OPINION

Trump’s Lawsuit Is Problematic for Big Tech

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Former President Trump is suing Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube in a series of class-action lawsuits that can decimate the colossal censorship regime of Big Tech.

Trump is the right person to lead this charge in collaboration with America First Policy Institute to restore his constitutional right to free speech while preserving liberty for every American threatened by the relentless strongarm of social media’s cancel culture. 

But Trump faces potential challenges.

First, he is betting that the case can proceed under the jurisdiction of Florida courts which are perceived to be right-leaning in the application of the law rather than California courts, which tend to be ideologically aligned with Silicon Valley.

Another hurdle is section 230 protections given to big tech, which only allows content to be filtered if it’s obscene or lewd, but not if it’s just political content.

However, the tech defendants violated the statute when they waged a censorship revolt against Americans, including the Commander-and-Chief. Even Trump was censored amid the 2020 presidential election and incurred a post-election ban resulting from the January 6th Capitol riot.

Facebook has argued in court that it can censor Laura Loomer under free speech laws in the Constitution, indicating a shift that Facebook may already see itself as a publisher rather than a tech behemoth. The assertion by Facebook means that they have shifted from simply being a content provider to being a publisher. If they are a publisher of content, they lose the protection of section 230.

Trump is known to have a rapid-fire rebuttal handy and is always at his disposal with or without mainstream media coverage.

But, perhaps the greatest counterclaim that corroborates the basis of the class-action lawsuit led by Trump was provided by President Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. From The White House spokesperson's perch, Psaki unambiguously stated that the Biden administration is working with Facebook to limit misinformation and that administration’s relationship with Big Tech shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Well, she is correct, and I applaud her for speaking the truth in such a straightforward manner. She conveyed what many conservatives knew all along, especially those who were unconstitutionally censored or outright banned from social media platforms.

Any reasonable freedom-loving patriot would suspect the Big-Brother overreach of government coupled with Facebook and Twitter’s tracking and tracing and search manipulation by Google will all slowly remove free speech and liberties that were taken for granted.

From my tenure at Google, I know firsthand about the intent of the leadership residing over the global search engine and their intentional efforts to manipulate algorithms to control data used by millions to form opinions. The same is true at Facebook and Twitter concerning its nefarious control of information and usage ban that disproportionally impacts right-leaning views.  

Trump’s legal team will likely argue that government departments are directly censoring speech by following Democrat leaders’ directives who show a “strong preference” for Big Tech censorship of COVID-19 related information or 2020 election audit results that conflict with mainstream media narratives.

For example, any information related to alternative COVID-19 treatment involving hydroxychloroquine was censored but may have led to the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions worldwide who look to the United States for leadership in science.

Also, Big Tech now allows us to freely discuss whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have been engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and escaped for nearly fourteen months; it was unquestionable and flagged as disinformation and false assertions.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas commented in a recent case that Big Tech might have its section 230 privileges revoked by being designated as a common carrier. By re-establishing Big Tech companies as common carriers, such as railroads, telephone, or power companies, the tech conglomerates would have to pivot to service users on their platform without political discrimination.

The recent class-action lawsuits by Trump are a good start. However, those who still believe in the tenets that make our republic the greatest must remain vigilant against Big Tech tyrants who rule with self-anointed power rooted in Silicon Valley’s grip on society and encouraged by Democrat ideologues.

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Zach Vorhies is the coauthor of Google Leaks: A Whistleblower’s Expose of Big Tech Censorship. He is a tech entrepreneur and a freedom-loving American.