Last updated on July 9th, 2021 at 08:05 am
Former President Donald Trump will announce class action lawsuits today against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over his social media bans. Trump, who is permanently banned from Twitter and has been suspended from Facebook for at least another two years, had his public platforms by the social media companies in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Since then, he has criticized the bans as censorship, particularly against conservatives.
Trump, who will make the announcement at 11 a.m. today, is supported in his legal challenge by the America First Policy Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing Trumpian policies. He will be joined by the group’s president and CEO and board chair, former Trump officials Linda McMahon and Brooke Rollins.
A report released in February from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights concluded that anti-conservative bias claims are part of a disinformation narrative and not supported by any tangible evidence.
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“The claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it. No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests,†the report stated.
Many Republicans, spurred by Trump, have asserted that social media companies have been unjustly banning conservatives.
In 2018 for example, Trump claimed Twitter is “SHADOW BANNING prominent Republicans†in response to a news story that alleged accounts owned by Republicans were showing up in a general search of the website but not automatically populating when typing their names in the drop-down bar. Twitter later issued a response, attributing the issue to a platform bug.
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
