The Zagat-ish guide to Trump’s social media lawsuits
A "very beautiful development" that's "likely doomed from the start”
TRUMP V. FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND YOUTUBE
United States District Court — Miami, Florida
A “very beautiful development,” former President Donald Trump calls his new spate of social-media lawsuits, but the cases are “likely doomed from the start.” Fans say the cases will prove that the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which banned Trump post-Jan. 6th in the face of Democratic ire, “are government actors” and thus “constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech.” But legal experts largely think that doesn’t make a great deal of sense: “Jack Dorsey doesn’t work for the government.” Nor are they sold on Trump’s argument that communications-law protections make the companies extensions of the state, saying the idea that “benefiting from a law prevents them from being private is asinine.”
The cases look “DOA,” especially since all the way up to the Supreme Court, federal courts have “repeatedly rejected efforts to classify social media platforms as state actors.” But keep in mind that for nearly all of his adult life, Trump “has used lawsuits as cudgels and prods and publicity stunts” — often failing as legal maneuvers but succeeding at keeping his name in the news.
(What the heck, Nancy?)
A Selection of Fine Readings
“The Man Behind China’s Aggressive New Voice”
Alex W. Palmer, The New York Times Magazine
Palmer profiles Zhao Lijian, the deputy director of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department and keeper of @zlj517 — an exceptionally provocative Twitter feed by Chinese diplomatic standards: “It would be tempting to dismiss [Zhao] as a bit player in this geopolitical drama. But in fact his influence has been immense… Zhao has managed to rapidly and completely transform how China communicates with its allies and adversaries. His unbridled style of online rhetoric has spread throughout the Chinese diplomatic corps, replacing the turgid mix of evasive diplomatese and abstruse Communist jargon that characterized the nation’s public statements for decades.”
“Biden’s Court-Reform Commission Hears from Experts on Term Limits and Judicial Review”
Mitchell Jagodinski, SCOTUSblog
Facing pressure from the left to add seats to the country’s highest court, President Biden this spring pulled together the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court. On the docket for the panel’s recent all-day hearing: making the institution more public. SCOTUSblog co-founder Amy Howe testified that, per Jagodinski, “the greatest step toward better transparency would permanently make live audio or video of oral arguments available to the public.” The court pandemic-adapted by streaming live audio of its proceedings but “has not indicated whether it will continue the practice next term.”
“Twitter to ‘Fully Comply’ With India Internet Rules”
Saritha Rai and Upmanyu Trivedi, Bloomberg
Twitter had been the hold out as Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp complied with new rules set up by the government of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, but now it says it’ll abide, too: “The U.S. social media giant has appointed an interim chief compliance officer, will name a grievance officer by July 11 and set up an India office in eight weeks, a lawyer for the company told the Delhi High Court.” Write Rai and Trivedi, “While the government accuses social media companies of infringing on the nation’s digital sovereignty, tech companies say the rules violate users’ rights to privacy.”
“Nigerian President Buhari Clashes With Twitter Chief Executive Dorsey”
John Campbell, Council on Foreign Relations
Nigeria’s banning of Twitter last month — “certainly a blight on Nigeria's free-wheeling culture of freedom of speech, especially among young, well-educated urbanites not sympathetic to Nigeria's political economy” — certainly had many causes, but one of them, writes Campbell, is Dorsey’s role in shaping the the geography of technology: “Twitter placed its African base of operations in Ghana, a country with a much smaller population, rather than Nigeria—a slap in the face of Nigerian aspirations to become the tech hub of Africa.”
“The Internet Is Rotting”
Jonathan Zittrain, The Atlantic
The decentralization of the Internet and Web has long been “celebrated as an instrument of grassroots democracy and freedom” and more recently been “understood to facilitate vectors for individual harassment and societal destabilization,” writes Zittrain, but he warns of another consequence: “Their designs naturally create gaps of responsibility for maintaining valuable content that others rely on. Links work seamlessly until they don’t. And as tangible counterparts to online work fade, these gaps represent actual holes in humanity’s knowledge.
“Robinhood Agrees to Pay $70 Million to Settle Regulatory Investigation”
Dave Michaels, The Wall Street Journal
The trading app will hand over the money to clear up “sweeping regulatory allegations that the brokerage misled customers, approved ineligible traders for risky strategies and didn’t supervise technology that failed and locked millions out of trading.” Still, things look on track for the company. Writes Michaels, “Its forthcoming initial public offering is one of the most anticipated of the year.”
(Okay, this one is more of a “fine listening”…)
“Coordinating Inauthentic Behavior With Facebook’s Head of Security Policy” (1 hour, 7 minutes)
The “Arbiters of Truth” podcast, Lawfare
Hosts Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic talk with Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy about, writes Lawfare’s about the threats Gleicher’s team sees on the platforms and what he makes of critiques of their handling of it. “And, of course,” writes Lawfare’s Jen Patja Howell, “they argued over Facebook’s use of the term ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ to describe what Nathaniel argues is a particularly troubling type of influence operation.”