Twitter’s TOS Formation Upheld–Taddeo-Waite v. X

TL;DR: a court upheld X’s TOS formation. This is not a new or surprising result, especially against a pro se plaintiff.

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The plaintiff claims that Twitter failed to remove a post about his young daughter. He sued Twitter in Connecticut. Twitter sought to send the case to N.D. Tex. as specified in its TOS.

The court didn’t include the screenshot in the opinion, and the litigants are confused over what screen applies. Among other screenshots, Twitter submitted this screenshot captured from the Wayback Machine (seriously, Twitter, that’s your TOS formation source of evidence? Do better).

The court sides with Twitter even though the plaintiff signed up for his Twitter account using Google’s single-sign-on (SSO):

the Court finds that the Relevant Terms and the forum-selection clauses therein were reasonably communicated to Plaintiff. Plaintiff asserts that he signed up for an X account through his Google account, rather than by using his email address. Defendants explain that when users sign up through Google, they must begin at the X homepage. On the homepage, X’s Terms of Service are hyperlinked in bright blue directly between (1) buttons for users to “Sign up with Google,” “Sign up with Apple,” or “Create account” and (2) a prompt asking the users if they “Already have an account?” and directing them to “Sign in.” The Terms of Service are accompanied by a reminder that “[b]y singing up, you agree to the Terms of Service.”…the Court is persuaded that this process satisfies the “reasonably communicated” standard.

You can’t even see the call-to-action language in this screenshot, so I would vote that it was not reasonably communicated at all. At minimum, this formation surely didn’t survive Chabolla and Godun. But it’s good enough to steamroller a pro se litigant.

The court bolsters its conclusion because the plaintiff doubled-down on Twitter and purchased a premium account (seriously, dude?). The court says:

even if the Court were to accept Plaintiff’s argument that signing up through Google somehow prevented him from seeing a forum-selection clause among the Terms of Service, that still does not account for why Plaintiff would have been unaware of the second forum-selection clause set forth in the Purchaser Terms of Service at the time he purchased an X Premium subscription….

Defendants state that, in completing the subscription, Plaintiff would have been required to click a “Subscribe & Pay” button, directly beneath which appeared the sentence: “By subscribing, you agree to our Purchaser Terms of Service.” The words “Purchaser Terms of Service” were both underlined and bolded and contained a hyperlink directing users to a webpage where the Purchaser Terms could be reviewed in full. Accordingly, the Court finds that, contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion that he first encountered the Purchaser Terms of Service only after completing payment, Plaintiff would necessarily have been presented with—and had the opportunity to review—the Purchaser Terms of Service before purchasing an X Premium subscription. And those terms, which were both underlined and bolded and contained a hyperlink, were therefore reasonably communicated to him

Again, the court doesn’t show the screenshot. Twitter submitted this screengrab of the Purchaser TOS formation:

This appears to be a carefully cropped excerpt of the TOS formation page. A more inquisitive judge would have demanded to see the whole page, not this magnified view, so that it could see the TOS formation process in the broader context. This court doesn’t make that inquiry, so Twitter gets away with it.

Twitter got away with its TOS formation practices in a pro se case, but Twitter’s TOS formation as evidenced in the screenshots seems wildly outdated and vulnerable to challenge in a more contested case. Also recall that Twitter suffered a pretty bad unconscionability ruling last year.

The venue won’t ultimately matter in this case. The relocation of the case from Connecticut to N.D. Tex. only delays the inevitable. This case is doomed due to Section 230, among other reasons.

Case Citation: Taddeo-Waite v. X Corp., 2025 WL 3237422 (D. Conn. Nov. 20, 2025)