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Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

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Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

commandlinefan wrote: post #99
itg wrote: post #9

Will this apply to all government officials on twitter? Can twitter still ban a user if they deem the content to be harassment/etc?

Not just government officials - it seems like the same logic would apply to celebrities like Alyssa Milano who use their twitter almost exclusively as a political campaign forum.

It does not, because the First Amendment is a limit on government, and “public forum” in First Amendment case law refers to a space (including a virtual one) over which the government has ownership or control which is used by government for particular purposes. This is a case about (existing) limits on what government officials can do in venues government officials have set up for certain used.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#102

Post by ryanoshea »

ikeyany wrote: post #73
sp332 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't apply to Twitter (the company). It applies to governments.

If your account gets banned, you're unable to communicate with the government (since it is established that Twitter is the president's official communication medium). Wouldn't it thus be a violation of the first amendment?

Haven't read the full decision, but here's how I see it. Governmental agencies do not instruct users to get in touch via Twitter. There are dedicated phone lines, email addresses, offices, and websites that serve that purpose in an official capacity. Agencies who do conduct business in response to inquiries on Twitter do so as an added convenience on top of the other readily available public channels.

When Trump uses Twitter as his primary method of addressing citizens and announcing administration policies, then selectively prevents citizens from viewing those communications, he's doing something much different (in my mind) than a private company restricting the access of a person to a service whose terms of use they have violated.

The equivalence you drew doesn't seem valid — US citizens have no expectation or right to send communications to the Office of the President and have them read or acted upon. They do have that expectation/right to have equal access to public communications by the President.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#103

Post by atonse »

pcunite wrote: post #8

Has the judge read some of the comments being made? Absolute craziness in there. Some accounts should absolutely be blocked, they are repeatedly spamming and saying things you would never say in a meeting face to face. -EDIT- Funny that my comment is being down-voted. Seen everyone wants to moderate comments. If someone says something you don't like on your personal page, you should be able to stop that. You've just…

You could technically call Trump a shithead to his face and that is not unlawful. Where the Secret Service would (rightly) draw the line is at threats to his safety (like if you threatened the president).

So it's not true that you could say things on social media that you couldn't say in person. You can say a lot of things to the president in person ("you didn't get legitimately elected" "you're an idiot"). Now is that the best use of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? No. But it's definitely legal.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#104

Post by mal10c »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #90

I am not legal expert but it makes perfect sense that any government official must not deny access to information to any citizen which is easily available to another. Blocking means other person can not see trump's tweets. I believe Trump can always mute other people. Let us consider the following scenarios : - Trump blocks only black people on Twitter. - Hawaii's missile alert systems issues a real missile alert on…

Because Twitter is not a government owned entity, the government should have no right to force the use or means of use of a private tool. Now if the tool was a government utility, it would be a different story.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#105

Post by mschuster91 »

mieseratte wrote: post #77
frockington wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't tell this to the hundreds of people who reply "Drumpf will be impeached #RESIST" to every single one of his tweets. The realization that he has never read a single one of their tweets might be enough cause a heart attack

> Drumpf On a tangent, what is the deal with the "Drumpf" thing? It was his family name some time ago, so is this just the other sides' "Barack Hussein Obama" or is there more to it?

> It was his family name some time ago, so is this just the other sides' "Barack Hussein Obama" or is there more to it?

No, it's not the same thing. The Hussein thing is that the Alt-Right uses it to imply Obama being a Muslim (which he is not) and thus, by extension, a terrorist supporter/enabler.

The Drumpf thing, however, is nothing more than highlighting the family origin (which Trump actually even stated himself, per https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-drumpf/).

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#106

Post by acdha »

ikeyany wrote: post #73
sp332 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't apply to Twitter (the company). It applies to governments.

If your account gets banned, you're unable to communicate with the government (since it is established that Twitter is the president's official communication medium). Wouldn't it thus be a violation of the first amendment?

You can still communicate with the government using official channels and you can still view his tweets. His account is basically write-only so you’re only losing your ability to send messages which won’t be read.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#107

Post by mal10c »

cm2012 wrote: post #82
aksss wrote: post #64

This seems wrong on the face of it. The judge asks the rhetorical question of whether the logic changes based on whether he's president or not, and he answers his question with a "No". So this is saying that no public official can block others on Twitter. That seems like it's in the "suicide pact" column of rights defense, but then I'm not one that cares about Twitter personally. Just seems that plenty of other forum…

Most politicians don't use their Twitter feed to make policy, like Trump does. If you run a widget business, and Trump makes a tweet that says, "I ban all widgets, especially widget company x", you should have the right to see that from the source. That's the distinction the judge made - Trump uses his feed as an official government policy mouthpiece.

A mouthpiece yes, but an official way to "make policy" no. Policy is still created through official means like signing executive orders, etc.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#108

Post by chimeracoder »

ikeyany wrote: post #73
sp332 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't apply to Twitter (the company). It applies to governments.

If your account gets banned, you're unable to communicate with the government (since it is established that Twitter is the president's official communication medium). Wouldn't it thus be a violation of the first amendment?

> If your account gets banned.... Wouldn't it thus be a violation of the first amendment?

Not unless the government is the entity doing the banning (or collaborating with Twitter to ban accounts at its request).

If the government ran its own Mastodon instance, then there would be an argument to be made that it couldn't ban users on that Mastodon instance, depending on the nature of that Mastodon instance and what it's used for. But that's not what's happening. The government does not run Twitter in any way; they're simply users of the platform, and the government's ability to use features of the platform (such as the "block" feature) may be limited by existing laws, the same way the government's ability to do other things in life is limited by existing laws.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#109

Post by spookthesunset »

evan_ wrote: post #6
pacifika wrote: post #2

Don’t understand this. Blocking a person does not prevent the followers of said person to see the conversation , thus it’s not a public forum?

I agree that it's kind of a questionable decision but my understanding of it is, people can normally post public replies to tweets- but if the user blocks you, you can't post your public reply. OK (and desirable) for most people, not ok for the government to do. There's not necessarily a perfect offline equivalent but it would sort of be like if the president tried to forbid a newspaper from running an editorial next…

> I agree that it's kind of a questionable decision

I don't see what is questionable about it. Seems pretty straightforward, actually. He is an elected official who is held accountable by the public. He is widely known to make official policy statements using twitter. He can't just block citizens from reading his policy statements. That isn't how US democracy works.

> I think the more interesting part of this is the ruling that the president's "personal" twitter account is an official government instrument.

Well, considering how his "personal" twitter account is being used to make official policy statements... seems that it is no longer "personal" anymore, eh? He kinda brought that on himself, eh?

If all he was using Twitter for was posting pictures of his house-cats or something and not using it to conducting official government business, then you might have something to question.

Re: Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

#110

Post by V-2 »

People are not blocked. Only accounts are blocked. It's not the same thing at all. It's trivial (and free) to create another account; in other words, the ban is not tied to you as a person, only to certain account.

Besides, you can still read all tweets of whoever blocked you; all it takes is logging out of your blocked account, or not logging in in the first place.

They can't comment anymore, true. But by this line of reasoning, is Trump (or any president / public official, for that matter) obliged to take phone calls from everyone?

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