California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes has filed a lawsuit against Twitter this week, suing the platform and a handful of users for $250 million. He says Twitter is shadow banning conservatives–something Republicans have been claiming for a while now and which Twitter has repeatedly denied–as well as “knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory.”
Now, we can definitely agree that Twitter has a major problem in its willingness to monitor and remove hateful and abusive content. But Nunes isn’t upset about racism or rape threats. No, his problem is specifically with the parody accounts “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow.” (He’s also suing Republican strategist Liz Mair.)
Devin Nunes’ Mom–again, a parody account–was already suspended last year. According to the complaint, “In her endless barrage of tweets, Devin Nunes’ Mom maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes’ character, honesty, integrity, ethics and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman.”
The complaint listed some specific insults, like this incredible burn: “Devin Nunes’ Mom stated that Nunes had turned out worse than Jacob Wohl.” The suit also says the account “falsely stated that Nunes would probably join the ‘Proud Boys’, ‘if it weren’t for that unfortunate ‘no masturbating’ rule,'” though it’s not specified which part of that statement is the false bit.
The official court documents also include a number of screengrabs of the account’s old tweets. They, uh, do not make Nunes look great.
Like, really not great.
Apparently this was the image @DevinNunes really, really disliked.
No one should repost it. It would be wrong, and bad. pic.twitter.com/DBADphxBD4
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 19, 2019
But again, that account hasn’t been active since last year. As for Devin Nunes’ Cow (@DevinCow), that account publishes “defamatory” content like this zinger: “Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.”
Thanks to Nunes’ lawsuit, the cow account has gone from a few thousand followers to, as of this writing, verging on 100,000 literally overnight.
We’ve gotten @DevinCow from 7,500 to over 80,000 followers overnight.
You can be part of one of the funniest things to ever happen on the internet if we can get the cow to get more followers than Devin Nunes.
Come on!
Follow @DevinCow
— andy lassner (@andylassner) March 19, 2019
Let’s try and get @DevinCow more followers than @DevinNunes
— andy lassner (@andylassner) March 19, 2019
It’s also sparked some new ideas in others.
Devin, please drop the suit against mother. Let’s talk son.
— Devin Nunes’ Dad (@NunesDad) March 19, 2019
Devin Nunes’ constituents have a lot of reasons to be angry with him. He was photographed with a group of white nationalist “Proud Boys,” he essentially admitted that the then-Republican-led House’s investigation into Donald Trump was a charade to protect the president, and he refused to attend town halls and other forums designed to let voters discuss issues with him. He is a public figure with a lot of power and some people created parody accounts to call him out on his behavior. If he thinks that’s abuse, he should take a stroll through the replies on pretty much any tweet written by one of his female colleagues.
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣Grow up. Everyone in the public eye gets mean tweets. You should see some of mine! https://t.co/yWJjdQg6EK via @NYTimes
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) March 19, 2019
The hypocrisy on display here is absolutely staggering, even by Republican Congressman standards. After all, Nunes has a history with “frivolous lawsuits.”
Last Congress, Devin Nunes cosponsored a bill called the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act”https://t.co/muQ0FhmUO7
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) March 19, 2019
I thought conservatives were supposed to be against censorship in all its forms. Do parody cow accounts not deserve these same rights to exist uncensored?
Sad to hear @youtube is censoring @prageru https://t.co/dk0OtOCznV
— Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) March 12, 2019
Or do you think it’s possible they only care about protecting freedom of speech when it’s not hurting their feelings?
Free speech warrior @benshapiro conspicuously silent about @DevinNunes suing a fictional cow for saying mean things about him on Twitter
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 19, 2019
Their incredibly delicate feelings.
Republicans: Liberals are the biggest snowflakes ever
Devin Nunes: Hold my mom and my cow
— andy lassner (@andylassner) March 19, 2019
(image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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