And Here Come The Completely Ridiculous Lawsuits Over Internet Company 'Bias'

from the these-won't-go-far dept

It was only a matter of time. Given the incorrect and misleading claims of "political bias" in social media moderation/search recently, you knew someone was going to file a lawsuit, and not surprisingly, the first to take the plunge is serial litigant Larry Klayman and his "Freedom Watch" organization. Of course, we've had a few similar lawsuits test the waters, all of which have failed miserably -- from Dennis Prager falsely claiming that YouTube was demonetizing his videos due to his political views (which was not even close to true) to Jared Taylor suing, claiming political bias in Twitter kicking him off its platform.

Klayman's complaint, however, adds layers of nuttiness upon those previous attempts. First off, he's hoping to turn it into a class action lawsuit for "all politically conservative organizations, entities and/or individuals who... have experienced illegal suppression and/or censorship." Second, he's filing it against four companies at once: Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple. Once again, I thought that conservatives believed in free markets and were against the fairness doctrine which (1) is not currently law and (2) even when it was, only applied to broadcasts over the airwaves. Yet, Klayman pretends that there's some sort of quasi fairness doctrine, and also takes every possible rumor or claim of political bias in tech, no matter how incorrect, and assumes it's true for the purpose of the case.

Literally the case dredges up a ton of disproven articles claiming bias where none has been shown to actually exist. It takes things out of context. For example, it puts tremendous weight on the long-ago debunked story of Facebook's "trending stories" being moderated to block conservatives, and mixes that with Facebook's totally unrelated attempt to increase quality of news, to argue it's proof that Facebook censors conservatives. That's ridiculous. First of all, the Gawker article, claiming Facebook bias in trending news, was later shown to be misleading and just the incorrect claims of a disgruntled ex-employee (and trending stories was a feature that few people even used anyway). The attempts to increase quality is not a sign of political bias, it's a recognition of the fact that choosing what is "quality" involves ranking stuff. That's how ranking works. But to say that's evidence of political bias is complete bullshit. The lawsuit also uses PragerU as an example, even though YouTube showed pretty damn clearly that many fewer of PragerU's videos were demonetized than well-known "liberal-leaning" accounts. But that doesn't stop Klayman.

As for the "harm" to Klayman? Apparently, he believes it's against the law for his fanbase to have stopped growing. Really. It must be a conspiracy against him.

Since Defendants, each and every one of them, have begun their conspiracy to intentionally and willfully, and/or acting in concerted parallel fashion, to suppress conservative content and refuse to deal with Freedom Watch, Freedom Watch’s growth on these platforms has come to a complete halt, and its audience base and revenue generated has either plateaued or diminished. For instance, the number of subscribers to Freedom Watch’s YouTube channel has remained static especially over the last six months, after years of steady grown, which simply cannot be a coincidence given the facts set forth in the previous section.

Wow. Watch out world. Apparently, any time someone's traffic decreases, you can just sue the sites that used to give you traffic according to Freedom Watch.

Also, it wouldn't be a Larry Klayman lawsuit if there weren't a few good conspiracy theories tossed in for fun. First he claims all these companies are colluding against him, and then reveals it's all part of the evil "leftist agenda" to overthrow the President.

Defendants’ agreement has a plainly anti-competitive effect and has no rational economic justification, as they are willing to lose revenue from conservative organizations and individuals like Freedom Watch and those similarly situated to further their leftist agenda and designs to effectively overthrow President Trump and his administration and have installed leftist government in this district and the 50 states.

Citation needed.

There's more silliness in the lawsuit. It quotes Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before the Senate, claiming that Zuckerberg "struggled to name a single competitor," which the very transcript he included shows is not true. The testimony involved Zuckerberg pointing out accurately that the company had many competitors, but that those were for different pieces of Facebook's business, rather than one competitor who did everything like Facebook -- and specifically named a bunch of companies that compete in different ways with Facebook.

It also claims that all of these companies are "quasi-public spaces." It's kind of incredible to think that some conservatives are now apparently against companies having First Amendment rights and believe in nationalizing their platforms. I'm curious if they now support tossing out the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, because part of that ruling is that political bias is protected by the First Amendment.

This lawsuit has no chance and has a high likelihood of being laughed out of court, but in case you were wondering the actual claims, he argues that the companies are violating antitrust laws "in restraint of trade" (namely, his businesses using their platforms), anticompetitive behavior (he claims that FreedomWorks is a competitor to all of the platforms), discrimination, and (most incredibly) a violation of the First Amendment. Apparently, he does not see the irony in claiming that these platforms -- which have strong First Amendment rights to determine what content they show on their own platforms -- are actually violating his First Amendment rights in not giving him enough YouTube subscribers. How? Because they should be nationalized or something:

Defendants act as quasi-state actors because they regulate their public platforms, thereby regulating free speech within their public forums, Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, Apple, Instagram as well as the other social media companies or entities. Defendants, each and every one of them acting in concert, have deprived Freedom Watch and those similarly situated of its constitutional rights by censoring its content for purely political reasons. Defendants’ censorship is arbitrary and capricious, and is purely viewpoint based.

The use of "arbitrary and capricious" is bizarre, seeing as that's the standard used in administrative law, concerning government body rulemaking is unfair. But, once again, none of these companies are government bodies.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, he's asking for... $1 billion. Because, why not?

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Filed Under: antitrust, first amendment, free speech, larry klayman, political bias

Companies: apple, facebook, freedom watch, google, twitter, youtube