Mango Man-Baby files festering pile of whiny flawsuits against Big Tech CEOs

 Donald Trump's whiny lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google (and their respective CEOs) are absurdly flawed and almost certainly doomed to failure in court. But more than likely that doesn't matter to Trump, because, like most of his stunts, he's using the flawsuits to gain political capital as well as cold hard cash.

Note: I've added content to this post, including new links, since it was originally published on July 7, 2021.
~CC

I had so wanted -- and truly intended -- to stop blogging about TFG, aka The Former Guy, aka #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, but he just keeps doing stupid and potentially dangerous stuff, so once in a while I have to go against my own best intentions. An incorrigible litigant, Trump has just announced that he has filed class-action suits, in U.S. District Court for Florida's southern district, against Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google and its CEO Sundar Pichai. He alleges that they have wrongfully censored him and violated his First Amendment rights. A jury trial has been requested.

At a rambling news conference at his Bedminster, NJ golf course, the former Herr Twitler announced that he is the lead class representative in the flawsuits, which I suppose is a good thing for him, most likely being one of the few times he has ever been at the head of any class. He declared, "We're demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well."

Somebody call the waaaaaahmbulance!

He added that the flawsuits will "go down as the biggest class action ever filed because thousands of people want to join."

The complaints demand that punitive damages be paid to Trump and his fellow plaintiffs -- amount to be determined at trial -- and that all suspended/banned social media accounts be reinstated. Also on the list of [demand-in-one-hand-and-crap-in-the-other-and-see-which-hand-fills-up-first] asks is for the court to toss out Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as "an unconstitutional delegation of authority." Trump's attorneys claim that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are not in fact private tech firms but instead are arms of the federal government, by virtue of having worked with legislators and governmental agencies such as the CDC to create and enforce policies on misinformation.

When I heard about Trump's latest legal stunt my first thought was, "The next step, probably already underway, will be for the Trumpaganda machinery to spew out invitations to get on board the class action train. The invites will go to millions of the gullible and ignoranti who may feel that they, too, have been cruelly wronged by having their hate speech, lies, and wild conspiranoid rants removed by Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube." I figured that the messages would go out via text, email, social media, and any other method available, accompanied by yet another craven attempt to pick the pockets of the marks. The whole scam would be framed as a noble effort to salvage the First Amendment rights of all good Americans -- and indeed to save America -- from the evil intentions of the "radical left" and other enemies. (Shades of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, though on a significantly larger and far more dangerous-to-democracy scale.)

And it looks like I was right about the pickpocket plan. It was a no-brainer, really.

But, as I've noted here several times previously, this is simply not a First Amendment issue. And the Trump attorneys' claim that the Big Tech companies are arms of the federal government don't change that fact. This CNET article, first published in January 2021 and updated in May, explains the basics.

Free speech protection under the First Amendment to the US Constitution applies only to the government censoring speech. It doesn't mean private companies can't decide what types of speech they allow on their platforms. Companies can and do have their own standards and policies that users must follow.

And they can remove users who violate those standards.

"It's a common mistake people make in understanding First Amendment protections," said Clay Calvert, a law professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. "There is no constitutional right to tweet or post on Facebook."

The article also details the reasons Trump and other sources of right-wing toxicity were de-platformed. Most of it had to do with Trump and gang's clear incitement of the deadly Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

I suspect, however, that none of that legal -- and moral -- stuff will stop the snowflakes from whining about their 1A rights being violated. Whining is what they do best, as discussed at length here previously. (See additional Whirled links at the end of this post.)

How likely is Trump to prevail? It seems the chances are not good. According to a Daily Beast piece carried on the Yahoo! News site, constitutional law experts are getting a chuckle from the legal arguments presented in the complaints.

“This lawsuit is a stunt and it’s unlikely to find traction in the courts,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast.

“The argument here that Facebook should be considered a state actor is not at all persuasive. It’s also difficult to square the arguments in the lawsuit with President Trump’s actions in office. The complaint argues that legislators coerced Facebook into censoring speech, but no government actor engaged in this kind of coercion more brazenly than Trump himself.”

Regarding Trump's real agenda, the Daily Beast article continues:

One former Facebook official close to the company described the lawsuits to The Daily Beast as “a desperate fundraising appeal disguised as a lawsuit.” As if to prove the point, Trump’s political action committee swiftly began fundraising after the announcement, sending out a text blast that billed the lawsuits as a fight against censorship.

No big surprise there. 

David Corn at Mother Jones also gets that with Trump, it's all about the grift.

Other than ginning up the Big Lie believers, there is another strong reason for Trump to proceed with this case: money. Lots of money. No sooner had Trump’s lawyers filed when his grift-machine kicked into action. A text message was sent to Trump supporters hitting them up for donations. “President Trump is filing a LAWSUIT against Facebook and Twitter for UNFAIR CENSORSHIP!” it proclaimed. It urged the recipients to send in a donation within “the NEXT HOUR” to qualify for a 500 percent match. (These matches, often ballyhooed in fundraising emails and texts, are basically a con.) And this solicitation promised that donors would end up on a list that “President Trump sees.” Really? Who believes Trump sits there and pores over the names of the folks who send him small donations of five or ten bucks?

But those small devotions add up. A lot. In the months after the November election, Trump collected about $100 million in such contributions. His pitch then was hysterical: I was robbed. He repeatedly pushed the false claim that the election had been stolen from him. And his supporters embraced his propaganda. A recent poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not accept Joe Biden’s victory as legitimate. And from these people Trump sucked up millions. 

And if you want a more detailed perspective about the foundational flaws in these complaints (jurisdiction, to begin with, not to mention ludicrous anachronisms, and typos and misspellings that would embarrass competent attorneys) -- as well as the dubious qualifications of the lawyers filing them -- see this piece by David Badash, reprinted with permission from Alternet and posted on The National Memo. Be sure to follow the Twitter links in the article, because several of the tweets contain screen shots of some of the stupidest parts of the complaints.

You'd think that with all of Trump's money, and that of his fellow plaintiffs, they'd be able to hire some competent lawyers who know how to spell, and that know something about the history of social media (or "social medial," according to the Trump lawyers), the Communications Decency Act (or the "Community Decency Act," according to the Trump lawyers), and so forth, not to mention something about the First Amendment. It's almost as if the legal eagles are deliberately working towards a dismissal. But then again, as noted above, the grift is the whole idea, and between now and the almost inevitable dismissal, the Trump machine will be able to pick a lot of pockets.

Stay tuned...

PS, added July 9, 2021: No takedown of The Donald's stupidity would be complete without the inimitable Aldous J Pennyfarthing, whose July 8 piece on the Daily Kos explores what will most likely happen if Trump and his ace team of attorneys decide to actually go forward with the actions.

You probably saw that Donald Trump has decided to sue Facebook, Twitter, and Google for supposedly violating his First Amendment rights ... by enforcing their own terms of service. As lawsuits go, this one is pretty embarrassing. If lawsuits could walk up stairs with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoes while their flaccid, flaxen shocks of corn husk hair decamped from their helmetless Darth Vader heads, that’s what this cosmic yak shart of a lawsuit would be doing right now.

Unfortunately for Trump, lawsuits trigger depositions, and it’s very unlikely that he’ll want to sit for another one of these—especially since his Twitter and Facebook bans were directly tied to his actions on Jan. 6.

Take the time to watch the clips from Trump's 2015 Trump U. deposition.

Related on this Whirled:

Re right-wing whining...

Although these posts express my own strongly held opinions about issues such as Big Tech and free speech and the First Amendment and right-wing whiners and politics, most of the posts also acknowledge that there are nuances. Most notable among these nuances is the fact that the major social media platforms do in fact exercise enormous power over the public conversation, not to mention their control over users' personal information -- and yes, they have often abused these controls. In other words, I get that there's "another side." But I also believe that those on "the left" have been "victimized" as much as (if not more than) those on the "right."

• May 31, 2021: Right-wing whiners celebrate (unconstitutional) Florida bill against Big Tech "censorship"
  Florida's governor Ron DeSantis proudly signed his name to legislation that would fine Big Tech companies eye-popping amounts of money for "censoring" conservative voices, and made it easier for individual snowflakes to file their own suits. Right-wingnuts cheered the new law, although weeks later a federal judge temporarily blocked it. But DeSantis and his group of brave whiners aren't going to give up.
• November 22, 2019: Triggered: Traitor Tot touts his own Trump-branded whine
  A look at Donnie Trump Junior's book, Triggered, which became a bestseller with the help of some strategic bulk purchasing, and which was so rife with whining that it might as well have been titled, Poor Little Rich Boy. One wag gave it an equally if not more appropriate title, Daddy, Please Love Me.
• March 25, 2019: Trump as Julius Seizer? Health Ranger endorses tyrannical solution to online "censorship" of right-wingers
  Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, alt-health huckster, conspiracy peddler, loyal Trumpist, and fascist-masquerading-as-patriotic-American-freedom-fighter, declared that Trump should just "seize" the domains of Facebook, Twitter, et al. until the Big Tech companies stopped "censoring" conservanoids and started behaving properly.
• March 21, 2019: Red, red whine: Devin Nunes' defamation flawsuit against Twitter, a bogus bovine, et al.
  The whole world got a chuckle out of Nunes' attempts to sue a fake cow on Twitter. This post takes a look at that, and also explores the question of who whines the most these daze: the right or the left? (Spoiler: The right.)
• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
  Manic conspiranoid right-wing rabble-rouser Alex Jones has been one of the loudest voices in the "censorship" wars. He was miffed that he was being "silenced" because of the atrocious claims he made about the Sandy Hook school murders being a hoax. This was one of the first posts where I explored some of the nuances, noting that although the de-platforming of Jones is not a First Amendment issue, and he truly is disgusting, issues around social media are not all black-and-white.
• February 2017: Another tempest in a teapot: Google delists and relists whiny Health Ranger
  This guy is a first-class whiner, but crossed the line when he posted content comparing the "censorship" of contemporary "conservatives" with the stuff that Hitler did. Of course he wasn't the first and will be far from the last "conservative" snowflake to do so.
• May 28, 2016: Facebook "censors" Leonard Coldwell again: somebody call the waaaahmbulance!
  Most of the world hasn't even heard of this former Kevin Trudeau buddy/fake doctor/cancer quack/alt-health fraudster/faux-tivational ranter/conspiracy loon/neo-Nazi/alleged predator, but I've written about him because of his relevance to the usual beat of this blog, and because his lunatic views unfortunately mirror those of an increasing number of folks who are living in a world of "alternative facts." Coldwell has repeatedly been thrown in Facebook jail because of his hate speech, and every time it happens he whines that it's because he is such a sterling repository of "truth" and Facebook just can't handle it.

Re incompetent lawyers filing ludicrous (and ultimately dismissed) flawsuits...

The other reason I have written so much about Coldwell is more personal: he tried for years to silence me and some of my fellow bloggers, most notably, the fab Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. After several years of online defamation and threats and attempts to incite others to act against those who wrote the truth about him, Loony Lenny finally resorted to flawsuits -- which, not surprisingly, flopped.

• September 12, 2015: A dish best served cold (and Salty)
  This one is about the 2015 suit Lenny filed against me, Jason Jones, and a few others --  though clearly I was the primary target. The lawsuit was fundamentally flawed on jurisdictional grounds (filed in the wrong court), not to mention that several of the defendants were not only improperly named, but never properly served. And, like Trump's Big Tech flawsuits, the complaints lacked merit and were rife with typos and grammatical errors. But that didn't stop both Lenny and his lawyers from boasting about them. This post also contains a link to my previous post about the flawsuit. But it actually centers around Part 1 of Jason's summation of the failed action. Spoiler: Suit was voluntarily dropped by plaintiff, four months after being filed, because his own lawyers advised he do so. It was the only competent thing they did during the entire life of the case.
• April 3, 2014: Salty Droid corners Coldwell and kicks him right in his Krautsack
  Prior to the suit against Schmidt, Jones, et al., Coldwell sued Jason Jones, for defamation per se, through an attorney he apparently found on one of those rent-a-lawyer sites (but who was actually a personal injury attorney, not a defamation lawyer). Unfortunately for Coldwell, every one of the blog posts cited in the complaint were actually written by someone else, an Israeli blogger named Omri Shabat. In fact, Omri was also named in the suit -- but as an aka for Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. In other words, Jason got sued for something that someone else wrote! This post also contains the link to Jason's account of the failed suit against him. Spoiler: Three weeks after the suit was filed, the lawyer withdrew as counsel for unspecified "professional reasons" and Coldwell apparently never found a substitute attorney, judging from the fact that the suit was dismissed in court for want of prosecution. In other words, nobody showed up.

From what I've seen so far, it appears that Trump's current batch of lawyers are easily as incompetent as Loony Lenny's were, and the complaints they filed equally as absurd. May they experience the same fate as the "Coldwell files."

* * * * *
July 27, 2021 marks the 15th birthday of Whirled Musings!
If you're so inclined, why not help celebrate WM's Quinceañera?
Now more than ever, your gift is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Right-wing whiners celebrate (unconstitutional) Florida bill against Big Tech "censorship"

 As you've no doubt heard by now, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a Big Tech "censorship" bill into law on May 24, 2021, boasting that it provides, at long last, a defense against Silicon Valley banning conservatives from social media. At least in Florida. From the Orlando Sentinel:

The law would slap daily fines of $100,000 on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon for each statewide political candidate removed from their platforms, and $10,000 a day for other candidates.

Other users must be notified when they’re banned or censored, including when a warning or other notice of false or disputed information is attached to their posts. Users also have the ability to sue companies for violating the law.

A provision of the bill, however, exempts companies that own a theme park, such as Walt Disney Co., which runs Disney+, a streaming service.

Since theme parks are such big business in Florida, the exemption for companies that own them is understandable from a strictly capitalistic perspective, but not from a perspective that has anything to do with free speech or moral principles or any of the other factors that contemporary republicans like to posture about. But even from a capitalistic perspective it's nonsensical in light of the fact that it will probably sabotage efforts by local governments to woo tech firms to Florida. Oops.

Here is a link to a page that provides links to everything you could possibly want to know about the history of Senate Bill 7072 (which apparently began life, appropriately enough, on April Fool's Day). Here's a link to a PDF of the text of the bill.

Over the past few years I've written numerous blog posts about the rantings and ravings of right-wing nuts who whine that they're being censored because of their "conservatism" -- f'rinstance, Scamworld hucksters like cancer quack/right-wing fanatic/predator Leonard Coldwell; lunatic rabble-rousers like Alex Jones or Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams; politicians like California's Devin Nunes, or the bastard children of Scamworld and politix such as Donald Trump and Junior.

All of these folks have spent a great deal of time snowflaking about being censored and persecuted and even death-threated because they're bold and fearless "truth tellers" and because the entire social media universe is in a conspiracy against "conservative voices." It's a given that if you're a republican or self-styled conservative these daze, you have a persecution complex that's bigger than Trump's butt in a pair of tennis shorts.

So it's no surprise that in the lead-up to the signing into law of the Florida bill, right-wing republicans from across the country were engaged in their usual moaning and pearl-clutching about being "censored" on tyrannical social media platforms. On May 6, 2021, one of my favorite bloggers and Facebook posters, Jim Wright, mused on the utter hypocrisy of the repubs' complaints.

Right Wing congresswoman Elise Stefanik [New York] is mad. Mad! Raging mad. Because her communications director was (briefly) suspended from Twitter.

"Republicans are united in fighting back against Big Tech’s tyranny?"

Something has to be done about this tyranny ... of an automated system briefly flagging an obscure functionary with 24 followers and then restoring the account a few hours later -- like pretty much every poor proletarian who's ever used social media.

Give me unrestricted Twitter or give me death!

Republicans are united in fighting against this tyranny!

Republicans. Yes, Republicans are united against the tyranny of big ... business?

Really?

The same 256 congressional Republicans who VOTED AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY and DELIBERATELY gave the very same big tech companies the power to decide who could and could not access the internet?

THOSE Republicans?

Are THOSE the Republicans united against Big Tech's tyranny?

The same "tyranny" they very specifically GAVE those very same companies?

The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who are "on the march" currently passing laws in a multiple states making freedom of speech and the right to protest illegal in direct violation of the 1st Amendment?

THOSE REPUBLICANS?

Are those the republicans we're talking about here? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS led by Ron DeSantis who just just passed draconian anti-voting laws in Florida this very morning and barred the press from access to the signing?

Is THAT one of the Republicans we're talking about? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who handed Big Tech billionaires a massive tax giveaway? And who rewarded the very same companies they're now complaining about with massive tax breaks? The same Republicans who said those companies were PEOPLE with more rights than actual people? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who side with billionaires and corporations and banks over ACTUAL AMERICAN CITIZENS every fucking day?

Are those the Republicans we're talking about?

I mean, godDAMN! Tell me more about these Republicans who are fighting Big Tech, standing up for the little guy, the average citizen.

Let's hear about THOSE Republicans.

Man, I love THAT fucking fairy tale.

That's about the size of it.

But hypocrisy hasn't stopped right-wing nutcakes from celebrating the Florida bill as a win. And some apparently can't wait to start suing those big tech companies, since the law allows individuals to take their grievances to court.

Well, I hate to rain on anyone's parade... no, I don't. I love doing that, at least if it's a fascist parade... but anyway, this bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. The wonderful Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for free speech and equal access online, explains the constitutional flaws of the bill in this May 5 piece, posted a little over two weeks before DeSantis signed it into law. Following a brief history lesson regarding a similar-in-spirit bill from nearly 50 years ago, the writer nails the real reason for the current legislation.

...you might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure, costing the state the time and expense of defending it in court. Politics, of course. The legislators who passed this bill probably knew it was unconstitutional, but may have seen political value in passing the base-pleasing statute, and blaming the courts when it gets struck down.

Politics is also the reason for the much-ridiculed exception for theme park owners. It’s actually a problem for the law itself. As the Supreme Court explained in Florida Star v BJF, carve-outs like this make the bill even more susceptible to a First Amendment challenge as under-inclusive.  Theme parks are big business in Florida, and the law’s definition of social media platform would otherwise fit Comcast (which owns Universal Studios' theme parks), Disney, and even Legoland. Performative legislation is less politically useful if it attacks a key employer and economic driver of your state. The theme park exception has also raised all sorts of amusing possibilities for the big internet companies to address this law by simply purchasing a theme park, which could easily be less expensive than compliance, even with the minimum 25 acres and 1 million visitors/year. Much as Section 230 Land would be high on my own must-visit list, striking the law down is the better solution.

The EFF piece acknowledges, as I have myself in previous blog posts, that there are real issues that need to be tackled regarding Big Tech's control over public conversation. I think most of us have experienced firsthand the confusion and frustration of being arbitrarily warned, suspended, or even banned by one of the social media platforms for a minor or accidental infraction, when others continue to get away with posting offensive or hateful or bigoted or threatening content. Or maybe, like me, you've reported offensive or threatening content to the platform and have been informed that it doesn't violate their community standards.

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that a few years ago, I was receiving harassing messages and emails as a direct result of a series of Facebook screeds posted by the notorious Leonard Coldwell, in which he falsely accused me of killing his favorite dog (!). He published my home address and cell phone number, the latter of which he could only have gotten from a mutual former friend of ours, or from an inquiry I had sent to the Mount Pleasant, SC police department regarding a police report about Coldwell (I never received a response from the PD, but later found out that my inquiry, address and all, became part of that report).

Along with the doxxing, Coldwell openly invited his followers to get in touch with me directly and let me know exactly what they thought about my vicious act. It was his lame and cowardly attempt to silence me, by inciting his followers to do his dirty work for him, because he was angry about the blog posts I had written about his quackery, scams, and general awfulness.

People were threatening to burn down my house in the middle of the night, and they were holding public discussions on Coldwell's Facebook page about all of the things that should be done to me as punishment for killing the dog -- shooting me, poisoning me, slowly torturing me to death...oh, yes, I got to read all of those sick and twisted fantasies posted by the sick and twisted followers of a sick and twisted man. Coldwell also posted some graphically detailed -- and false -- allegations about me sexually harassing him. I was blocked from participating on his forums so I couldn't even defend myself.

I reported these posts to Facebook... and Facebook said the posts didn't violate their community standards. Nice. Ultimately most of the posts were taken down, but some still remain.

So yeah, there's a lot that needs to be worked out with the tech giants; they do need to be reined in. A good starting place: The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which the EFF and numerous other non-profits came up with a few years ago. It's a reasonable basic guideline.

But unconstitutional laws like Florida's SB 7072 that pander to right-wing lunatics and whiners are not the answer to this problem that affects every one of us -- conservative, liberal, or apolitical.

Update, 2 July 2021: On Wednesday, June 30, a federal judge blocked this new law from going into effect July 1. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction via a 31-page order, citing SB 7072 as unconstitutional and discriminatory. From the Miami Herald:

Calling it “riddled with imprecision and ambiguity,” a federal judge Wednesday blocked a new state law targeting social media behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter that can strip politicians and other users from their platforms.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction as he sided with online industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which filed the lawsuit challenging the measure pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by Republican lawmakers this spring.

“The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate government interest,” Hinkle wrote in Wednesday’s 31-page order.

Hinkle directed the state to suspend implementation until a final ruling on the lawsuit is released. He made it clear that he knows this law is politically motivated, and took several swipes at it during a hearing on June 28, saying to lawyers representing the DeSantis administration, "I won't put you on the spot and ask you if you've ever dealt with a statute that was more poorly drafted."

Of course, like most stories in both Scamworld and politix, this one has no neat and tidy ending, at least not yet. The right-wing whiners, led by Governor DeSantis and others, have no intention of giving up the battle. DeSantis is confident the state will prevail in the lawsuit. If it does, that will set an appalling precedent.

* * * * *

July 27, 2021 marks the 15th birthday of Whirled Musings!
If you're so inclined, why not help celebrate WM's Quinceañera?
Now more than ever, your gift is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

 

Trump as Julius Seizer? Health Ranger endorses tyranny as solution to online "censorship" of right-wingers

On my previous post I wrote about a frivolous defamation lawsuit from a whiny-boy US congressman, Republican Devin Nunes, who is miffed at Twitter, a fake cow, and a few other assorted parties. I also riffed a bit on the general hypersensitivity of conservatives who sure can dish out the harassment and bullying to their perceived "enemies" (liberals, progressives, Democrats), but can't take it when it's dished back. Right-wing/conservative (and, in the US., Republican or libertarian) whining is an issue that has received a bit of attention recently, because contrary to what the tough guys and gals fighting "political correctness" would like us to believe, it is actually a thing.

An 18-liter bottle of aggressive red whine was recently uncorked by Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, alt-right/alt-health fear crapitalist and rabble-rousing Trumpian. On a Natural News screed posted on March 22, 2019, Adams gripes at length, and not for the first time, about how the tech giants -- Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all the usual suspects -- are systematically censoring and shadow-banning conservatives and any speech that is "pro-Trump, pro-Christian, pro-America," in favor of "granting artificially high visibility to pro-Democrat, pro-socialism, pro-communism and pro-Islam speech."

If you told me five years ago that I would wake up one day in America and have Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google all banning natural health news, and that the entire U.S. Congress and President of the United States would do absolutely nothing about it, and that there wouldn’t be a single prominent voice on the political Left who would speak out against the scourge of censorship, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Yet that’s where we are right now in America. Actually, it’s even worse. Our Brighteon.com free speech video platform is under such intense threats and assault from upstream internet infrastructure providers that we are now being forced to implement outrageous limitations on speech in order to avoid the entire platform being annihilated (new announcement to come soon). Certain ISPs in New Zealand have now blocked the entire domain of Brighteon.com, even after all the mosque shooting videos were removed from the platform under threat from other infrastructure providers. (New Zealand and Australia are now essentially Communist China in terms of internet censorship, with NZ rapidly becoming a new Islamic state that celebrates hijabs, a symbol of the oppression of women and gays.)

So... non-Muslim women in New Zealand donning head scarves to express solidarity with Muslim victims of white nationalist terrorism... that's the problem? What a putz.

And it isn't just political and religious oppression that Captain Murica is fighting. He is also bravely standing up against the tech giants' suppression of "the truth" about vaccines, cancer cures, and all manner of things that, in the words of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, they don't want you to know about. Warns Adams:

We have now reached the point where the tech giants are banning all questions about vaccines… where “anti-cancer” content is being stifled on Facebook and Google… where any opinion that opposes the authoritarian left-wing techno-tyranny is silenced into oblivion.

But he can't help himself: he brings it back to politix in the next part of the paragraph:

Our elections are no longer fair and free, given that Democracy depends entirely on public knowledge and public debate so that citizens who vote might decide for themselves which candidates and policy decisions to support, yet we now find ourselves in a world where tech giants like Google and Twitter are now deciding all future elections by silencing conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Christian, pro-America speech while granting artificially high visibility to pro-Democrat, pro-socialism, pro-communism and pro-Islam speech.

And so on. Actually -- to address one of the points with which Adams led -- "the Left" has spoken out about censorship, and so have the mainstream media (aka the "fake news" in Trumpian parlance), sounding an alarm every time Donald Trump bullies his critics and frames that bullying in threats to the free press and to freedom of assembly and to other First Amendment and civil rights. Trump's re-election campaign is now even reaching out to TV producers and trying to get them to blacklist certain prominent Democrats for "lying to the American people" about the Mueller Report and the Trump/Russia scandal. Millions of us are hugely concerned about this. The rest of the world has also taken notice of the "Trump effect" on our freedoms.

But apparently our frequently expressed collective outrage is not enough for Adams. He is only focused on preserving freedom of speech for his kind, much like his idol Trump, who is fresh from signing an executive order to "protect free speech" -- at least conservative speech -- on college campuses.

And as for Adams' claim about Google and Twitter "deciding all future elections," presumably in favor of "the Left"... Hello!?? Russian interference, anyone? Of course, the tech giants played a starring role in that debacle too, and they've been faced with growing demands for accountability since then, but you don't notice Adams complaining about the results of the 2016 US presidential election, do you? Clearly he is only afraid of the Interwebs driving current and future voting trends leftwards.

Obeying Godwin's Law, Adams goes on to claim that what the tech giants are doing today to the conservatives "is far worse than the book burning of the Third Reich." Here he gets a bit rambly, as he is wont to do. (I know, I have no room to talk about rambling.)

It’s not just books that are under attack today, of course: It’s all human knowledge which runs counter to the insane, deranged narratives of the political Left.

We are now being told that biology no longer exists and that gender is “fluid.” Despite the fact that this insane idea violates the basic sciences of physiology, this is now such an ingrained position in the minds of the tech giants that anyone who opposes the gender fluidity delusion is labeled as being engaged in “hate speech.” Facebook has even announced it will no longer allow advertising companies to market to women or women by gender selection, claiming there is no such thing as biological gender. (Yes, Leftists now literally believe there is no such thing as a “man” or a “woman.”)

We’re also being told that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” and that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t shut down all combustion engines and fossil fuel consumption (the “Green New Deal”). This is pure insanity on its face, especially given the fact that India and China are the world’s largest producers of CO2 by far, and they would obviously not be stupid enough to collapse their entire air travel, agriculture and transportation industries in order to appease some insane, deranged Democrat from New York whose IQ is so low that is strains the very definition of “intelligent species.”

I don't want to waste too much time and space unpacking this mishmash of alt-right conspiranoia, but I do want to address a few points in passing. The "insane, deranged Democrat" with the "low" IQ is, presumably, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose IQ, education level, and accomplishments so far in her young life far outstrip most of her critics, probably including Adams himself, despite his very lengthy boasts on his own sites about his amazing intelligence and impressive accomplishments. Adams' comment about "Leftists" as a group completely disavowing the existence of biological genders is really too stupid to address at length here. Suffice to say that there is a wide range of beliefs and opinions about these issues on both the left and the right, but clearly neither Adams nor his target audience are fans of nuance and complexity. As for Adams' anti-environmentalist grousing about the carbon dioxide issue, basing his gripes on the fact that because plants need CO₂ to survive there's no such thing as too much CO₂, that's bollocks. Too much of a good thing is... well... usually a bad thing. It's a pretty simple principle.

The "only way to avoid a civil war"
Adams projects that if the online oppressors aren't stopped PDQ, there will be "civil war" as a result of the tech giants having designated all "pro-America forces" -- in other words, people who think like Adams and his conspiranoid audience -- as "terrorists." To preserve their good name as well as their freedom, these brave patriotic Muricans will have no choice but to engage in a civil war with the Left, and one of the very first things they'll have no choice but to do is seize control of all online platforms, including and especially Google and Facebook.

Seizing control over these assets and forcing a restoration of First Amendment freedoms for all Americans would be one of the most urgent priorities for pro-America forces. At the boots-on-the-ground military tactical level, this would be made difficult by the fact that tech giants tend to reside in left-wing Antifa-ridden areas of the country where anti-America forces would fight any patriots, National Guard troops or military forces that attempt to halt the Left’s Fourth Reich crimes against humanity via speech oppression.

It’s worth noting that the tech giants really are engaged in crimes against humanity. Silencing the speech of human beings in the way now being conducted by the tech giants is an assault on human dignity and basic human rights...

Absent civil war, what is Adams' proposed solution to the "censorship" that he says is destroying America? It's something that any sane person would see as tyranny: He wants Donald John Trump -- the man whose butt-cheeks have, for the past few years, been the virtual repository of Adams' smug nose and probably much of the rest of his face as well -- to "seize the domain names" of the tech giants and hold them hostage until they stop their oppression.

The “ace in the hole” in all this would be a conservative president declaring a national emergency and seizing the domain names of Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants. By declaring these tech companies to be engaged in an active insurrection against the United States of America — and operating in open complicity with Antifa terrorists and Mexican drug cartels that engage in human trafficking across the open border — the President could demand those domains be seized by the U.S. State Department and prohibited from operating...

...On the flip side, a left-wing President could exercise the same power against conservatives sites and seize domain names such as Infowars.com or ZeroHedge.com — two independent media websites which are already targeted and largely de-platformed by leftist tech giants. Control over the domain space is the ultimate control over online speech, and that’s exactly why President Trump needs to give the tech giants this ultimatum:

If you will not halt your oppression of human rights and your censorship of Americans based on political and religious bigotry as well as active election meddling, you will no longer be allowed to operate as the dominant “public square” content controllers...

...Believe it or not, any President of the United States has the power to seize corporations if they are engaged in treason against America. It is time to exercise that power and restore a level playing field of free speech for all Americans...

If I'm reading this correctly, the Health Ranger is declaring that the tyranny of a right-wing prez is a far, far better thing than the tyranny of a left-wing leader. So Trump has a mandate to tyrannize while the tyrannizing is good.

This is not the first time that Mike Adams has endorsed Trumpian tyranny. I've written about that a few times on this blog, such as on this October 2018 post (scroll down to the sub-head, "Elsewhere on the conspiranoia front: martial law is okay as long as it's alt-right martial law"). Back in May 2016 I also mentioned the matter (scroll down to the sub-head, "The Health Ranger is also a major Trumpian"). In both instances I cited Adams' endorsement of Trump declaring martial law in order to whip the country into shape. And in July 2017, I wrote about Adams' endorsement of "burn(ing) the leftist-scripted newspapers," which segued into another one of his tributes to Trump. See under, "Little Hitler strikes again" (I am not above obeying Godwin's law myself).

Unfortunately Adams doesn't seem to be alone in his wish that Trump would just take matters into his own fat orange hands and totally remake the United States according to the MAGA wet dream. At a recent event held by gone-but-not-forgotten Trump aide Steve Bannon, an angry Trump supporter expressed a wish for Trump to become a dictator and "crush Congress" -- and she was applauded by both Bannon and the audience.

That's pretty scary stuff.

Nothing could be finer than to block a little whiner...
Meanwhile, in the conspiranoia outback, where the traffic and the Facebook "likes" and the retweets are much lighter than they are around the Natural News scampire, cancer quack/fake doctor/neo-Nazi/ridiculous little hater-man Leonard Coldwell (who is a fan of both Trump and Mike Adams) has bottled his own third-rate whine. He is upset about having been thrown in Facebook jail for 30 days...again. The graphic on his blog post about the matter, employed without any apparent trace of irony, depicts a Nazi, and the clear message on the graphic is that Lenny was Facebook-jailed for posting anti-vaccination info.

But we've heard that song before. More than likely Lenny was reported for hate speech, as has happened so many, many times before. There's more than a hint of this on his main English-language Facebook page, in what appears to be his last post under his own name before Facebook took action. One of Lenny's alter egos, "Eyn Rand," had to take over the whinery on that Facebook thread.

As you'll see if you take a closer look at the screen grab, "Eyn" couldn't just leave it at bitching about Lenny being "censored." He also had to post a link to a video offering "proof" that the horrific mosque shootings in New Zealand were a "hoax."

For those of you who might be wondering why I keep spending (or perhaps you think "squandering" is a better word) time and energy writing about these crackpots, it's simple, apart from the fact that they're low-hanging fruit and I am still a lazy blogger. It's also because Mike Adams is undoubtedly an influencer of sorts, about which I'll have a bit more in the next section. And though Coldwell is a far lesser influencer, except in his own mind -- yes, even though he is so nearly irrelevant that even the UK blogger Longdog, who has devoted his entire blog solely to Coldwell's hatefulness and stupidity, has grown bored with him -- Lenny nevertheless reflects the nuttiest conspiracy narratives, the most toxic right-wingnut hatreds, and the most egregious medical and scientific misinformation, and all of these things have become all too mainstream. My philosophy is that as long as Coldwell continues to make blatantly stupid and hateful and wrongheaded public statements, he should continue to be held up as an example of blatant stupidity and hatefulness and wrongheadedness.

Just the (anti)-vaxx, ma'am
Mike Adams and Leonard Coldwell, like numerous others harvesting the fruits of the alt-health whinery, are chronic complainers that "natural health" information is being ruthlessly censored by Big Pharma and the medical industry and the Rothschilds and the Killuminati and, of course, Big Tech. As a result, they insist, untold numbers of people are surely getting sick, and many are even dying, because they are being deprived of this life-changing, life-saving health information. I have spilled more than my share of words about this false narrative, one example being this August 2014 post. It's long. I'll wait.

One of the focal points of the alt-health brouhaha -- and certainly a perennial pet issue for both Adams and Coldwell -- is the anti-vaccination or anti-vaxx movement, about which I've also written a few words before. This matter has received a lot of renewed attention lately due to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the US and numerous other spots across the world. There's also the story of Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky, who became one of the latest heroes of the anti-vaxx movement after he announced that he had deliberately exposed his nine (!) children to chicken pox rather than having them vaccinated. He presented it as being all about personal choice re vaccinations, but at least one opinion writer believes that Bevin's "choice" was informed by darker cultural and religious forces, and she may very well be right.

One of the latest developments that got the anti-vaxxers all fired up again was Facebook's announcement earlier this month of a plan to rein in anti-vaxx conspiracy theories. The company didn't say it would actually remove the anti-vaxx groups and pages; it will simply wipe these pages and groups from its recommendations, and it will stop allowing advertisers to target people whom Facebook's algorithm identifies as being interested in "vaccine controversies." But in the views of the anti-vaxx fanatics, that's "censorship" and as such it allows them to whine a little bit louder.

Ahead of its announcement, Facebook had lamented the seemingly infinite reach of the anti-vaxx misinformation machine, insinuating that it was going to be exceedingly difficult to handle the problem. But as a writer on The Atlantic site noted:

...while Facebook’s scale might as well be infinite, the actual universe of people arguing about vaccinations is limited and knowable...

...While there is no dearth of posts related to vaccines, the top 50 Facebook pages ranked by the number of public posts they made about vaccines generated nearly half (46 percent) of the top 10,000 posts for or against vaccinations, as well as 38 percent of the total likes on those posts, from January 2016 to February of this year. The distribution is heavy on the top, particularly for the anti-vax position. Just seven anti-vax pages generated nearly 20 percent of the top 10,000 vaccination posts in this time period: Natural News, Dr. Tenpenny on Vaccines and Current Events, Stop Mandatory Vaccination, March Against Monsanto, J. B. Handley, Erin at Health Nut News, and Revolution for Choice.

And here we run into our old friend the Health Ranger again.

Among the most prominent anti-vax pages is Natural News, an Infowars-like conspiracy site sprinkled with tumeric powder and the essence of chemtrails. The site, which has 2.9 million likes and comes up high in a variety of search results about vaccines and vaccination, runs stories with headlines like “Left-Wing Media Run by Actual Demon-Possessed Anti-human EVIL Entities … Watch This Stunning Mini-documentary” as well as “Tech Giants’ Censorship Is an Online ETHNIC CLEANSING Campaign, Equivalent to Intellectual Genocide.” According to a list of the site's popular stories, the two most popular posts are both about vaccines.

Natural News has kept up a steady drumbeat of posts about how the site is going to be “silenced” or “censored” by the tech platforms. The site’s owner, Mike Adams, has claimed that Apple (among other tech companies) is defending “satanism” by asking Natural News to make changes to its app in the App Store. “This is the first time that a dominant tech company has overtly come out in defense of Satanism while threatening to censor a prominent publisher that exposes the evils of Satanic influence,” Adams wrote in a recent post. He refers to the tech companies as “techno-fascists.”

Natural News -- and this will probably come as no great surprise -- did not respond to a request for comment.

In any case, it is clear that Facebook and other tech giants such as Google seem to be making efforts to stem the tide of misinformation about vaccines, as well as misinfo on any number of other topics. And just a few days ago, GoFundMe announced that anti-vaxxers can no longer use their platform to raise money. Other platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Amazon have acted in various ways to curb anti-vaxx content. How this will all play out is still uncertain, but it's a pretty sure bet that strident conspiranoids will continue to cry foul at even the mildest efforts to rein them in, while others will say that the tech giants aren't doing enough to stop dangerous misinformation.

Marketplace of ideas, or menacing monopolies?
Like millions if not billions of other people all over world, I have a love-hate relationship with the tech giants, particularly social media such as Facebook. I've never claimed that they're above reproach. Among numerous other issues, they have been playing fast and loose with users' personal information and they should not be let off the hook for that.

More to the point of this post, and as I mentioned in my previous one, a poll taken last year by Hill.TV and American Barometer showed that a majority of the respondents believed that there's a sytstemic bias against conservative views in social media. But the poll was heavily divided along party lines. And the view that conservatives are unfairly being targeted is not a universal one by any means. It's just that these days, the conservanoids seem to be doing the loudest whining about being grievously wronged (with the Whiner in Chief leading the charge, especially now that he has been fake-exonerated by his hand-picked AG's coy letter "summarizing" the Mueller investigation).

Many who decry any form of Internet "censorship" paint the online world as a "marketplace of ideas," where virtually anything goes, or should go. Others say that parties hosting or providing content have an ethical if not a legal responsibility to ban or at least control content such as hate speech and misinformation -- although then we get into the quagmire of deciding what exactly determines "hate speech" and "misinformation." It's not always clear. These are topics far too large and complex for this little Whirled; I mainly wanted to acknowledge, as I have previously, that I am aware that there are some serious issues with the tech giants, and that these issues are both more significant and more nuanced than, "Mike Adams is a putz" or "Leonard Coldwell is a whiny little hater-man."

One issue is the question of whether the tech giants need to be taken down a notch or two via antitrust enforcement, since companies such as Facebook and Google represent virtual monopolies in their respective realms. The Verge ran a thoughtful piece about this matter last September. And a January 2019 piece on the GovTech site drives home the point that monopolies are bad for innovation. These are real and serious issues that affect nearly all of us.

But none of the above is even remotely a suggestion that Donald John Trump should "seize" the tech giants and remake them into a tool to further elevate himself and the hateful, fearmongering blowhards whose vitriol has already left an indelible stain on the public conversation. I don't want Donald Trump or Mike Adams or Alex Jones or even Leonard Coldwell "censored." But the swill they distribute should be called out for what it is, and for what it's worth, I will continue to do just that. And I am glad to know that I am not alone.

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Red, red whine: Devin Nunes' defamation flawsuit against Twitter, a bogus bovine, et al.

I'm probably only the four-millionth or so person to mention this, but have you noticed a certain hyper-sensitivity in many of the conservative/libertarian manly men (and a few proud and defiant women) -- you know, the ones who are currently infesting the political and cultural landscape with their bright red caps and fact-devoid social media memes? Have you observed, as I have, that they seem to have awfully thin skins -- especially when you consider their derisive sneers about the oppressive, America-threatening "political correctness" of the left, and their screeds about wimpy liberals (aka "snowflakes") who are hypersensitive to "triggers" and have an insatiable need for "safe spaces?"
 
I have previously danced around the theme of right-wing snowflakery, e.g., in this May 2016 post (trigger warning: contains nekkid Donald Trump picture). But it's a matter that has captured my attention more fully in light of rabid Republican "strategist" Devin Nunes' comic $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, a made-up mommy, and a fake cow. (And I'm probably only the four-millionth or so person to publicly write about this, but I never claimed to be a groundbreaker.)

Anyway. From the Vox article linked to just above:

A member of Congress since January 2003, Nunes is perhaps best known nationally first for his involvement in the Benghazi investigation and second for his dogged defense of Donald Trump, upon whose transition team Nunes served. It was Nunes, for example, who wrote the 2018 memo on wiretapping that many Trump supporters believed would permanently damage special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. (It didn’t.)

So it stands to reason that Twitter users less enthralled with Trump would tweet things about Nunes that were perhaps less than cordial — like calling him a “presidential fluffer and swamp rat,” for instance. (In fact, a tweet using those very words was included in the lawsuit.)

But in the 40-page complaint filed on Monday, Nunes argues that tweets like that and the two parody Twitter accounts were not merely examples of Twitter being Twitter. Rather, he argues that the social media platform served as “a portal of defamation” by permitting parody accounts of his mother and his imaginary bovine to exist on the platform.

The operative word, seemingly missed by Nunes and his lawyer, is "parody." Which, you know, is protected in the United States by the First Amendment and whatnot. Parody and other forms of sometimes unpopular speech are not protected everywhere, of course. In Russia (to name but one example of other places in the world where freedom of expression is not exactly a sacred cow), a person might, thanks to a new law recently signed by Trump's dom bromantic partner Putin, conceivably be prosecuted for parody, since it is by its nature disrespectful, and if your parody or satire disrespects Putin or the Russian government, well, then, shame on you, Господин or девушка Smarty-Pants. But the US isn't Russia... not yet, anyway.

Here is the direct link to the fake farm animal's Twitter account, which has more Twitter followers than the real Devin. Goodness, that must trample on his ego. If you're on Twitter and haven't done so already, why not go ahead and follow that cow? I've herd that she's very nice, the crème de la crème.  

Who feels more "hard done by": libs or cons?
Defamation cases are nearly always about hurt feelings, and a sense of being hard done by, as much as they are about actual damages. (A tip of the hat to an ancient post on the Kung Fu Monkey blog, which I've cited here before, for the "hard done by" theme. Ah, "that sweet crack pipe of moral indignation.") For me, this latest legal looniness brings up an argument that has been going on for a few years regarding who is in fact more hypersensitive: liberals/left-wingers or conservatives/right-wingers. TheTylt.com -- to name but one of countless examples -- has tackled this matter, running two surveys that I know of a couple of years ago -- this one and this one. Spoiler: the right-wingers won the sensitivity sweepstakes both times.

But the core sensitivity of so many crass loudmouths and blowhards on the right should come as no big surprise anymore, particularly since #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump is such a thin-skinned type himself. For instance, just this past weekend he got in a lather about a rerun of the Christmas 2018 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live, suggesting once again that SNL and other media he doesn't like should be investigated by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission.

Moreover Trump is apparently making good on the promise/threat that he spewed forth in his recent two-hour-plus rant to the Conservative Political Action Conference: a vow to sign an executive order that would punish colleges and universities that "do not support free speech" by denying them federal research funds. The initial promise was a direct response to a February 19, 2019 incident on the campus of the University of California Berkeley in which a man who was not a Berkeley student was on campus expressing his support of Trump, whereupon another man, who was not a Berkeley student either, punched him. The punchee, one Hayden Williams, was paraded around by Trump as a hero at the CPAC rant, the poster child for liberals' oppression of conservatives on campus.

Never mind that Berkeley was, in fact, already providing a solid platform for conservatives and pro-Trumpsters. In this case, the conservative org Turning Point USA was, with the university's permission, recruiting students to the cause. And never mind that many universities already have free-speech guidelines and policies that allow non-liberal expression on their campuses. Those inconvenient facts didn't stop the right-wing whining following the punching, and didn't stop Trump from his subsequent grandstanding.

Also never mind the fact that, according to the Chicago Trib article I cited a couple of paragraphs ago, "it's unclear what type of free speech limitation could trigger a loss of federal research funding. White House officials declined to provide specific cases of free speech suppression." The guiding sentiment behind the EO seems to be that by golly, it's time that someone stepped up and protected (conservative) free speech!

Here's an opinion piece, published on March 4, 2019 in the wake of the CPAC rant, explaining why Trump is missing the point, once again.

...Because almost across the board institutional missions center on scientific discovery, knowledge and learning, institutions of higher education are a key mechanism for fostering democratic education. Campuses often subscribe to John Stuart Mill’s notion that a university is a “marketplace of ideas,” where educators offer “balanced perspectives” so that students can “hear the other side” on every issue.

However, academic freedom guidelines specifically say that faculty members need not always cover “the other side” if the standards of the discipline deem that other side to be untrue. When topics seem to be settled, with a right answer having emerged through science and ethics, faculty can focus on the knowledge produced. A white nationalist view, for example, does not merit debate within the campus marketplace of ideas.

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville, Va., tragedy, these disagreements have taken on a deeper significance, as those of us who work within higher education navigate increasingly polarized contexts for teaching, learning and research. Public discussions of these issues have been dominated by legal analyses of the First Amendment, without sufficient attention to philosophical discussion of disagreement, truth and the democratic purposes of higher education.

College faculty and campus leaders are caught between wanting to be nonpartisan and promoting their institution’s missions, which often prioritize excellence and truth...

On the other hand, if colleges and unis are mandated by executive order or law or whatever to allow free speech, religious schools such as Liberty University, which also receives federal research funds, might have to allow satanists and abortion-rights advocates to speak on their campuses. So there's that. Could be interesting.

Misusing the courts to capitalize on being hard done by
It's not unusual for thin-skins who have the resources to try to use the legal system to fight back against real and imagined slights, generally via multi-million dollar "defamation" lawsuits. Trump is one notable and obvious example; a few of those defamation lawsuits are listed in this article, though the piece also covers some of his other infamous and yuuugely expensive legal dramas.

Another recent example is the "Covington kid," the MAGA-cap-sporting Catholic school student Nicholas Sandmann, whose parents sued the New York Times for $250 million and, more recently, CNN for $275 million, for the news outlets' initial coverage of an incident in which their kid confronted an elderly Native American activist and some shouting Black Hebrew Israelite cultists. (Never mind that the NYT and CNN and most other mainstream outlets revised their stories as new info came to light.) Part of the plaintiffs' argument was that the media are biased against Donald Trump and conservatives. Ah, snowflakes. No two are alike, and yet at some level they all are.

And now there's Devin and that fake mama and that bogus bovine and, of course, that very real social media platform, the latter of whom possesses the actual deep pockets that Devin and his legal team hope to mine.

If you want a good laugh, read the lawsuit. I have been trying to find a dowloadable PDF of the document that includes the filing/court stamps, indicating that it was actually filed and the date and time that this occurred. The document to which I linked does not seem to be that, but it was uploaded to Scribd by Fox News on March 18, and seems to be the reference point for all of the chatter about it. It begins by trying to lay out the case that Twitter has been purposely defaming poor Devin and continues to do so, and that furthermore Twitter has it out for all Republicans.

1. Twitter is an information content provider. Twitter creates and develops content, in whole or in part, through a combination of means: (a) by explicit censorship of viewpoints with which it disagrees, (b) by shadow-banning conservatives, such as Plaintiff, (c) by knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory – providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers – thereby facilitating defamation on its platform, (d) by completely ignoring lawful complaints about offensive content and by allowing that content to remain accessible to the public, and (e) by intentionally abandoning and refusing to enforce its so-called Terms of Service and Twitter Rules – essentially refusing to self-regulate – thereby selectively amplifying the message of defamers such as Mair, Devin Nunes’ Mom and Devin Nunes’ cow, and materially contributing to the libelousness of the hundreds of  posts at issue in this action.

2. Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon. Twitter knew the defamation was (and is) happening. Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive: Twitter allowed (and allows) its platform to serve as a portal of defamation in order to undermine public confidence in Plaintiff and to benefit his opponents and opponents of the Republican Party...

And so on, and so forth, adding up to yet another fine red whine. Alas, poor Devin, and oh, those poor, put-upon Republicans.

This bit, which occurs towards the end and wraps up the counts for which the plaintiff is demanding so much money, made me chuckle.

COUNT IV – COMMON LAW CONSPIRACY...
... 54. Beginning in February 2018 and continuing through the present, Mair, Devin Nunes’ Mom and Devin Nunes’ cow, acting as individuals, combined, associated, agreed or acted in concert with each other and/or with one or more “clients” or other donors, non-profits, operatives or agents of the Democratic Party (whose identity is unknown at this time) for the express purposes of injuring Nunes, intentionally and unlawfully interfering with his business and employment as a United States Congressman, and defaming Nunes. In furtherance of the conspiracy and preconceived plan, the Defendants engaged in a joint scheme the unlawful purpose of which was to destroy Nunes’ personal and professional reputations and influence the outcome of a federal election.

Nunes is asking for a minimum of $250,000,000 for the alleged attempts to destroy his reputation, but is certainly open to the idea of receiving much more, should it please the court. On his monologue on March 19, 2019, Stephen Colbert said that Nunes' legal team came up with that figure by applying a scientific legal formula: they took the dollar amount that Nunes' reputation is actually worth, and added $250,000,000 to it. That sounds about right.

Colbert and gang felt inspired by the hoopla to create another parody Twitter account, Devin Nunes' Skin. The opening (and so far only) tweet:

Devin Nunes' skin @devinnunesskin
Still thin.

Less than 24 hours after being launched, that account had more than 30,000 followers. And although as of this writing the account still contains a solitary tweet, the following is making its way steadily to 44,000.

I am well aware that there is an ongoing debate about several issues related to social media, and one of these issues is the question of whether or not platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are indeed biased against conservatives. A poll taken late last year by Hill.TV and American Barometer indicated that a majority of American voters thought that the social media giants have a systemic bias against conservative views. Unsurprisingly, the poll was heavily divided along party lines, with Republicans overwhelmingly likely to view tech companies as being biased against conservatives. Media bias is a perennial issue that is worthy of exploration and analysis, but frivolous defamation lawsuits by whiny politicians and other public figures are not helpful at all.
 
Conspiranoia strikes deep...again
All of the talk about conspiracy to defame reminds me very much of another defamation flawsuit from a few years back, one in which I was the top-named defendant. It didn't make the mainstream news, of course, and was barely a blip in the blogosphere, but if you think I am going to pass up an opportunity to sneer about it, you are very much mistaken. As you may know, the suit did not go very well for the plaintiff, Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, aka LoonyC, the stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld; his attorneys advised him to drop the case, and he did. Nor did his previous attempt to sue a critical blogger (my pal and co-defendant in the aforementioned case, Salty Droid) go very well; his rent-a-lawyer in that one dropped out of the case early on, and the whole thing was dismissed because LoonyC never showed up for any hearings. Yet he has continued to boast about his powerful legal team and about his steadfast willingness to fight and defeat anyone who dares to "defame" him.

Arguably the majority of defamation lawsuits fail, at least in the US. It's complicated, and I don't claim to be anything remotely resembling an expert on these matters. But it seems that more than likely, Devin Nunes doesn't have a very strong case, in part because he is a politician and a public figure, and America has a long history of protecting those who make fun of our politicians. Also, Twitter is merely distributing, not creating, the offending content. But some have warned that even if Nunes loses the lawsuit and the probable appeal, he is creating an opening for the Supreme Court to reconsider its previous rulings on defamation and public officials. As a lawmaker, Nunes is in a unique position to introduce legislation that could very well have a chilling effect that would make Putin proud.

For now, it seems nothing will stop either Nunes or his detractors from... oh, you knew this was coming, didn't you?... milking this matter for all it's worth. But it's worth noting that last year Nunes was a co-sponsor of HR 1179, the "Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act." Cory Doctorow on Boing-Boing made sport of this (as well as the now-defunct fake-mama Twitter account).

Nunes is upset that he was called a "herp-face," and is really upset about a human centipede meme that depicted Nunes, Trump and Putin as generic, labeled stick-figures with their mouths grafted onto one-another's anuses. This tweet may just be the greatest exhibit ever filed in a lawsuit.

It's a very good thing to have a little comic relief in the midst of the horror and chaos that is swirling all around us, but let's hope that the right-wing snowflakes don't have the last laugh.

Addendum, 5 April 2019: Republican strategist Elizabeth "Liz" Mair, who besides Twitter is actually the main defendant in Nunes' silly complaint, wrote a serious editorial about the real threats to free speech for all of us. It was published in USA Today. Here 'tis.
 
Related on this Whirled: Vintage whines from conservative conspiranoid snowflakes

• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
• February 2017: Another tempest in a teapot: Google delists and relists whiny Health Ranger
• May 2016: Facebook "censors" Leonard Coldwell again: somebody call the waaaahmbulance!

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!