Devin Nunes’ Lawsuit Against Twitter Could Turn Into The Company’s Worst Nightmare

Aldebaran said:

It only took 6 posts to turn this into a Trump-bashing thread.

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One of Trump’s flunkies like Nunes tends to generate that.

DaisyDay said:

Given my druthers, I'll take frogs, then gnats.

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Well that's a mistake. Take gnats then frogs. That way the latter will eat the former, and you'll just be left with frogs.

In the spirit of Gaiman's American Gods, I think

cow451 said:

Twitter is a plague upon the earth. Or is it Facebook. Or maybe Instagram is a plague. Or maybe there are Ten Plagues! Add ITunes, You Tube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tumblr and Reddit!

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Is pretty close to the truth.

Tanj said:

Is pretty close to the truth.

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I hear the Apple God is abolishing ITunes.

NightHawkeye said:

Any comments on the Devin Nunes lawsuit against Twitter?

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Any updates?

NightHawkeye said:

Any comments on the Devin Nunes lawsuit against Twitter?

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“I consider the lawsuit frivolous,” the cow wrote. “Nunes has defamed me. He publicly stated that I’m involved in a conspiracy, as a foreign actor, use dark money and am part of his opponents’ campaign. None of this is true.”

The cow thinks that Nunes is filing lawsuits to scare off critics, tie them in legal knots and either “bankrupt and/or wear them out emotionally.”

The lawsuits, the cow noted, have also been great for Nunes’ fundraising. Could this be the real reason he has become lawsuit-happy?

As McClatchy Washington, D.C., bureau reporter Kate Irby wrote, Nunes raised nearly $1.9 million in the last quarter, and more than $3 million this year. According to the website Open Secrets, he has $6.9 million cash on hand, the most of any House incumbent, trailed only by his archnemesis, Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff, who has $6.7 million.

Irby reported that almost none of Nunes’ donations in the last quarter came from inside his district, which includes parts of Fresno, plus Clovis, Tulare and Visalia. Instead, it came from interest groups and corporate PACs.

essentialsaltes said:

“I consider the lawsuit frivolous,” the cow wrote. “Nunes has defamed me. He publicly stated that I’m involved in a conspiracy, as a foreign actor, use dark money and am part of his opponents’ campaign. None of this is true.”

The cow thinks that Nunes is filing lawsuits to scare off critics, tie them in legal knots and either “bankrupt and/or wear them out emotionally.”

The lawsuits, the cow noted, have also been great for Nunes’ fundraising. Could this be the real reason he has become lawsuit-happy?

As McClatchy Washington, D.C., bureau reporter Kate Irby wrote, Nunes raised nearly $1.9 million in the last quarter, and more than $3 million this year. According to the website Open Secrets, he has $6.9 million cash on hand, the most of any House incumbent, trailed only by his archnemesis, Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff, who has $6.7 million.

Irby reported that almost none of Nunes’ donations in the last quarter came from inside his district, which includes parts of Fresno, plus Clovis, Tulare and Visalia. Instead, it came from interest groups and corporate PACs.

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It would be interesting to see a counter lawsuit for defamation, by the Cow.

SimplyMe said:

It would be interesting to see a counter lawsuit for defamation, by the Cow.

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Disclaimer:
This cow is not related to that one.

cow451 said:

Disclaimer:
This cow is not related to that one.

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Sure. Sure. We would never rat on the cow. Whoever she may be.

NightHawkeye said:

Devin Nunes’ Lawsuit Against Twitter Could Turn Into The Company’s Worst Nightmare:

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Devin Nunes cannot sue Twitter over fake cow parody account, judge rules

A Virginia judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in 2019 over statements made by a Republican strategist and two parody accounts, one pretending to be a cow and the other his mother.

Judge John Marshall, in a letter to Nunes’s attorneys on Friday, cited a federal law that protects social media companies from being held responsible for what individuals post on their sites.

Marshall, of Virginia Circuit Court, wrote that Nunes “seeks to have the court treat Twitter as the publisher or speaker of the content provided by others based on its allowing or not allowing certain content to be on its Internet platform. The court refuses to do so.”

Nunes claimed in his lawsuit that derogatory comments made about him by the cow, “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and Mair had slandered his character. He also accused Twitter of negligence for not removing the misinformation such as calling him a “treasonous cowpoke” or that “Nunes was ‘voted ‘Most Likely to Commit Treason’ in high school.”

It may seem like a small victory for one parody cow, but really it's a victory for all parody even-toed ungulates.

Aldebaran said:

It only took 6 posts to turn this into a Trump-bashing thread.

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The first post began congratulating Nunes for uncovering the sinister plot to discover Russians working to get Trump elected. How is that undeserving of bashing? If a guy is gonna unabashedly lie then when he gets bashed don't ask why.

Comrades! Poor Devin Nunes! Evil liberal court. Sad. Loyal soldier for Presidential Trump. A great patriot...even better than Tom Brady...everybody loves this guy. America First! Deep State Elected College losers want Socialist Antifactory to burn down cities and hate police...

NightHawkeye said:

Devin Nunes’ Lawsuit Against Twitter Could Turn Into The Company’s Worst Nightmare: A Virginia judge ruled last week that the Republican lawmaker's lawsuit against Twitter could proceed to trial in Virginia, meaning the company may finally be forced to disclose evidence of bias against conservative users.

Through his work exposing the faulty foundation of the Russian collusion hoax, Nunes attracted the ire of left-wing dark money groups and Democratic activists ...

The suit against Twitter alleges negligence by the social media company in knowingly allowing and supporting the defamation to continue on its platform.
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Twitter ignored the defamation and impersonation, which violated the company’s own policies and terms of use, for months on end despite being notified over and over that the accounts were violating the law and Twitter’s terms of service.
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As a result of Marshall’s order, the case will now proceed to trial, and Twitter will be subject to full-blown discovery by Nunes and his legal team.
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Full discovery could reveal that Twitter’s claims of neutral algorithms and no political ideological bias might not have been based in fact. Even worse for Twitter, the state of Virginia does not grant an automatic right to appeal a trial court’s ruling while the case is in process.
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Marshall, the trial judge, also rejected Twitter’s argument that the global tech company with operations and users in nearly 200 countries would be significantly inconvenienced if it were required to litigate in Virginia instead of California, where its headquarters are located. The implication of the venue ruling means that Twitter could potentially be subject to negligence lawsuits throughout the country, wherever harm is delivered or felt as a result of the company’s failure to enforce its own rules and policies.

Additionally, Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA), which has traditionally provided internet service providers and third-party publishing platforms safe harbor from civil liability claims, may not apply in this particular case given the nature of Nunes’ claims against the company. Rather than directly alleging that Twitter itself should be treated as the publisher of the content at issue, a claim which would be barred under the CDA, Nunes instead claims that Twitter selectively and deliberately neglected to enforce its own policies regarding the accounts that targeted Nunes for defamation. Federal courts have ruled that Section 230 of the CDA does not shield tech companies from so-called promissory estoppel claims, which arise from a failure to provide promised products or services. Nunes will also likely argue that it is up to a jury to determine based on facts that will arise from discovery whether Twitter was acting as a content-neutral third-party service provider subject to the CDA’s safe harbor, or whether it was acting as a publisher itself by manipulating its rules and algorithms to promote certain political content.

Nunes need not even win in court for Twitter to face significant legal and enterprise liabilities going forward given the risks that discovery poses to Twitter. Depending on what is unearthed during the discovery process, Twitter could eventually find itself facing class-action lawsuits for securities fraud if the company made claims to investors or Congress that were contradicted by internal documents.
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Twitter’s response will have ramifications far beyond its own business. How this case shakes out could shape the legal environment for social media companies for years or decades to come.​

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Yet another pointless waste of time. Isn’t he supposed to work for the government, doing useful, government things? Maybe he should sue himself for wasting his law degree.

Tom 1 said:

Yet another pointless waste of time. Isn’t he supposed to work for the government, doing useful, government things?

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Last I heard he was making a big deal about chilupas during some Congressional hearings. At some point you just have to write certain people off - work around the problem rather than trying to fix them.

NightHawkeye said:

Any comments on the Devin Nunes lawsuit against Twitter?

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How about this one?

Devin Nunes cannot sue Twitter over fake cow parody account, judge rules

A Virginia judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in 2019 over statements made by a Republican strategist and two parody accounts, one pretending to be a cow and the other his mother.


Judge John Marshall, in a letter to Nunes’s attorneys on Friday, cited a federal law that protects social media companies from being held responsible for what individuals post on their sites.

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Here's your comment:

Marshall, of Virginia Circuit Court, wrote that Nunes “seeks to have the court treat Twitter as the publisher or speaker of the content provided by others based on its allowing or not allowing certain content to be on its Internet platform. The court refuses to do so.”

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I mean, it "could" have been the company's worst nightmare, but it turned out to barely be worth a bemused chuckle.

essentialsaltes said:

Devin Nunes cannot sue Twitter over fake cow parody account, judge rules

[June 24] A Virginia judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in 2019 over statements made by a Republican strategist and two parody accounts, one pretending to be a cow and the other his mother.

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Nunes rejects the judge's reality and attempts to substitute his own.

A Virginia judge late last month reiterated a ruling that dismissed Twitter from a lawsuit Rep. Devin Nunes filed last year alleging the social media company allowed anonymous users to criticize him unfairly on its platform.

Marshall issued the second ruling on July 24 saying his previous ruling did, in fact, mean Nunes could not sue Twitter in the case because social media platforms under federal law generally are not liable for comments made by their users.

“The Court finds that (federal law) provides Twitter with immunity from civil liability in this action,” Marshall wrote. “Accordingly, all claims alleged against Twitter in this action are dismissed with prejudice.”

Four days later, Nunes filed a new complaint in the same court again attempting to sue Twitter over tweets by Republican political strategist Liz Mair, the Twitter account known as “Devin Nunes’ Cow” and the account known as “Devin Nunes’ Mom.”

Joe Meadows, a defamation attorney based in Arlington, Virginia, said the judge’s order on dismissal will likely be a “fatal roadblock” to Nunes’ and Biss’ new complaint.

“It’s a pretty dicey prospect of being able to amend a complaint after a court has already ordered that it be dismissed with prejudice,” Meadows said, adding he would be “surprised” if the court accepted it.

Another dud "bombshell" lawsuit. Who's surprised?

Amazing that some people still seem to believe that satire must be libelous. Especially when those people belong to a party that insists they believe in freedom of speech.

durangodawood said:

Another dud "bombshell" lawsuit. Who's surprised?

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You just wait until Wednesday.... you'll see...