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Former President Trump's suspended Twitter.

Experts Roast Trump’s ‘Incompetent' Lawsuit Against Social Media Giants

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Donald Trump, the former president, on Wednesday announced what he described as a class action lawsuit against "Big Tech," specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and their CEOs as well. Trump for about 50 minutes ranted and railed about having been banned from the social media platforms, along with numerous other grievances.

Trump, his team, and the group supporting him, America First Policy Institute, are essentially claiming Trump's First Amendment rights were violated when he was banned from the two social media platforms, and because they have protection under federal law known as Section 230, they are an arm of the government, which experts say is false.

Legal experts are responding negatively to both the lawsuit itself and the attorneys who filed it.

Sam Brunson, Georgia Reithal Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago, mocks their AOL email addresses and calls them "not competent."

He also calls the lawsuit a "LOLsuit."

Commercial, trademark, copyright, patent and trade secret litigation attorney Akiva Cohen calls the attorneys a "clown show."

And also mocks them for having AOL email addresses, among other things.

University of Michigan law professor, NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst, former US Attorney:

Brad Heath, DC reporter for Reuters on crime and justice:

Preston Byrne, partner at Anderson Kill Law Firm, Fellow at Adam Smith Institute:

Trump PAC Raising Funds On Facebook Despite His Suspension

Trump PAC Raising Funds On Facebook Despite His Suspension

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Facebook's latest policy carve-out for former President Donald Trump, which allows Trump's political action committees to run ads as long they are not "in his voice," has permitted Trump to fundraise and promote his events on the platform, even though he is suspended for at least two years. In return, Facebook has earned at least $10,000 in revenue on these ads.

On June 21, Politico reported that Trump's Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, a joint venture between his Make America Great Again PAC and his newer Save America leadership PAC, had started sponsoring Facebook ads on the Team Trump campaign page. The Team Trump page, which hasn't run any ads since the 2020 election, is also now managed by the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, and it was run by the Trump campaign as recently as May.

Media Matters analyzed data from Facebook's Ad Library and found that Team Trump has run 258 ads since June 16, spending at least $10,200 and earning at least 1.3 million impressions on ads fundraising off Trump's visit to the border, attacking President Joe Biden, supporting Trump and "the MAGA Movement," or promoting his upcoming rally in Ohio. At time of publication, 37 of the ads are active.

Trump's fundraising committee is running these ads even though Facebook has suspended him from the platform for at least two years, citing his "acts of incitement" in order "to be a deterrent to Mr. Trump and others from committing such severe violations in future." (Responding to Politico's initial reporting about the ads, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said, "Groups affiliated with the former president are not barred from posting on Facebook so long as they are not posting in his voice.")

In addition to inciting violence, thousands of Trump's Facebook posts also contained misinformation, warranted an additional information label, or contained harmful rhetoric about others. Facebook allowed Trump to abuse the platform for years, with policy exemptions and weak or ineffective attempts to rein in lies from the former president and his campaign. As but one example, the platform's policyof not fact-checking politicians in ads allowed Facebook to profit from thousands of misleading ads spreading smears and misinformation that Trump ran. And in some cases -- such as with the platform's labeling system -- Facebook's policy may have actually backfired, amplifying Trump's misinformation.

Despite Trump's suspension, his Facebook and Instagram pages remain visible and his old content continues to garner new engagement. Now, this latest policy carve-out allowing "affiliated groups" to run pro-Trump ads as long they are not "in his voice" functionally permits Trump to fundraise on Facebook and promote his events through his network of PACs.

Promoting Trump's Ohio Rally

Since June 16, Team Trump has run at least 119 ads promoting Trump's Ohio rally to be held in July, encouraging people to "get your free tickets now." At time of publication, Facebook has removed 86 of them for violating its advertising policies. (It is unclear which policy they violated.) Trump's fundraising committee spent at least $6,500 and earned more than 490,000 impressions on five different versions of these Ohio rally ads:

Team Trump Facebook ads promoting Trump's Ohio rally_1

Team Trump Facebook ads promoting Trump's Ohio rally_2

Fundraising Off Trump's Border Visit

On June 24, Team Trump started running ads fundraising off Trump's visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. At time of publication, there are at least 10 ads, four of which remain active. Trump's fundraising committee spent less than $300 and earned under 6,000 impressions on three different versions of these ads:

Team Trump Facebook ads fundraising off Trump's visit to the border (1)

Anti-Biden Fundraising

Since June 16, Team Trump has run at least 56 fundraising ads attacking Biden and declaring that "America is in DECLINE." At time of publication, 15 of these ads remain active. Trump's fundraising committee spent at least $900 and earned more than 140,000 impressions on three different versions of these ads:

Team Trump facebook anti-Biden fundraising ads (1)

Pro-Trump Fundraising

Since June 16, Team Trump has run at least 73 fundraising ads in support of Trump and "the America First agenda." At time of publication, 18 of these ads remain active. Trump's fundraising committee spent at least $2,800 and earned more than 745,000 impressions with four different versions of these ads:

Team Trump Facebook pro-Trump fundraising ads

Former President Trump

How Trump Became An Online Flop In 2021

Reprinted with permission from Press Run

After less than a month of postings, Trump's blog was officially taken offline last week, after drawing an embarrassingly small audience. Loyalists will no longer be able to check on "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" to read his latest, bitter musings.

The sudden move to unplug the aging Florida blogger came as Trump continues to struggle to attract an online audience after getting de-platformed by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in the wake of the January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. The social media giants rightly accused Trump of inciting violence and of depicting the mob vigilantes as patriots. Once accustomed to seeing his tweets and Facebook posts garnering millions of likes and responses, Trump now finds himself lost in the online wilderness, ignored and rejected.

NBC News last week reported that Trump's blog had "attracted a little over 212,000 engagements," a shockingly small number for someone of his political status. By comparison, when Trump got banned for life from Twitter, he had 88 million followers.

While Trump is widely seen as the odds on favorite to win the 2024 Republican nomination if he decides to run again, competing in a general election campaign with virtually no online presence could pose a major problem for the him.

Although there had been chatter about Trump launching an ambitious media play in his post-presidency years, he's always been lazy. Which is why the idea that he'd undertake the Herculean task of building a social media outpost from nothing always seemed farfetched. To date, it's clear he's taken a haphazard approach to his website.

The Washington Post reported that Trump's blog was taken down because he was upset that people were making fun of its paltry audience. Going back to his days at The Apprentice,Trump has always used ratings as a way to judge a person's worth. One of his favorite putdowns as president was to claim that a particular news network had bad ratings, which means his dismal showing online this year no doubt stings. Especially after his flak Jason Miller had hyped the site as "the hottest ticket in social media, it's going to completely redefine the game."

Why the online collapse this year? Aside from Trump's hibernation down at Mar-a-Lago, he's clearly been unable to reproduce the buzz that his tweets, and to a degree his Facebook posts, generated. Reveling in Twitter's rapid-fire insult style, Trump became a social media star by making news and announcing controversial government policy online. By comparison, his dreary, boring blog posts generated yawns. His namesake site is also seen as being primitive by 2021 standards, and included no comment section for Trump's blog postings.

The site's audience collapse in the last 12 months has been astonishing. "Data provided by right-wing website monitor The Righting revealed that last April, DonaldJTrump.com pulled in 14.4 million unique visitors. Last month, it garnered a mere 161,000," The Wrap recently reported.

It hasn't just been his colossal flop as a blogger. All across the internet, references to Trump have plummeted, even as Republican leaders scramble to placate him.

"Chatter about Trump has fallen across the biggest social media sites to its lowest level since May 2016, when he was just becoming the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, according to the BuzzSumo data," the Post reported. "On Twitter, data from the online-analytics firm Zignal Labs shows, mentions of him have cratered to an average of about 4 million a week, the lowest since 2016."

The bad online news comes after Trump's recent one-hour sit-down with Steve Cortes and Jenn Pellegrino on NewsMax on May 25 drew just 295,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data — and just 62,000 viewers in the advertiser-coveted age demographic of 25 to 54. That same night during the 9 p.m. time slot when Trump appeared on NewsMax, his interview got beat badly in the ratings by Chopped, and by HGTV's Unsellable Houses, which pulled 1.3 million total viewers, or nearly four times the Trump audience.

For years, the media loved to portray Trump as a cultural phenomenon who produces bonanza ratings. Of course, Trump pushed that media myth himself. He once claimed that when he appeared on Fox News Sunday in November 2018, the show landed nine million viewers. In truth, 1.7 million people tuned in. The truth is, he often produces shoulder shrugs.

Trump's convention acceptance speech last year was the lowest-rated one in primetime history. The summer before, ABC News aired a primetime Trump special, built around the idea of tagging along with him for 30 hours inside the White House. The special flopped, coming in third place among the three major networks on Sunday at 8 PM ET. Worse, the show produced just half the television audience that ABC's Celebrity Family Feud had attracted in the same time slot one week earlier.

The dichotomy now at play is an amazing one: As Trump fades from public view and generates so little interest online, the Republican Party continues to genuflect in front of him.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, left, and former President Trump.

Republicans Declare War On Facebook Over Trump Ban

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Congressional Republicans lashed out against Facebook on Wednesday after the company announced that it would maintain its ban on Donald Trump for inciting violence on the social media platform.

Facebook first banned Trump on January 7, the day after the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

"The Board found that the two posts by Mr. Trump on January 6 severely violated Facebook's Community Standards and Instagram's Community Guidelines," Facebook's oversight board noted, citing Trump's praise of the rioters.

In those posts, Trump had written, "We love you. You're very special," and called the rioters "great patriots" as they broke through barriers and ran through the halls of the Capitol complex, some saying they were in search of Mike Pence with the intent to do him harm.

Five people died during the attack, and over 450 people have been arrested and face federal charges.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led the charge against the decision on Wednesday.

"Facebook is more interested in acting like a Democrat Super PAC than a platform for free speech and open debate," he tweeted, adding, "A House Republican majority will rein in big tech power over our speech."

Calling the decision "disgraceful," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked, "For every liberal celebrating Trump's social media ban, if the Big Tech oligarchs can muzzle the former President, what's to stop them from silencing you?"

Trump is still free to offer his views on multiple platforms, including his recently launched blog.

"It's clear that Mark Zuckerberg views himself as the arbiter of speech," complained Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote, "Big tech thinks it can control anything."

"Break them up," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote, "@facebook thank you for securing the GOP majority come 2022."

She wrote, in a tweet that was deleted a few minutes after she posted it but that was captured by ProPublica first, "This morning, Facebook banned Trump permanently. Facebook will pay the price. Mark my words."

The official account of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee derided the decision with one word: "Pathetic."

Republicans have protested Trump's deplatforming since it first occurred. In Florida and Texas, legislation has been proposed and passed by Republicans with the goal of punishing tech companies for banning public officials who violate their terms of service.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.