Wednesday, July 07, 2021

The Tech Firms should sue Trump for harassment.

I thought the Supreme Court already ruled in the Tech Firms favor. There is a "tone" of the leadership of Alphabet, Inc. and it has always been one of benevolence to society. I would expect their continuing companies would move in that same direction.

April 5, 2021
By Amy Howe

Just under three months (click here) after former President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, the Supreme Court put an end to a legal battle over Trump’s personal Twitter account, throwing out a lower-court ruling against the former president and instructing that court to dismiss the case on the ground that it is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy.

The lawsuit was filed in July 2017 by the Knight First Amendment Institute and seven individuals whom Trump had blocked on Twitter after they criticized the president or his policies. The plaintiffs alleged that blocking them on Twitter violated the First Amendment, and the district court agreed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld that ruling.

Represented by former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, the federal government’s top lawyer in the Supreme Court during the end of the Trump administration, Trump asked the justices to weigh in last summer. Wall contended that the 2nd Circuit’s decision disregarded “the critical distinction between the President’s (sometimes) official statements on Twitter and his always personal decision to block” the plaintiffs from seeing and responding to his tweets. The lower court’s ruling, he wrote, would limit the ability of public officials to “insulate their social-media accounts from harassment, trolling, or hate speech without invasive judicial oversight.” Particularly when it comes to the president, Wall concluded, the Supreme Court should have the final word on “where to draw the line between the President’s personal decisions and official conduct.”...

As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “(click here) Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have....

Trump continues to rob the American people of their sanity by staying in the news. Enough of this mess the media easily could have created to trap Americans into higher ratings. Our country needs to heal from a president that wanted to destroy the USA Constitution for his own wealth and comfort. No more!

July 7, 2021
By Kevin Breuninger

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday (click here) he is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as their respective CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai.

Trump, who has a history of threatening legal action but not always following through, made the announcement at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, at 11 a.m. ET alongside two leaders from America First Policy Institute, the pro-Trump nonprofit group that is supporting the lawsuits.

The three related lawsuits, filed in federal court in Florida, allege the tech giants have violated plaintiffs’ First Amendments rights.

The lawsuits were unveiled just over a month after Facebook decided to uphold Trump’s ban from using the platform until at least January 2023. Twitter, Trump’s preferred social media outlet throughout his one term in office, permanently banned him on the heels of the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters....

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