Update on Atkinson v. Facebook & Social Media Censorship
Call me stupid now, will ya? Pretty please? Okay. Okay. I’ll admit that spiking the football is a guilty pleasure for me, but I have reason to spike it tonight.
After Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg succeeded in transferring my lawsuit against them to California federal court, they moved to dismiss it, and I naturally opposed it. I filed my opposition on November 6, 2020, and I am strongly confident that at least some of my claims will survive their motion to dismiss. Should some of my claims survive, I will be the first private plaintiff to put Facebook officials including Mr. Zuckerberg under oath to answer questions about their censorship of the average American’s harmless social media postings on politics.
What does that have to do with me spiking the football, you ask? After all, there are a lot of “ifs” in the way first.
When I first filed this lawsuit on November 19, 2019, the aftermath was ugly, which I expected. My law school classmates alternated between declaring me delusional and crazy and wondering just what in the name of good decency was I up to. A professor at my law school apparently devoted a good portion of a class to discussing whether I could be sanctioned for my lawsuit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 – from what I heard, those in favor of sanctions were an overwhelming majority. For all intents and purposes, the world considered me the dumbest law student that Quinnipiac University School of Law ever produced.
I like you mad at me, world. Here’s right back at you….
Luckily for the world though, I wasn’t around for the full brunt of the aftermath. I was driving two friends to the 2019 Federalist Society Lawyers’ Convention in Washington, D.C, but I got a positive earful on the way down there. Some people in the world, however, just have to make sure that you know that everyone thinks you’re stupid because they don’t have the guts to tell you themselves. Thus, I found out about my new reputation anyway.
Fast forward to little less than a year later and I don’t look like such an idiot. Everyone from Joe Rogan to President Donald Trump is complaining about social media censorship. It’s no longer stupid to want to do something about it. This week, a friend of mine pointed that out to me as being utterly hilarious. I had to laugh. I will always be stupid in the eyes of my peers. I am a man who was a bit ahead of his time.
I will keep pushing my lawsuit against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. I strongly believe that I will be able to surmount their assertions of absolute and categorical immunity under 47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1). I also believe that, given the opportunity to conduct discovery, I will be able to prove most, if not all, of the allegations in my complaint.
Social media censorship is a grave danger to our system of ordered liberty. This stupid average American is out to put a nail in its coffin. If you want to contribute to that effort, please consider donating.
