had more than 88 MILLION FOLLOWERS at the time of the ban.
Specifically, Trump argues in the Friday filing that his Twitter account "became an important source of news and information about government affairs and served as a digital town hall," where the former president shared his opinions and ideas. At the time of the ban, Trump had 88 million followers on the social media platform Twitter. Trump claims that Twitter also censored him during his presidency by labeling some of his tweets as "misleading information," which the platform claimed violated its rules against "glorifying violence." Twitter has denied this claim.
Trump's complaint also makes reference to Florida's new social media law, which prohibits social media companies from "knowingly" deplatforming politicians and requires the platforms to apply "censorship, deplatforming, and shadow banning standards in a consistent manner," according to the complaint. Trump claims that Twitter has failed to enforce its policies in a consistent fashion. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the legislation in May, but a federal judge blocked it from taking effect until after the election. That decision is being challenged by DeSantis' administration.
As part of this, the former president claimed that Twitter applied its COVID-19 posting rules inconsistently, "in order to appease government actors who generally supported protests in the summer of 2020," but "strongly opposed" the events of January 6. Trump claims that the media falsely reported that the January 6th riot was a source of COVID-19 infection, but that this was not the case during the summer protests. There was no increase in COVID-19 cases in cities where large protests took place in the summer of 2020, according to data from a number of reports, which noted that outdoor masking at the protests may have played a role in keeping cases down.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
