WASHINGTON – Former United States (US) president Donald Trump yesterday unveiled a suit against Google, Facebook and Twitter, escalating his years-long free speech battle with tech giants, who he argues have wrongfully censored him.
“I am filing, as the lead class representative, a major class-action suit against big tech giants, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as their CEOs, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey – three real nice guys,” announced Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The nation’s top tech firms have become the “enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship”, added the 75-year-old Republican, who was banned from posting on Facebook and Twitter after his repeated false claims of election fraud fuelled the violent siege of the US Capitol January 6 by his supporters.
Trump is being joined in the suit by the America First Policy Institute. They have invited thousands of citizens who have been “deplatformed” from social media sites to sign on.
“We are standing up for American democracy by standing up for free speech rights of every American – Democrat, Republican, independent, whoever it may be,” said Trump.
“This suit is just the beginning.”
Legal experts say the case – which may or may not be deemed a class action, a designation granted by a court and not just declared by a litigant – is unlikely to gain traction.
But Trump’s team and the Republican National Committee were quick to fundraise off of it.
Trump filed the complaints in a US district court in southern Florida, where he is seeking an immediate halt to censorship, blacklisting and what he called the “cancelling” of people who share his political views.
He stressed that he is not looking for any sort of a settlement, saying “we are in a fight that we are going to win”.
The suit comes amid efforts by Congress to curb the powers of big tech.
Last month, the House of Representatives advanced sweeping reforms of antitrust laws aimed at the business practices of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. – AFP, July 8, 2021
