Alt-Right Suing Twitter? WeSearchr Starts Crowdfunding Effort To Sue Social Network For Discrimination

President Donald Trump is an active member on Twitter, and so are many of his followers. A group of those users who identify as members of the alt-right are now attempting to launch a crowdfunding effort to sue the social network for discrimination against conservative users.

The effort is taking place on WeSearchr, a crowdfunding site targeted to alt-right members that allows users to set “bounties” to get questions answered or complete specific goals.

The WeSearchr staff set a bounty to on Tuesday that takes aim at Twitter, accusing the social network of discriminating against its conservative users and censoring some of its most controversial users—many of whom are associated with the alt-right movement, an extremist wing of the conservative movement that is often associated with white nationalism.

WeSearchr hopes to sue Twitter for its alleged misdeeds, with a goal set for $250,000 to accomplish the effort. Since launching, the group has accumulated just over $3,000—a little more than one percent of its total goal.

WeSearchr posits that Twitter’s decision to permanently ban users like Milo Yiannopoulos, Chuck C. Johnson and Martin Shkreli were performed with “flimsy or non-existent pretexts”—despite all three parties actively harassing others on the platform and violating Twitter’s terms of service. Twitter also cracked down on many alt-right accounts that were in violation of its rules last year.

Worth noting is the fact WeSearchr is funded by Chuck C. Johnson, the controversial founder of GotNews.com who had been suspended from Twitter for releasing personal information of innocent people. Johnson was eventually banned from the service when he urged his followers to “take out” civil rights activist Deray McKesson—a man who he targets in the bounty for having a “close relationship” with company CEO Jack Dorsey.

The crowdfunding effort also accuses Twitter of “shadowbanning” prominent conservatives—effectively ensuring their voices are hidden from broader discussion without completely kicking them off the platform—despite little actual proof of such action other than a Breitbart report from Yiannopoulos.

Lee Phillips, the chief scientist of the Alogus Research Corporation, recently theorized the shadowban effect is more paranoia than fact, noting that he could not find a single account that had been shadowbanned on Twitter.

Despite this, WeSearchr is intent on making Twitter “the next Gawker” by suing it out of existence—the fate the popular news site was dealt when it lost a lawsuit filed by Hulk Hogan and funded by Peter Thiel after the site published a sex tape of the professional wrestler.

Ken White—an attorney at Brown White and Osborn, LLP and author on First Amendment issues— told Motherboard the attempted lawsuit would be “frivolous” and notes Twitter is “free to kick people off for speech it doesn’t like unless doing so runs afoul of a particular federal or state statute.”

WeSearchr itself has been banned from Twitter after it posted a call for information on the protestor who punched white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face. However, the site has continued to gather users around its crowdfunding effort through the hashtag #SueTwitter.

WeSearchr is keeping its crowdfunding campaign open through Jan. 24, 2020.