The filing argued that Ken Paxton abused his power by launching an investigation in retaliation for the platform’s suspension of former President Donald Trump.
Twitter on Monday filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeking to stop the state’s investigation into its content moderation practices.
The social media giant said in its filing that the investigation requested by Paxton was an abuse of his power and a retaliatory action over Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump from the platform, which was the former president’s preferred method of communication with his supporters.
“Twitter seeks to stop AG Paxton from unlawfully abusing his authority as the highest law-enforcement officer of the State of Texas to intimidate, harass, and target Twitter in retaliation for Twitter’s exercise of its First Amendment rights,” the company wrote.
On Jan. 13, five days after the company suspended Trump in light of the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol, Paxton announced he was launching an investigation into the content moderation policies at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Apple.
“First Amendment rights and transparency must be maintained for a free online community to operate and thrive,” he said in a statement at the time. “However, the seemingly coordinated de-platforming of the President of the United States and several leading voices not only chills free speech, it wholly silences those whose speech and political beliefs do not align with leaders of Big Tech companies.”
In its filing, however, Twitter maintained that First Amendment protections guaranteed the company’s ability to decide what was permissible on its platform, as well as what to remove or restrict. Cooperating with the state’s request for “volumes of highly confidential documents” related to content moderation, the company said, would undermine the effectiveness of Twitter’s policies and compromise its abilities to carry out such moderation.
The company said it tried to work out an agreement with the Texas attorney general to limit the scope of his office’s request, which sought all of the company’s policies, but the two parties were not able to do so.
“Instead, AG Paxton made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees,” the company said.
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Twitter on Monday filed a complaint against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeking to stop the state’s investigation into its content moderation practices https://t.co/BZpiv7Ia50
— POLITICO (@politico) March 9, 2021
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