July 8, 2021 ☼ trump ☼ social-media ☼ stupid ☼ lawsuit
Source: The Washington Post - Link
Former president Donald Trump announced a lawsuit Wednesday against social media companies that have blocked his accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And in doing so, he advanced a rather novel legal argument: that these platforms are not private businesses but in fact state actors, i.e. de facto government entities. One must be a state actor, after all, to be sued for First Amendment violations. Ipso facto, Trump needs the courts to declare social media behemoths such as Facebook state actors.
This claim was immediately and widely derided by legal experts, who suggested that it was more of a PR stunt and a fundraising ploy than anything — arguments that were legitimized by Trump quickly seeking to raise money off it.
Social media companies are private entities. They can make the rules for what they allow as content. It’s simply not a First Amendment issue.