Former US President Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to restore his account, Reuters reported. Trump's Twitter account was permanently suspended in January this year following the Capitol Hill riots on January 6. Other social media companies too followed suit and took action against the former US President. In July, Trump sued Twitter, Facebook and Google, as well as their chief executives alleging that their action against Trump was unlawful. In Florida, Trump has filed a request for a preliminary injunction against Twitter arguing that Twitter was coerced by US Congress members to suspend his account.
Twitter "exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate," Trump's lawyers said in the filing.
Twitter declined to comment on the filing when contacted by Reuters.
In the court filing, Trump argued Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet regularly but censored him even during his presidency by labelling his tweets as "misleading information" or indicating they violated the company's rules against "glorifying violence", Reuters reported.
On January 8, Twitter said in its blogpost that after a close review of the recent tweets from Donald Trump's account and the context around them, the company took the decision to permanently suspend the account due to the risk of further "incitement of violence".
"Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behaviour from this account in recent weeks," Twitter said.
{{/usCountry}}"Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behaviour from this account in recent weeks," Twitter said.
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