Devin Nunes is suing Twitter and some users over making fun of him... no, I'm not kidding.

WaPo

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming that Twitter, two parody Twitter accounts and a Republican political consultant violated the First Amendment and defamed him. In addition to $250 million in damages, Nunes is demanding that the social media platform disclose the identities behind the anonymous accounts that have caused him particular suffering, according to the suit: “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow.”

The suit, filed in state court, alleged violations of Virginia’s law against insults. It also brought claims against Twitter for conspiracy and negligence. The tech company, Nunes said, “intended to generate and proliferate false and defamatory statements” about him. Its failure to police mean tweets, puns and memes posted by accounts purporting to be his mother and cow caused him “extreme pain and suffering.”

Since filing, Nunes has been ridiculed, and the case has been labeled by experts who spoke to The Washington Post as, in all likelihood, doomed to fail. But others believe there is more to the lawsuit than any desire by Nunes to create a spectacle.

Could the defendants be held liable for libel?

According to First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams: The speech involved is protected for several reasons.

“Rep. Nunes seems to think the First Amendment exists to protect him from his critics when it’s actually meant to protect his critics from him,” said Abrams, calling the suit “bizarre” and “likely unconstitutional.”

As an initial matter, the First Amendment applies only to government conduct, and “Twitter is not the government,” Abrams said.

Libel is a technical term, legally. It’s a written defamatory statement. The landmark Supreme Court case, New York Times v. Sullivan, made clear that when the plaintiff is a public official (which Nunes is, as a U.S. congressman), to succeed in a libel case, he or she has to prove that the alleged defamatory statement was false and the publisher either knew it was untrue or had serious doubts about its veracity.

Years after that pivotal case, in a lawsuit very similar to Nunes’s, Jerry Falwell sued Hustler magazine for a satirical advertisement that portrayed him in an outhouse having sex with his mother. The court rejected Falwell’s claim that Hustler violated the First Amendment, ruling that although the ad was provocative and insulting, a public figure was not protected from “patently offensive speech.”

According to Abrams, courts also have a history of ruling that speech that is “most obviously hyperbole” or “fighting words” is protected.

Abrams said that the statements Nunes alleges are defamatory are “precisely what the First Amendment protects,” including insults, charges of misconduct and attacks on a sitting member of Congress. “The public is allowed to and is protected when it criticizes — even in the harshest terms — people serving in public office,” he added.

Is Twitter responsible for mean tweets posted on the platform?

In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, providing broad protection for materials posted on the Internet, including social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Under Section 230 of the Act, these tech giants are viewed as distributors, not publishers, and are shielded from liability.

“Unless the platform is actually a co-creator of the content, it’s simply distributing,” Stuart Karle, former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal and the former chief operating officer of Reuters News, told The Post.

Generally, a site would not be responsible for a user who posts objectionable content; inviting and encouraging users to post is not usually viewed as contributing content. Courts look to whether the host has acted as a neutral middleman, or if it created or disseminated the information. If it turns out to be the latter, the court could hold the platform liable.

Will Twitter have to identify the anonymous accounts?

By opting to disclose the users’ identities, Twitter would highlight its role as a distributor, not a publisher, said Karle, now an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School.

But, he said, Twitter could also argue it should not be compelled to disclose the identities until the court analyzes each statement alleged to be defamatory and determines whether it is factual — or, in other words, is a statement that can be proved true or false. They cannot be opinions, hyperbole or a nasty insults, and that could prove fatal for Nunes.

If the offending tweets are deemed nonfactual, Twitter may not be compelled to disclose identities of the two anonymous users. And many of the tweets and memes listed in the complaint are unlikely to be regarded as statements of fact, according to Karle.

And, just as no one actually thought Falwell was in the outhouse with his mother, it would be difficult to view the mean tweets as anything more than hyperbole or rude speech.

For example: Karle said that statements like “Alpha Omega wines taste like treason” were “neither comprehensible nor factual.” Memes, like comments, also tend not to be factual.

According to the complaint, Devin Nunes’ Mom called Nunes a “presidential fluffer and swamp rat,” a statement that is an opinion and, perhaps, an insult, but it’s not factual.

The cow’s account allegedly said that “Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison,” remarks that also would be construed as insults.

But an insult is not an offense in the United States. To be actionable, it must clearly create a threat of violence, and “we know there was no violent result,” Karle said. “There weren’t riots at Nunes’s events.”

What’s the end game?

Even if Nunes loses the lawsuit and appeal, Karle theorized, the congressman is creating an opening for the Supreme Court to reconsider defamation of public officials and overturn the statute passed by Congress.

As a lawmaker, Nunes is uniquely positioned to change the law by introducing legislation.

“For a congressman to complain that Twitter should be liable when that plainly isn’t the law . . . it looks like someone who wants to take this up for law reform,” Karle said. “He’s beginning the legal process to redo the jurisprudence.”

Remember... it's only the left that gets blamed for being snowflakes. :eye roll:

This reminds me of Bob Murray suing John Oliver for the same thing.

Republicans are seriously the biggest pussies on Earth

What is in the water that republicans drink? Must be really soft water.

If I'm not mistaken, part of the reason Twitter is being criticized is because of alleged selective enforcement of their policies, such as doing nothing when liberal celebrities demanded the doxxing of the Covington kids or threatened to physically assault certain conservaties (Cardi B's threat to "dogwalk" Tomi Lahren which got over 800,000 likes is one example) but banned conservatives when they mocked fired journalists by telling them to "learn to code" or other violations.

In this particular case, I don't see him being very successful in terms of getting any money since Twitter is a private company and not a branch of the government. But it can open up a conversation they may not have been willing to have in the past.

Also parody accounts are protected (to a degree), as is Twitter, and shadow banning has no real evidence.

This was an absolute disaster for Nunes. Streisand effect. The parody accounts are now 100x more popular than before and growing in followers. Even more parody accounts have popped up. Many of them are actually quite hilarious.

It seems Trump and Devin are upset that the GOP and their ideas just aren't as liked on Facebook/Twitter.

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html

Checking my posting history you can see I am a pretty big advocate against the amount of shitposts and trolls on gamespot that go unpunished. But can you imagine being so salty that you sue gamespot for hundreds of millions of dollars over being trolled? lol.

Cool it down a few notches Nunes, this will go exactly nowhere.

Or when they allow trump to bully others you mean.

Twitter already stated that they won't ban him because he's the president and they think that keeping his account open no matter what is in the best interest of the country. So if you disagree with his methods, you can bring it up with them on why they won't ban him. But it is a double-edged sword; a court ruled that Trump can't block anybody on Twittter because it violates the First Amendment.

At the same time, if I was against the president, I wouldn't want his Twitter account removed. His tweets have been used in lawsuits against the government, and it allows us to get his unfiltered words that would harm him politically. Granted, words that may help him politically may be the biggest reason his opponents may want him banned, but you have to be willing to take the good with the bad.

I follow like 6 people on Twitter. Trump is one of them.

And you provided proof................alleged selective enforcement. So why cry about it?

The accounts nunez is suing now have more followers than him.

What an idiot.

Pointing out statements of fact aren't crying. If anything I would just sit back and eat popcorn in reaction to Twitter banning the president because the backlash would be nuclear and could rally conservatives more than anything else liberals could do.

Is that the only word you conservatives know.......liberals? The US is NOT liberal and those individuals that are......are in the minority. smh

You're acting like liberal is an insult.

Liberals are disgusting and twitter sucks ass. Never used twitter never going too. WACK

Guys a shit bag, deserves abuse.

One.......that's how you intended. Two........stating facts. You have an us vs them attitude.

I don't know who Devin Nunes is, yet I was able to guess he was a Republican just from the headline... How typical of right-wing snowflakes.

he's a farmer from california who was the previous chair of the House Intelligence Committee

Where I work (National Capital Region), most of our civilian workers are Democrats. One of them says she’s a liberal from Buffalo (NY) and I doubt she would be calling herself a liberal if she found it offensive. No us vs them feelings here, we all work together and don’t hide into our echochambers. Instead of arguing about politics, we argue about sports instead. You should see our March Madness bracket.

Lmao Nunes is such an idiot.

Right? I'm not a big fan of "whataboutism" but as long as Trump can tweet, you can't really accuse the Twitter of "selective enforcement".

Let's not pretend that Twitter's decision not to ban the president is because they are nonpartisan.

Columbia Journalism Review gives another good reason why Twitter won't ban Trump even if it was proven that they are left-leaning:

This all leads to the third point, which is that blocking Trump from Twitter would be a big, fat present to the alt-right and conservative movements in the US, and to any of his supporters, because it would give them even more ammunition to argue that left-wing social media platforms are out to get conservative voices and remove their content whenever possible.

A good way to interpret that quote is that it's a great way to rally conservatives and help Trump get reelected, versus letting him tweet as he pleases and allow his many critics to post rebuttals to his tweets instead. The inital joy and mockery of Trump supporters the left would indulge in after his ban would not last very long due to the long term backlash and possible political boost he would get.

Hm I think that anyone should be able to be criticized without legal ramifications. I always thought of defamation as a more structural/organized deceitful attack against a person/group especially with repeated attempts. Like, something done by a media outlet intentionally to throw someone to the wolves through lies or intentionally deceive people in a way to make someone/a group look bad. (Like what they caught Jim Jefferies doing on camera.)

That's the price you pay as a public figure. Criticism.

Columbia Journalistic review got this wrong, The main reason why Twitter won´t ban Trump or any other major political figure is that they know it would escalate into legislation and most likely social media platforms being named as a public utility. There is no reason to poke a bear especially not when the bear is the US government.

Who cares if a bunch of conservative or far far far alt-right loons thinks that the evil social media is out to get them.

The reasons they put in the article are obviously not the only reasons Twitter won't ban the president. Legislation against social media is a threat, but there isn't enough support in Congress to get anything meaningful passed prior to 2020 assuming Trump is the only major victim (if anything, many of the Democrats in Congress would be glad they banned Trump from Twitter). The lawsuit this thread is about isn't accomplishing much more than getting Nunes mocked, if you want to see it in another way.

The immediate threat of the right (not just alt-right, your average right-leaning independent and Republican that thinks Trump isn't doing that bad) reacting negatively to them banning Trump, boycotts (he still got 63 million votes and if even half of them are on Twitter that's over 30 million potential boycotters) and the potential boost to who hits the polls next year is a more immediate issue they would be concerned about.

You are correct there is not enough support, but how do you think it would look if Twitter banned the president of the united states? you can be 100% sure that even the hardliners would stand up and be ready to do something about it. And it would be fast , some laws can be done in a few weeks if there is not too much opposition to it.

And no the Democrats would not be glad they banned Trump, sure some of the more radical would but you can be sure that more than 15 would be upset and behind the Republicans in a legislative manner.

Also what you are referring to in the last is "civil unrest" which is highly unlikely since most even on the right would not care that much about Twitter.

Co-opting right wing memes is that cutest thing someone could do.