Here, chew on this:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/devin-nunes-sues-twitter-his-mom-for-250-million
DEVIN NUNES SUES TWITTER, HIS “MOM,” FOR $250 MILLION
The California congressman’s lawsuit centers on an oft-repeated right-wing conspiracy theory: that Twitter is biased against conservatives.
BY
MARCH 19, 2019 9:44 AM
Nunes photographed in the Capitol on December 5, 2017.
By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call.
Devin Nunes announced Monday that he intends to sue Twitter, along with a pair of parody accounts, over “fake . . . and slanderous news.” Speaking to Fox’s Sean Hannity, the California congressman and top
Donald Trump lackey, who’s seeking $250 million in damages,
accused the social-media giant of “shadow-banning” conservatives—a popular right-wing conspiracy theory for which
zero concrete evidence has emerged. Nunes also accused the accounts “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” along with G.O.P. communications strategist Liz Mair, of running an “orchestrated” campaign to hurt his re-election chances in the 2018 midterms and undermine his investigative authority on the House Intelligence Committee.
“Twitter knew the defamation was (and is) happening,” Nunes’s lawyers argued in a
complaint dated Monday and addressed to a Virginia court. “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.”
As it stands, the suit seems destined for failure. Twitter has repeatedly
denied censoring conservative voices. Even if the company were “shadow-banning” certain accounts, said Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, that wouldn’t be grounds for a lawsuit. “It’s not illegal,” the conservative former judge
said Tuesday. “They are not the government.” As for the critical accounts, Nunes is a public figure. The right to mock him, however mercilessly, is protected under the First Amendment. “The case is not really well thought through,” Jim Bickerton, an expert in libel law,
told The Washington Post, noting that the jokes made by the parody accounts—one posing as the congressman’s disappointed mother, the other as his long-suffering cow—are “most obviously hyperbole” and thus likely fair game.
“Here, they actually have someone who says she’s Devin Nunes’s mother,” Bickerton said. “People are going to know that’s not really his mom.”
In his complaint, Nunes accuses Twitter of “amplifying” the critical accounts. Of course, by raising a stink about them, that’s precisely what Nunes himself has now done. Both Mair and @DevinCow appeared to gain in followers in the aftermath of the lawsuit (@DevinNunesMom was apparently suspended earlier this year after complaints from Nunes). Meanwhile, the tweets have continued:
The obviously ridiculous case, filed by an
increasingly ridiculous figure, highlights conservatives’ strange relationship with Twitter and the First Amendment. Nunes, Trump, and other right-wingers routinely accuse the platform of pushing a political agenda, arguing that its activities amount to “discrimination.” (“Not good,” Trump
tweeted about the company’s alleged shadow-banning last summer.) And yet, Twitter is also Trump’s
favorite mode of communication—a safe space to vent about his perceived enemies and comment on his favorite television programs in real-time. But as his repeated criticism of
Saturday Night Live and other late-night shows demonstrates, Trump isn’t keen on jokes at his expense. Based on this complaint, it appears Nunes feels the same way.
