According to Engadget (via CNBC), San Francisco federal district court Judge James Donato Issued the final verdict on Donald Trump’s return to Twitter. According to the ruling, Twitter’s deactivation of Trump’s account did not violate the First Amendment. In January 2021, after Trump’s supporters raided the Capitol, Twitter decided to suspend Trump’s account. Yet, it hasn’t allowed him to get his account back. After Trump filed a lawsuit, Twitter said the lawsuit was against the company’s First Amendment free speech rights. Twitter said the government “cannot force the private operator of an online platform, such as Twitter, to disseminate speech with which the operator disagrees.” Twitter even asked the federal judge to reject Trump’s lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Trump insisted that Twitter had violated the First Amendment. However, judge Donato says Twitter is a private company, and “the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.”
Section 230 is against Trump and protects Twitter
Trump even challenged Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA). Section 230 says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The judge also rejected this appeal and said Trump is not in a legal position to challenge Section 230. During his presidency, Trump tried to reduce the legal protections that some social platforms use to justify their actions. Elon Musk, one of the main critics of suspending Trump’s account, is now on the verge of buying Twitter. However, Trump has said that he won’t go back to Twitter even if Musk can buy the whole of Twitter. The former president has invested in building a new social platform called Truth Social. He’s supposed to stick with it instead of getting back to Twitter. Truth Social has over 513,000 daily active users.
