Giggle at Trump's legal action against Social Media at your own peril...

[WarGamer]

At least ONE SCOTUS JUDGE agrees with him.

This is NOT a joke and has broad consequences.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/04/09/justice-thomas-sends-a-message-on-social-media-regulation/

Justice Thomas is keyed into much of the ferment among conservatives who feel that tech companies are biased against their perspective. They point to the deplatforming of President Trump in January, following the Capitol Hill riot by his supporters, as a paradigmatic case of political discrimination against the conservative point of view.


Note: As always, when I link to Brookings... they're the best. I've been a supporter for years and I highly recommend them as a primary source for political analysis.

[PortTack]

1. Nope! If anything they won't even take the case.

It would open a can of worms and would flood SCOTUS with useless 1st amendment cases they won’t even hear.

[Aristus]

2. Who gives a good goddamn what Thomas thinks?

Just because right-wingers want private corporations to be the state, it doesn't mean the Constitution is going to agree...

[Fullduplexxx]

3. Justices Gorsuch and Thomas call to revisit landmark First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan

(CNN)Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch on Friday said the Supreme Court should revisit the breadth of the landmark First Amendment decision in New York Times v. Sullivan and explore how it applies to social media and technology companies.

That 1964 ruling created a higher bar for public figures to claim libel and has been a bedrock of US media law, but the two conservative justices said it's time to take another look.

"Since 1964," Gorsuch wrote Friday, "our Nation's media landscape has shifted in ways few could have forseen."





https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/02/politics/supreme-court-landmark-libel-case/index.html

[WarGamer]

5. Correct.

And some people laugh...

Once this thing gets into the Court system, there's a "5-4" risk.

Personally I think Barf Kavanaugh is also on this side of the issue.

Scalito most certainly is and HandMaiden very well MAY be.

[ZonkerHarris]

12. Go ahead. It will kill Fox News first.

[Takket]

4. Any case claiming anti-conservative bias

Would have to include a reasoned analysis of who they gave NOT banned. And when drumpf produces his name and a handful of others and twitter says “here are the 5000 elected rethugs we have not banned because they have not violated our rules” the lawsuit is over.

[WarGamer]

6. It's up to the men and women in black robes.

Logic and rational thought need not apply.

[Arazi]

7. It's another grift. If you try to sign onto the class action lawsuit you get to a donation page

Plus #Traitor will never allow himself to he deposed in discovery. He'd have to answer every question about his incitement actions before and during Jan 6th.

He'll never do it

[getagrip_already]

8. maybe, but thomas doesn't want more 1st amendment freedoms....

He wants less. He wants news outlets to be sued by the (rich) subjects of their stories, which will surely lead to censorship and control of broad swaths of the media.

This suit would open up social media to every crazy thought without regard to fact or inciting violence.

They are opposed goals.

[abqtommy]

9. Thanks. I went to your Brookings link and bookmarked it.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

10. I am amused by the idiots who filed this lawsuit

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[ScratchCat]

11. You're missing the point

Neither Donald Trump nor anyone else has a right under the United States Constitution to use Facebook. No court, including the SCOTUS, is going to rule as such. No court is going to hear a suit claiming a private company is a State actor and therefore can't create rules regarding content posted. Donald Trump violated the terms of service of Facebook and Twitter time and time again and was banned for specific actions. Other people have been banned for similar things while 99.9% of users follow the rules and maintain their accounts.

Its not that he "doesn't have a case"; there is no "issue" to begin with.

[WarGamer]

14. I don't think I'm missing anything

As I already said... the content of the suit is irrelevant and YES it's a loser, for sure. BUT.

1) Headlines scream "Trump leads class action lawsuit against media giants"

PR win for Trump.

2) It's not really 1A that Trump is arguing. He's attacking sec 230. Is FB/TWTR a publisher or a content provider? A producer? Just a platform? A clearly sympathetic ear in Justice Thomas:

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,”

In fact, read this:

https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/clarence-thomas-section-230-cda-content-moderation.html

Clarence Thomas Is Begging Someone to Sue Over Conservatives’ Most-Hated Internet Law

Thomas seems to be saying that if your company meets the definition of publisher, it can be held legally liable for any content it ever carries, whether or not it originated the content. That notion flies in the face of what most legal scholars consider to be the First Amendment case protecting publishers, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In Sullivan and in the cases that follow it, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment requires that no publisher should be held responsible for defamatory content without being shown to be at fault—e.g., by publishing falsehoods negligently or with “actual malice.” But the justice is untroubled by the fact that his framing of publisher liability would undo Times v. Sullivan—just last year Thomas let it be known, by concurring in the court’s refusal to hear another case, that he’s ready to dispense with that precedent altogether.

3) Trump wants to get this into the Court system. Filed the suit in the District of S Fla, a friendly locale. Doesn't matter if it's tossed out, he wants to feed it to Thomas and the 5 Cons.

4) TWTR and FB lost BILLIONS of dollars in market cap after the announcement today. Look at the stock graph compared to when Trump was speaking.

If you read a bit more about the issue, you'd better understand it. And it IS a threat.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. Why Trump's 'class-action lawsuit' is so hard to take seriously

I agree with Steve Benen/ This is a fundraising stunt

Link to tweet

Complicating matters just a bit more, there have been related cases along these lines, and they've all failed: private social-media companies are not arms of the government, judges have ruled, and they have the authority to regulate content. Similarly, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from such lawsuits, still exists, Trump's incessant whining about the provision notwithstanding.

So why bother? Why go through the motions with a misguided public-relations stunt, rooted entirely in dubious claims and conspiracy theories that don't make any sense?

There's no great mystery here: "Before Mr. Trump was done speaking, both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee had sent text messages about the lawsuit and asked for contributions. Mr. Trump's political action committee sent its own solicitation shortly after the event ended. 'Donate NOW,' it said."

I don't doubt that many will fall for this. Republican voters who've been conditioned to believe that Twitter and Facebook are big meanies toward conservatives will likely grab their credit cards to show their support for Trump and this pointless exercise.

But that doesn't mean this lawsuit has merit; it means the opposite

[WarGamer]

15. see post 14

the legitimacy of the suit is irrelevant.

[LexVegas]

16. ...

[WarGamer]

17. No discussion? nt