Enlarge / A mob of Trump supporters stormed and breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump’s incitement of the mob led to his bans from major social networks. (credit: Getty Images | The Washington Post)
Former President Donald Trump today sued Twitter, Facebook, Google subsidiary YouTube, and their CEOs, claiming that all three companies are guilty of “impermissible censorship” that violates “the First Amendment right to free speech.”
Trump’s lawsuits are almost certainly doomed. The First Amendment does not require private companies to host speech—the Constitutional amendment only imposes limits on how the government can restrict speech. In addition to the First Amendment, US law gives online platforms immunity from lawsuits over how they moderate user-submitted content. The law does so via Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Despite those two titanic legal barriers, Trump’s lawsuits seek reinstatement of his social media accounts along with financial damages from the companies and from their chief executives, namely Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Trump’s lawsuits seek class-action status with him as the lead plaintiff, and they claim the CEOs are liable for damages because they are “personally responsible” for their companies’ “unconstitutional censorship” of Trump and other users.
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