Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to get his Twitter account back, after being banned from the platform in January earlier this year. The 75-year-old former US president officially filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida on Friday, October 1st in an attempt to force Twitter to reinstate him, arguing that the ban actually violates the First Amendment, as well as Florida’s new social media law. Wow – we’ve never known anyone to be this obsessed with Twitter!
If you can recall, Trump was banned from the social network just two days after the deadly January 6th riots at the Capitol building which involved pro-Trump supporters protesting Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Twitter initially banned Trump’s account for 12 hours due to the “repeated and severe violations” of the Civic Integrity Policy after he kept tweeting that the election was stolen from him, and then banned him permanently two days later. Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube also banned him following the riots, although Facebook’s Oversight Board later upheld that decision.
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In Friday's court filing, Trump argued that the platform’s ban violates the First Amendment, and then insisted that his Twitter account – which had 88 million followers at the time of the initial ban – "became an important source of news and information about government affairs and was a digital town hall." He also referenced Florida’s new social media law, which essentially prohibits social media platforms from "knowingly" de-platforming politicians, and also requires them to apply "censorship, de-platforming, and shadow banning standards in a consistent manner."
According to Friday's lawsuit, Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction of Twitter’s ban, also arguing that the social networking platform is "coerced by members of the United States Congress" and is therefore censoring him; he then described the social media platform as "a major avenue of public discourse." We can't believe how much time and energy he is devoting to getting back on Twitter!
Do you think he will successfully get his account back? Would you like to see him back on the platform? So many questions!
