A Lawsuit Seeking $250 Million Against Twitter For 'Shadow-Banning Conservatives'

A lawsuit has been filed by a congressman from the Republican party, which seeks $250 million, accusing Twitter of “shadow-banning conservatives” and making use of “abusive, harmful and defamatory” content to earn money.

In particular, California Rep. Devin Nunes filed the lawsuit with the defendants including Liz Mair, a political consultant, @DevinCow and @DevinNunesMom Twitter users. Accordingly, the Republican congressman alleges that two Twitter accounts and Mair attacked and damaged his reputation and the company gave no attention to his complaints.

Fox News early reported the suit to be filed in a court in Virginia state on Monday. Meanwhile, the online filing system of the court showed the suit was filed on Tuesday.

Nunes states that two Twitter accounts posted statements which harm his reputation during the Congressional election in 2018. Additionally, he alleges Twitter of lacking actions to control this behavior. The lawmaker did not immediately reply to a comment request.

It is known that Nunes asks for an amount of $250 million to compensate for his reputation damages and $350,000 for punitive damages.

The social network refused to comment on this lawsuit. Previously, it has also denied claims of “shadow-banning conservatives”. It is known that shadow banning is the act of blocking a person’s post from being seen, but the one creating it.

Nunes objected to a tweet of Mair where she directed her Twitter followers to an article on Fresno Bee about an independent lawsuit against Nunes’ partly-owned winery. According to the lawsuit, the tweet indicated that his winery was related to illegal activity comprising of prostitution and drug use.

On Monday, Mair tweeted that she was refusing to give any comment on this lawsuit. She also did not immediately reply to a message which was sent to her own consulting firm.

Additionally, the @DevinNunesMom user was said to impersonate Nunes’ mother and wrongly accused Nunes of justice obstruction and perjury. And the account has currently been suspended.

The other Twitter account, @DevinCow, still worked and had thousands of Twitter followers when the news of the lawsuit was reported on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, this user which gained over 107,000 followers in total also did not give an immediate response to a Twitter post which asks for comment on this lawsuit.