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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

#211

Post by freedomben »

droopybuns wrote: post #171
freedomben wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if true, that's a totally subjective standard that can't be applied consistently. One person's "political speech" is another person's "troll."

By that reasoning, this Judge’s ruling must be totally subjective. https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/17/fbi-apprehends-troll-for...

That case isn't about "trolling," it's about causing physical harm to someone through electronic means. It's more equivalent to electronic warfare. I don't equate trolling (which is annoying, and irritating) with electronic warfare (which could literally kill you).

And if it isn't subjective, then what is the objective measure that you use to determine if something is "trolling" or not?

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

#212

Post by s73v3r_ »

megaman22 wrote: post #146

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.

No. @realDonaldTrump ceased being a personal account when he started using it for official business.

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

#214

Post by s73v3r_ »

3pt14159 wrote: post #210
s73v3r_ wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. He can mute them. But they should not be any more inconvenienced than anyone else who follows him.

Then they can still respond. I'm no fan of Trump, but I understand wanting to reduce the noise in my Twitter feed.

Right, but he's not going to see it. But regardless of whether or not Trump wants that noise on his twitter feed, he's stuck with it for as long as it's an official government account.

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

#215

Post by JasonFruit »

Wait, any public official? So the elected school board members in my town can't block me on Twitter if I go on crazy racist tirades, as long as they're political in nature? How about the dogcatcher? He can't block PETA animal rights screed accounts? And doesn't being forced to let cranks interact with prominent accounts increase those cranks' visibility? Is that forcing the prominent person to promote speech with which they disagree?

I think there's a lot of nuance this opinion doesn't address.

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

#216

Post by xienze »

sp332 wrote: post #15
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?

This is covered in the quote in the 4th paragraph. It applies to all government officials, but it only covers reactions to political statements. Harassment is still a valid reason to block someone. If they like a sports team the official doesn't, that's probably valid too.

> It applies to all government officials, but it only covers reactions to political statements. Harassment is still a valid reason to block someone.

And if the reaction to every single Trump tweet is “you’re scum I hope you die REEEEEE!”, does that person get a ban? Probably if the official’s anyone other than Trump, I’d guess. Seriously, you folks should look at the people banned, it’s a bunch of losers that would auto post some variant of “you’re an asshole” ten seconds after every Tweet, and they would rocket to the top of the reply list. In a sane world that would be considered harassment and not a valid reaction to a political statement, but whatever.

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

#217

Post by TechieKid »

rdtsc wrote: post #196
amarkov wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What he can't do is publicly broadcast his tweets to the world, and then exclude people from them on political grounds. What if he blocks them on non-political grounds. Maybe they made fun of his mother, or dog, or threatened to throw dirty socks on his lawn, should be be able to block them then?

While I realize the article/judge's opinion specifically calls out political speech, I'm fairly sure that applies to all speech, and the political speech subset was probably chosen by the plaintiffs as an easier path to victory.

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

#218

Post by logfromblammo »

chimeracoder wrote: post #156
ikeyany wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? No, because that's not what this ruling does. This ruling says that the White House can't block incoming calls from a specific number. (Though even that's not really a great analogy, because phone numbers are not considered to correspond uniquely…

You always have the option to communicate with the government via first-class letter delivered by the US Postal Service, or by showing up in person during the openly published hours of operation.

If the government, for some reason, decided to only communicate via telephone calls, there would still be no duty on any private phone company to provide anyone with the ability to call the government. The government would implicitly require itself to start up and operate a public telephone company, so that any person unwilling or unable to make phone calls via a private company could use it to communicate with the government instead.

In all likelihood, this would mean that VoIP phone booths would appear in every post office, and only calls from those phones to phones registered to government offices would be connected. They wouldn't even necessarily have to use phone numbers or connect to the PSTN; a .gov or .us SIP registration server would do.

For private services, if the government uses them at all, it must use them in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner. The private company has no duty to enforce this on its government users, or to police their behavior.

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

#219

Post by daveguy »

xienze wrote: post #200
RIMR wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> Yeah, and now you can't respond to anything he says. You've had your voice taken away. Not really. I mean, what did we do before Twitter came along?

Before Twitter came along the president didn't have the legal ability to prevent you from criticizing him in any other venue either.

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

#220

Post by DeepYogurt »

JasonFruit wrote: post #215

Wait, any public official? So the elected school board members in my town can't block me on Twitter if I go on crazy racist tirades, as long as they're political in nature? How about the dogcatcher? He can't block PETA animal rights screed accounts? And doesn't being forced to let cranks interact with prominent accounts increase those cranks' visibility? Is that forcing the prominent person to promote speech with whi…

Maybe this will lead to the end of twitter use by public officials :)
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