Devin Nunes’ ludicrous $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, explained

Enlarge / Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in 2018. (credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

A lot of people on Twitter have been criticizing and mocking Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and he's not going to take it anymore. On Monday, he sued several of his online critics-as well as Twitter itself-for defamation, negligence, and conspiracy. He claims that his critics' harsh words have cost him $250 million in "pain, insult, embarrassment, humiliation, emotional distress and mental suffering, and injury to his personal and professional reputations."

Eric Goldman, a legal scholar at Santa Clara University, isn't optimistic about Nunes's chances. "There were so many obvious examples in the complaint of tweets that were clearly not defamatory," Goldman told Ars in a phone conversation. "It's not a lawsuit I would have wanted to bring, as a lawyer or as a plaintiff."

Nunes will face a particularly uphill battle with respect to Twitter, Prof. Goldman argues. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives online platforms like Twitter broad immunity against liability for the writings of their users. "Twitter is clearly going to qualify for Section 230," Goldman says. And that means that Nunes won't get a dollar-to say nothing of $250 million-from the social media giant.

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