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Twitter Had Right to Suspend Account for Whatever Reason—Ninth Circuit
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A District Court determination that Twitter, Inc. (now known as X Corp.) had the unfettered right to suspend an account any time it wished to do so has been upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
District Court Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the Northern District of California on Aug. 23, 2023, dismissed claims set forth against the social media network by Taiming Zhang based on his tweeting having been blocked in November 2021 for “violating twitter rules.” Although the judge’s emphasis was on immunity under the Communications Decency Act of 1996, she also examined the claims in his 115-page pleading, one by one, and found that none was “plausible,” dismissing the complaint without leave to amend.
In finding a claim based on breach of contract to lack merit, Corley said:
“To the extent Plaintiff’s breach of contract claim is predicated on Twitter’s suspension of and refusal to reinstate his account, this claim fails because Twitter’s Terms of Service provide ‘[w]e may suspend or terminate your accounts or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any reason.’…That is, under the express terms of the Terms of Service, Twitter had the contractual right to terminate Plaintiff’s account for any reason.”
Other User
Zhang contended that Twitter wrongfully lifted his posting privileges and should, instead, have terminated those of another user. That user, he contended, used his Twitter account “to promote his porn.”
The pro se plaintiff contended that he was “lured” through Twitter postings to go to a website which caused him to be “scammed,” losing money. He concluded that the person had HIV—saying, “he would not otherwise refuse to give me his blood test results”—and sent tweets “to other gay porn stars” warning them of that.
Postings by the subject of his tweets, Zhang, were in violation of various Twitter policies.
Corley held:
“As to Twitter’s alleged breach of its various policies, Plaintiff has not alleged facts that plausibly support an inference these policies constitute a contract between Plaintiff and Twitter, and even if he could do so, the policies do not require Twitter to perform any particular action; that is, there is again no breach of a contract. For example, Twitter’s Financial Scam, Abusive Behavior, and Platform Manipulation and Spam policies do not require Twitter to suspend users suspected of violating the terms of the policies.”
Ninth Circuit Opinion
The Ninth Circuit said Friday, in an opinion signed by Senior Judges Ferdinand F. Fernandez, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, and Barry G. Silverman:
“The district court correctly found that Zhang failed to plead the required elements of each of his claims, specifically: (1) breach of contract, (2) fraud, (3) intentional infliction of emotional distress, (4) assault, (5) defamation, (6) intrusion of privacy, (7) criminal claims, and (8) California Unfair Competition Law claim….We therefore uphold the district court’s dismissal of all Zhang’s claims.”
Declining to address applicability of the Communications Decency Act, the judges said:
“We need not and do not consider the district court’s alternative ground for dismissal.”
The case is Zhang v. Twitter, Inc., 23-16125.
X Corp. was represented by Kenneth M. Trujillo Jamison and Eileen M. Ahern of the downtown Los Angeles firm of Willenken LLP.
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