I don't see how he has a case here. I do see how he does this to promote himself though and he'll surely get a lot of free coverage on the news media.

He’s only _announced_ a suit; he can claim victory any number of ways without even filing one. In fact, I don’t know that winning such a suit even theoretically helps him.

Filing a lawsuit is cheap, I expect that he's not going to follow through, he's got the publicity he wants.

Also likely to figure in the lawsuit are emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg that might be used to indicate an untoward pattern of collusion between the government and a private corporation, featuring -- disturbingly enough -- redactions, surely a suspicious indication of potentially damaging future revelations.

In what universe are emails from one of Trump's appointees, in which he forwards Zuckerberg's "cold email" to Donald Trump's communications team evidence of some plot to get him thrown off Facebook and Twitter 8 months later?

Said another way... How could "Collusion between the Government and a private corporation" be supportive of Trump's effort here when he was heading the government that was allegedly doing the colluding.

Ha - George Conway (infamous conservative lawyer) has the same question;

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1412828921242996738

> But what makes this meta-insane is that he’s claiming that the Facebook was a FEDERAL state actor because it was entangled with the FEDERAL government at a time when HE WAS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Of course, every single member of the US government was fully and faithfully implementing the president's policy goals.

The absolute purity of the status of Facebook et al. as private companies, free from any taint of government influence and hence free to suppress speech at corporate will, is looking a mite tattered.

> Of course, every single member of the US government was fully and faithfully implementing the president's policy goals.

Sure, blah blah deep state. Even if Fauci and Zuckerberg teamed up in some grand scheme to ban Trump from Facebook after an election that he lost -- the question remains -- how is that a 1st Amendment issue and not an Executive Branch staffing issue?

Given that we have a Unitary Executive (an argument held strongly by the most conservative jurists in the country) -- if someone in the Executive Branch were colluding to pressure social media companies with the power of the State, legally it was Trump who was colluding. So Trump is suing Facebook for colluding with his own government?

This lawsuit makes no sense on its face, it will be Cable News bait for a few days and then be forgotten, and unfortunately, it further clouds the much more important debate about social media platforms and their rights and responsibilities.

For the record, here's what Pam Bondi said on related issues during the press conference today:

"When you have Mark Zuckerberg and others being called in front of Congress and being coerced and being questioned by all these congressmen, then you also have Mark Zuckerberg emailing with Dr. Fauci about COVID and in fact, a lot of their emails that we received have been redacted, not just because of phone numbers, but because they were trading trade secrets. A private company is communicating with the federal government and parts of that were redacted. They’re not immune anymore. They are not immune anymore. It was coercion, collusion, working together and they cannot hide from the first amendment."

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-press-conf...

I suspect she meant they can't hide "behind" the first amendment.. but otherwise that word salad makes as much sense as the typical Pam Bondi speech.

For the 1 millionth time - the Fauci-Zuckerberg emails not only took place during the Trump administration, and were shared with the White House comms team, but they were also were released under FOIA during the Trump administration. All of these were released in 2020!

His government redacted the emails that he's complaining about being redacted. He's literally suing Facebook for colluding with his government and his attorney is using the redactions that his government performed as evidence of that collusion.

Just an astonishingly incompetent lawsuit and I hope the lawyers who filed it are sanctioned.

Didn't Pam Bondi solicit a bribe from Donald Trump to drop her investigation into Trump University (which was later found to be fraudulent by a court and was ordered dissolved)? What credibility does she have left?

Trump's legal team has taken up the argument put forth by Glenn Greenwald (e.g., his March essay "Congress, in a Five-Hour Hearing, Demands Tech CEOs Censor the Internet Even More Aggressively") that Congress is, in effect, outsourcing its authority to Silicon Valley in the quest of censoring opinions with which they disagree. This imputed Washington - SV nexus will be the fulcrum of the suit.

No, they really haven't. This is a LOLSuit of the worst form. He didn't even file in an appropriate district.

> This imputed Washington - SV nexus will be the fulcrum of the suit.

This doesn't and couldn't exist.

If you want to understand the purpose of the suit, check out the email they sent to his follower list as soon as the press conference was over:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5tKUD9WQAoJ82z?format=jpg&name=...

Just endless grifting.

"This doesn't and couldn't exist"

Rep. Angie Craig (D, MN) questions Mark Zuckerberg in a Congressional hearing: "Facebook allows Rep. Greene's (R, GA) video to remain online. Is that right, yes or no?"

https://youtu.be/vsA4u7i20_0

I'm not sure how this relates to anything.. expand?

The argument from GG is basically that Congress intimidates Big Tech into deplatforming viewpoints that the culturally dominant party (Democrats) disagree with. The OP references Rep Craig asking Zuckerberg if it's "right" to "allow" her republican colleague Rep Greene to post content on Facebook. The implication is that Rep Craig is heavily implying it's not right, and therefore, if Facebook wants to be on the "good side" of Rep Craig (the Democrats), it shouldn't host Rep Greene's content.

It should be fairly obvious why large companies want to be in the good graces of lawmakers. It's reasonable for Sundar Pichai or Mark Zuckerberg to think that angry lawmakers lead to more anti-trust lawsuits than happy lawmakers.

The problem is actually that both sides are angry at Big Tech, but for opposing reasons. The Democrats don't like that Republican content is the most popular on Facebook, and the Republicans don't like that Facebook doesn't deplatform Democrats engaging in the same or worse behavior as any deplatformed Republican.

Both of their concerns are understandable, and stem from the power of "deplatforming" – ever since the deplatforming of Alex Jones, this situation was inevitable. As soon as the platforms set a precedent for what's "bad," they created future obligations for themselves. Because they need to be consistent, right? So if you took down this "bad" thing, why not take down this other "bad" thing? Well, it turns out people have different definitions of "bad," and so that's where most of this vitriol originates.

I appreciate the detailed response but it's an astonishingly silly argument.

Facebook has a 1st amendment right to host whatever content they want.. any desire toward consistency is entirely self-imposed. They could ban every single Democratic politician tomorrow if they wanted and people would be outraged, but the US government rightfully protects private companies from government-compelled speech.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. But it doesn't stop me from understanding both perspectives, each of which at least originates from a logical place (before morphing into political soundbites that must survive in an environment that selects for emotional engagement, not logical coherence).

Personally, I continue to believe that the algorithmic newsfeed is the primary source of these problems. Perhaps that's where we can find some common ground to take a logical first step. I propose that we regulate any Newsfeed with >100m impressions per day, to require and default to a "chronological" sorting order, with any preference expiring after 30 days.

She is exhibit A in Greenwald's essay lambasting Congress for pressuring SV to censor speech they find objectionable.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-in-a-five-hour-hea...

His argument is that congress outsourced its authority to censor? Does Congress even have the authority to censor?

The argument is that congress knows it does not have the authority to censor so instead they brow beat the tech companies into doing it for them in the form of dragging executives before congress and using the bully pulpit.

If you're curious to hear him outline it in his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nil5_AI0fWs

Interestingly to me was him explaining how he picked the lawyers to use. He asked who the best lawyers are, and "they" said it's the tobacco lawyers, so he went with the tobacco lawyers, because "they" say the tobacco lawyers are the best.

He means John Coale, anti-tobacco, anti-Union Carbide lawyer,

https://bijog.com/biography/john-p-coale

If it weren't for tobacco lawyers we'd have warning labels on cigarette packs, no cigarette vending machines, age limits on smoking, we couldn't smoke in bars and there would be a massive publicly funded campaign against smoking. Yes, tobacco lawyers are the best.

I presumed he was talking about these lawyers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598535/

No, you've got the matter backwards. It's John Coale, anti-tobacco litigator.

My mistake, thank you kindly for clarifying. Seems like no matter what side of the tobacco coin you land on, the lawyers in tobacco are quite good.

Relevant and civil discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762145

stop paying attention to this man

Am I crazy, or does this just seem like a Trump fundraiser with extra steps?

The fundraising has begun

https://twitter.com/NYTnickc/status/1412804622591406080

It is. See also “barratry” (common law).

In the end it has no merit. Trumps M.O. is to threaten legal action to get what he wants. Sometimes he follows through. In this case he gets his name in the news, and whips up his supporters. Now he can again claim he went after big tech. The details like merit and results don’t matter.

It's remarkable how effective it was to de-platform Trump. The ring-wing fever in US almost vanished overnight and we have lived in much more peaceful time since he left office and vanished from social media.

Twitter & Facebook should've de-platformed him much earlier but they prioritized engagement, unfortunately.

Is that sarcasm? De-platforming him was the right move (I agree it should have happened earlier) but I don't feel like the right-wing fever has broken at all. The temperature may have lowered, but the sickness is still very much with us.

Not having lived in the US for a while, I can't judge the situation there. But -- to keep with your metaphor -- lowering the temperature in patient zero sure seems to have reduced the chance of further outbreaks across the pond. Before the deplatforming, Trump was omnipresent in the media here and as a result on a pretty good trajectory to get a following in the fringes of Europe. The lack of media attention has been cathartic, at least as far as I can tell (small university town, so probably not the best place to judge that but still).

What's your definition of peaceful? No dissent of your political beliefs?

Because it doesn't seem to be about murder spikes, riots, or organized thefts.

Silencing your opposition doesn't make them go away or make your views right.

Trump was a symptom of an illness that needed to be dealt with. It's analogous to being sick and having a fever. Taking ibuprofen will go a along way to cope with the illness.

I suggest you read up on history - particularly the period between WWI and WWII.

If they can do it to Trump they can do it to anyone for any reason and that means the death of democracy.

A corporation running its own platform in the manner it sees fit is going to lead to the death of democracy? But forcing them to carry speech they don't want to is better for democracy?

The mind boggles at the mental gymnastics some people must go through to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

That's the part I don't understand, you can still go in the streets and protests (well ok maybe we could argue if that's still allowed since it seems people are starting to be against peaceful protests now as well), you can still print paper and distribute it to others on public land, as well as send it to their mailbox. You can still pay for advertising whatever message you want to a lot of private outlets. You can still host your own content and platform anywhere on the internet.

Apart for peaceful protests which I feel there's a weird sentiment that the police or military should intervene to suppress (which I think is the most problematic act against democracy), I don't really see where it is dying otherwise.

Prior to Facebook or Twitter, there were no free platforms. You couldn't even dream to be on television unless you had a lot of money to pay to offer your own TV channel, or pay to be featured.

So I really don't see the argument for Facebook and Twitter and all to somehow have to offer free content hosting and promoting for anyone. Why wouldn't it be at their discretions like it always was for private platforms to do so?

Yes, they ban anyone who violates their TOS. This is not news nor a threat to democracy.

Trump was deplatformed for using Twitter to incite a violent attack on the United States Capitol which aimed to derail the certification of his opponent's victory. While the attack was ongoing, he used Twitter to label the Vice President a traitor, as a gallows was erected before the capitol and people roamed the halls chanting "Hang Mike Pence".

If you're worried about the death of democracy, given the context, it seems strange to focus on the deplatforming.

I was willing to believe that Trump had labeled Pence a traitor on Twitter, but couldn't find the tweet. The nearest one seems to be:

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2021"

That one is hardly friendly to Pence, but stops far short of branding him a "traitor".

Or was there one I missed?

That's the one. You have to remember the rest of the context as well. This is what Trump told the mob before he sent them to the Capitol:

  I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

  States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

  Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.

  They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.

  The radical left knows exactly what they're doing. They're ruthless and it's time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories.

  The Republicans have to get tougher. You're not going to have a Republican Party if you don't get tougher. They want to play so straight. They want to play so, sir, yes, the United States. The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules.

 So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's listening to.

If you're keeping track, Trump's claim is that the election was stolen through fraud, and the only legal remedy at this point is for Mike Pence to reject the certification of the election and to send it back to the states. Trump tells his followers that if Pence does this, then the Presidency will be won, and that that Mike Pence needs to do this because he swore an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution.

A traitor is someone who betrays their country, which is exactly what Trump is charging here. He told his followers that Pence refusing to certify the election is tantamount to breaking his oath to protect the country and Constitution.

Trump tweets this during the insurrection, when he should have been Tweeting to calm things down. His followers got that message in real time and gave them further animus to find Pence. You can see it in the chronological videos NYT and Washington Post stitched together. The implication wasn't lost on them.

Thanks for the detailed reply. As a perennial skeptic and witness to government shenanigans back in the day, I'm keeping a wary, open mind concerning these events.

The emerging Glenn Greenwald perspective on early government knowledge and possible participation merits consideration, IMO.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1412882760675512326

"If you throw racist skinheads out of your bar, you could throw anyone out of your bar for any reason, and that means the death of your bar"

Not everything is a slippery slope.. and thankfully, democracy doesn't depend on Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Don't worry duck, they're not coming for ducks

nah, just your regular old paradox of tolerance; in order to have tolerance you must not tolerate intolerance. Also the way you structured your statement implies that President Trump was de-platformed for no reason, do you believe that?

I find it amusing that Donald Trump hates windmills ("they cause cancer") and "tilting at windmills" is an English idiom which means "attacking imaginary enemies"

Funnily enough, Don Quixote, where that idiom originates from, is about a man living out his delusions.