Twitter ended Donald Trump's nearly 12-year run when it shuttered his account in January, 2020. Twitter's counterpunch comes as US states, in addition to federal lawmakers and governments outside the US, are cracking down on tech companies they see as having amassed too much power in the past decade. This includes antitrust and anti-monopoly regulation, internet privacy laws as well as attempts to regulate how platforms like Twitter, Facebook and others moderate their sites. Trump getting banned for life from Twitter and suspended temporarily from Facebook after inciting the January 6 Capitol riots only reinforced it. In launching his investigation, Paxton cited the First Amendment when he says tech companies' banishment of Trump "chills free speech" and "wholly silences" those who disagree with them.

Source: New Zealand Herald March 09, 2021 03:53 UTC