According to the latest news, former Us President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida seeking to force Twitter to reinstate him. He claimed that the platform’s ban violates the First Amendment and Florida’s new social media law. In short, Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction of Twitter’s ban.
Trump argued that Twitter, “coerced by members of the United States Congress” is censoring him, describing the social media platform as “a major avenue of public discourse.” Trump seeks to temporarily reinstate Twitter while he continues his efforts toward permanent reinstatement.
Trump’s complaint states, Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate.” Trump used his @RealDonaldTrump account to announce policy and personnel decisions, criticize political enemies and spread election related misinformation.
Two days after the deadly 6th January riot at the Capitol building, Twitter permanently banned @RealDonaldTrump in January. Initially, Twitter put a 12 hour ban on the former president’s account for “repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy” after he posted tweets repeating lies that the election was stolen. After two days, Twitter made the ban permanent. It is to be noted that other social platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube also banned Trump after the riot.
In the latest filing, Trump argued that his Twitter account “became an important source of news and information about government affairs and was a digital town hall.” Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before getting banned. Trump is also claiming that during his presidency, Twitter labeled some of his tweets as “misleading information”.
Trump’s complaint cites Florida’s new social media law that prohibits social media companies from “knowingly” censoring politicians. As of now, Twitter has not commented on these developments.
