{"id":350160,"date":"2018-02-28T09:31:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T08:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/free-speech-suit-aims-to-end-twitters-political-censorship\/"},"modified":"2018-02-28T09:31:17","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T08:31:17","slug":"free-speech-suit-aims-to-end-twitters-political-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/free-speech-suit-aims-to-end-twitters-political-censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Free Speech\u2019 Suit Aims to End Twitter\u2019s Political Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<p><em>Ian Mason, Breitbart, 23 February 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A group of free-speech lawyers filed the most serious legal challenge yet to Twitter\u2019s censorship policies Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a ruling preventing Twitter from banning users purely on the basis of their views and political associations.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Dp-AKNTnFdk\" width=\"560\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The 29-page complaint contends that, under a California legal doctrine that recognizes some private facilities as \u201cpublic forums,\u201d Twitter may not discriminate against speech on their platform based purely on viewpoint. If successful, it would be the first extension of that doctrine to internet social media platforms and could transform the way free speech is treated online. The suit became all the more relevant Wednesday as Twitter stood accused of locking out thousands of conservatives under the guise of cracking down on \u201cRussian bots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CUg5TrWzjzY\" width=\"560\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The genesis of the suit is Twitter\u2019s November 2017 announcement that they would start banning and sanctioning users based on their offline behavior and associations. On December 18, 2017, Twitter, five years after their top British executive described the company as \u201cthe free speech wing of the free speech party,\u201d made good on this threat, \u201cpurging\u201d hundreds of mostly right-wing users. Twitter\u2019s new policy refers to association with \u201cviolent extremist groups,\u201d and a company blog post claimed, \u201cIf an account\u2019s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/redice.tv\/news\/free-speech-suit-aims-to-end-twitters-political-censorship\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Mason, Breitbart, 23 February 2018 A group of free-speech lawyers filed the most serious legal challenge yet to Twitter\u2019s censorship policies Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a ruling preventing Twitter from banning users purely on the basis of their views and political associations. The 29-page complaint contends that, under a California [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-350160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}