Trump announces lawsuits aimed at social media companies alleging censorship | Hacker News Reader

Trump announces lawsuits aimed at social media companies alleging censorship

washingtonpost.com

22 pointsnataz13 comments

My gut tells me this is a quick cash grab to help support the PACs and the coming trump org legal battles in NY.

You don't need to win the lawsuit, you need news headlines, outrage, and fundraising emails.

"The suits allege that the companies violated Trump’s First Amendment rights in suspending his accounts and argues that Facebook, in particular, no longer should be considered a private company but “a state actor” whose actions are constrained by First Amendment restrictions on government limitations on free speech."

I don't understand how any attorney would be willing to bring such a ludicrous argument in front of the court. It's a massive embarrassment to the profession.

I find it even more dumbfounding that US judges will put up with frivolous nonsense like this without sanctioning the attorneys that brought it to their court.

On twitter, in the lawsuit below, it was basically government censorship, disguised by one step, through a consulting firm working for the government.

U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, Twitter, and others sued for 1st Amendment violations regarding state coordinated banning of Twitter accounts https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/u-s-senator-alex-padill...

I'm interested in your high level of confidence. Not only will Trump lose, but it's embarrassing to lawyers as a whole? That's quite a statement.

Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until evidence and the case in general has been presented before making statements like this?

Personally, the "conspiracy theory" I've heard is that members of the US government were sending messages directly to Twitter's staff requesting censorship of specific posts. It seems reasonable for the courts to get involved if a private entity is censoring on behalf of government agents personally, but I'm not a lawyer.

It's not like there's no history of lawsuits and threats from Trump in the past to provide a baseline. Does he deserve the benefit of the doubt anymore for these?

How many media outlets did he threaten to sue? How many nonsense election lawsuits did he throw out? Trump uses lawsuits and threats of lawsuits as a weapon. Most of them are not even designed to have any hope of winning, that's not what they're for.

It's not worth responding to the accounts attacking my post. Look at their comment history. They're trolls.

Doesn't this make him look bad when the lawsuit goes against him, or is withdrawn?

This will sound extremely elitist/classist, but...the majority of his supporters are probably not familiar enough with constitutional law to understand how embarrassingly disconnected from reality this suit is.

He already lost an election and all the "kraken" lawsuits. When he loses he can just blame it on the corrupt deep state or something.

Never mind.

The 'tweets' displayed there are mostly borderline incomprehensible, and frankly don't really seem to read as Trump tweets most of the time. How is this supposed to be useful?

I think Trump should consider moving to 4chan's /pol/ he would be very welcome there.

So I'm a bit confused why my post is unpopular, is /pol/ unpopular, or is Trump unpopular at /pol/?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com