Klayman Sues Tech Biggies over Bias, Censorship

Activist and Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman is suing Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple in federal court in Washington on behalf of “hundreds” of members of a class of “politically conservative organizations.”

The class-action complaint filed Wednesday focuses on the documented reports of bias and censorship against the tech industry.

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The complaint points out that separate actions would result in inconsistent or varying adjudication.

“It has been revealed that defendants, each and every one of them, have engaged in a conspiracy to intentionally and willfully suppress political conservative content,” the claim states.

“This conspiracy has resulted in severe financial loss, as well as unconstitutional suppression of speech and other content, for Freedom Watch and those similarly situated.”

It accuses the tech companies of acting in concert with CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, “all of whom are owned and/or managed by persons with a leftist political ideology.”

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The complaint says the “executives” of the defendants and their compatriots “are intricately connected with former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton and still serve their interests.”

Among their actions are YouTube’s efforts to demonetize videos posted by conservatives.

YouTube is owned by Google.

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It presents several instances of censorship, citing PJ Media, the New York Times, National Review, Gizmodo and others.

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“A study conducted by Western Journal found that since the algorithm change, ‘Liberal publishers have gained about 2 percent more web traffic from Facebook than they were getting prior to the algorithm changes … On the other hand, conservative [and thus Republican] publishers have lost an average of nearly 14 percent.”

Klayman states, “These results are not coindicental. ‘Campbell Brown, a former anchor on NBC and CNN who now leads Facebooks’ news partnerships team, told attendees at a recent technology and publishing conference that Facebook would be censoring news publishers based on its own internal biases.’”

Freedom Watch itself, including its YouTube channel, has been impacted, Klayman said, because of an “illegal agreement” among defendants “to refuse to deal with conservative news and media outlets.”

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The suit alleges violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the First Amendment.

“Defendants created, operate, and control public platforms that are for public use and public benefit and invite the public to utilize their platforms as a forum for free speech. Defendants act as quasi-state actors because they regulate their public platforms, thereby regulating free speech within their public forums, Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, Apple, Instagram as well as the other social media companies or entities,” the filing says.

The complaint asks for $1 billion in general damages and an order to stop the censorship.

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