Dallas, TX — The American Conservative Union (ACU) announced on Wednesday that it is joining several leading center-right organizations in a class-action lawsuit against the Big Tech oligopoly. The lawsuit was filed by representatives of former President Donald Trump and the America First Policy Institute. ACU hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The suit states that Google, Facebook, and Twitter have harmed ACU and other plaintiffs by systematically censoring its social media content.

“It is my honor to stand alongside President Trump and the brave citizens from across the country who had the courage to stand up to Big Tech, even though they have little power, except for their rights enshrined in the Constitution, including the First Amendment, which is the birthright of every American,” said ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp. “This lawsuit will break the stranglehold Big Tech has over our freedom to speak.”

John P. Coale, lead counsel for President Trump’s major class-action against Big Tech, will appear at CPAC 2021 on Saturday, July 10th to give update on the thousands of people who are joining the lawsuit.

ACU notes that Google wrongfully removed videos of the CPAC 2021 conference. Prior to the videos of President Donald Trump’s CPAC 2021 speech being removed by Google, they had received 31 million views on Google’s YouTube platform. YouTube representatives told ACU that the speech was removed because ACU did not offer context on what YouTube determined to be “election disinformation.”

ACU also notes that in April 2016, Facebook suppressed CPAC 2015 content from its trending section. Gizmodo reported that a Facebook contractor “decided that there was too much CPAC content in the news, so prevented coverage from entering the conversation.”

ACU also notes that its various Twitter accounts lost more than 11,000 followers in just six months, and ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp’s account lost roughly 47,000 followers in just eight days in early 2021. Twitter offered no explanation of any of these cases of missing followers; however, it is clear that Twitter is “shadow-banning” ACU’s content.

During the 2018 midterm elections, Facebook removed several of ACU’s digital ads, asserting that the content was in violation of their “community standards.” ACU contacted a Facebook representative, who told ACU that the discontinuation of the ads was based on the inclusion of an image of Kathy Griffin holding up a prop of the bloodied head of Donald Trump. ACU edited out the image, and the ads were allowed to proceed; however other users such as NowThis Politics, Yahoo News, TMZ and dozens of other Facebook users have racked up millions of views on posts containing that same image.

ACU has urged Americans to contact their offices with information about the ways Big Tech has restricted their First Amendment rights in hopes of advancing the lawsuit and ending censorship online.

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