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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

#141

Post by RIMR »

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…

More importantly, blocking someone on Twitter prevents them from evoking your Twitter handle or retweeting you.

So, in the President's case, if someone is retweeting him and criticizing his words, or calling him out by his Twitter handle in a way that he doesn't like, he can block them and literally prevent them from posting certain content about him.

This is mindbogglingly unethical.

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

#142

Post by chimeracoder »

acdha wrote: post #134
bcheung wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block also makes it so people can't harass you. I think this is an important distinction. By saying you can't block someone the judge is also saying you can't ignore someone who is harassing you. Anyone who isn't logged in can still see it. They can just open an incognito window. They aren't really blocked from viewing his tweets. It's unfortunate that the 2 are tied together into the same function. This would be a m…

He could still mute someone which would keep their tweets from showing up but not prevent them from viewing his. This is also probably moot since verified accounts reportedly have even better options for filtering out messages than normal users.

> This is also probably moot since verified accounts reportedly have even better options for filtering out messages than normal users.

Verified accounts don't. We have an extra tab to view only notifications from other verified users, but that's it.

If you have a large volume of notifications (e.g. a tweet goes viral), they give you a modal to prompt you to set up filters, but AFAIK those filters aren't limited to verified users. A non-verified user would still get that modal, which is just pointing you towards features already in the Settings page.

Source: am verified on Twitter, and also have had tweets popular enough to trigger that modal.

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

#143

Post by koolba »

giarc wrote: post #122
koolba wrote: post #114

> The judge said the comment section of Trump’s personal account, @realDonaldTrump, is a public forum and that blocking users on the basis of political speech is a violation of their free-speech rights under the First Amendment. If this applied to @potus I might agree with it but applying it to his personal account is rubbish. You could easily extend that same logic to say that any elected official, at any level of g…

But is it his personal account anymore? It's a verified account with the description of "45th President of the United States of America". When he speaks (tweets) he speaks as the POTUS. Doesn't matter if it's from the @potus account or @realdonaldtrump account.

> But is it his personal account anymore?

Yes. For example one of his tweets from earlier today isn't a matter of public policy, it's his opinion on the current state of affairs: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/99928232531686604...

> It's a verified account with the description of "45th President of the United States of America".

Many people on Twitter have "Works @company" or "$TITLE as Company" on their verified accounts. That doesn't make their account the property of their employer. It's purely a declarative, factual, statement.

> When he speaks (tweets) he speaks as the POTUS. Doesn't matter if it's from the @potus account or @realdonaldtrump account.

I'm saying it does. Whether it's in a personal capacity or public capacity matters. In this case there's a clear separation too as he's got access to the @potus and he seems to use that for official business.

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

#144

Post by amarkov »

paulddraper wrote: post #119
cmiles74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing Trump to use Twitter. They are saying that if he uses Twitter, he must leave his tweets open to all the public and not a subset. President Trump could always choose to close his account if he finds this requirement to be too onerous.

Do his Gmail emails need to be open to all the public? His Slack messages? His Facebook posts? I don't see how anyone, president or otherwise, can't chose whom they send messages to.

He can certainly send private emails, Slack messages, or even Twitter DMs. What he can't do is publicly broadcast his tweets to the world, and then exclude people from them on political grounds.

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

#145

Post by erezyehuda »

paulddraper wrote: post #119
cmiles74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing Trump to use Twitter. They are saying that if he uses Twitter, he must leave his tweets open to all the public and not a subset. President Trump could always choose to close his account if he finds this requirement to be too onerous.

Do his Gmail emails need to be open to all the public? His Slack messages? His Facebook posts? I don't see how anyone, president or otherwise, can't chose whom they send messages to.

He can send messages at his discretion. With Twitter, however, tweets are (in this case) considered public announcements, with blocked people being exceptions on a personal level, and the ruling is that he is not allowed to make those exceptions. He still has access to direct messages, AFAIK. With Slack and Facebook, I can imagine comparable situations arising with similar principles.

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

#146

Post by megaman22 »

Trump has multiple twitter accounts. His primary one is @realDonaldTrump, which he's been using since 2009, long before he was a government figure. This is his private citizen Twitter account, as far as I'm concerned, and he can do whatever he damn well pleases there.

If he were to block people from his @POTUS President Donald Trump account, then I might take issue with that.

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

#147

Post by ikeyany »

chimeracoder wrote: post #108
ikeyany wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Can we use a more common example?

If one of the ways to interact with the executive branch is by calling the white house, wouldn't telecoms banning you from having a phone number be a more similar analogy?

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

#148

Post by RIMR »

ballenf wrote: post #127
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…

Doesn't it just mean you have to click one button, "logout", to read the tweets?

Yeah, and now you can't respond to anything he says. You've had your voice taken away. The only way back into the conversation is to create a new Twitter account (in violation of the Twitter TOS).

And if you log back in with the blocked account, and try to tweet @realDonaldTrump, it will prevent you from posting because he blocked you, preventing you from using his Twitter handle in any way.

You also cannot retweet him anymore, which is a common way of publicly condemning the things he says.

In the hands of the President, the block feature is a powerful censorship tool.

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

#149

Post by acdha »

chimeracoder wrote: post #142
acdha wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could still mute someone which would keep their tweets from showing up but not prevent them from viewing his. This is also probably moot since verified accounts reportedly have even better options for filtering out messages than normal users.

> This is also probably moot since verified accounts reportedly have even better options for filtering out messages than normal users. Verified accounts don't. We have an extra tab to view only notifications from other verified users, but that's it. If you have a large volume of notifications (e.g. a tweet goes viral), they give you a modal to prompt you to set up filters, but AFAIK those filters aren't limited to ve…

I think my impression might have been obsolete dating back before Twitter opened the quality filter & the other options up to general users.

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

#150

Post by abiox »

evan_ wrote: post #133
spookthesunset wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> He can't just block citizens from reading his policy statements. That isn't how US democracy works. if that was the crux of the issue, the ruling would be "stop making policy statements on twitter." The vast majority of US citizens don't use twitter and a sizable portion don't even have access to a twitter-capable device.

> if that was the crux of the issue, the ruling would be "stop making policy statements on twitter."

i don't think that sort of thing is within the purview of the court.

> The vast majority of US citizens don't use twitter and a sizable portion don't even have access to a twitter-capable device.

afaik there isn't a way to make statements in a manner that will reach all citizens.

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