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Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

reuters.com

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Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

educationdata wrote: post #3

Does this mean all public officials are not allowed to block twitter users? Or this court ruling only works on Trump?

> Does this mean all public officials are not allowed to block twitter users?

If the use of their account meets certain legal criteria which make it a limited public forum, yes; that's generally true of official government accounts, whether of an office or office holder, but can be true of notionally personal accounts if used for government purposes (as the court has evidence, including White House statements, was the case for Trump's “personal” account.)

Note that while Trump's Twitter account is the highest visibility case on this issue, there have been a number of similar cases regarding local government offices and officials accounts on various social media platforms with the same general result before the case about Trump's account was filed.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#22

Post by bumholio »

> Trump could “mute” users, meaning he would not see their tweets while they could still respond to his, she said, without violating their free speech rights.

Herein lies the problem: Trump does not want to block his critics from expressing their thoughts - he can't do that anyway. Nor can he truly block them from seeing his tweets. He wants their replies not to be part of the conversation started by his tweets. They can still comment, on their own pages, in their own articles, but their comments will not have similar visibility to the people that follow Donald Trump and related conversations.

And I think the court overreached to call it a violation of the rights to free speech. Because what the commenters really want is visibility, they want to piggy back on the large audience Trump's tweets have and exploit the way Twitter's algorithm highlights such replies, especially if they are 'considered important' though their own retweets, likes etc.

For example, I want to produce an one hour rant about how Donald Trump is a cretin that damages the US and the world, and have it uploaded on the White House website - an official communication tool of the US government - so that it has proper visibility. But the White House can rightfully deny that request without violating my freedom of speech. Twitter is a multi-user version of a similar software, which unlike whitehouse.gov is configured by default to allow such posts on other's users pages.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#23

Post by compsciphd »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

In a slightly related topic to blocking people on twitter, Elon Musk is being investigated by the SEC for a whole whack of things he shouldn't have done. 1) Release material information without alerting the exchange to stop trading and 2) and this is the tie in, releasing said information on his personal twitter account. Now this is normally fine based on RegFD but he has blocked people on twitter and RegFD is very c…

I think one can make the argument that Trump and Musk might be different.

Trump by blocking users doesn't prevent the users from seeing the content (i.e. they can log out and see the content). What it does do is prevent the user from easily engaging with the president (i.e. why its a free speech issue). It's basically saying that users A, B, and C can easily engage, but by blocking D, we are going to put a road block that makes it difficult for D.

In the case of Musk, if one is claiming that blocking is discriminating who can see the content, one can make the claim that this really isn't true, all blocking does is make it more difficult to interface with musk, not to see the content.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#24

Post by psergeant »

mikeash wrote: post #17
educationdata wrote: post #3

Does this mean all public officials are not allowed to block twitter users? Or this court ruling only works on Trump?

Public officials would be fine blocking people on their personal accounts as long as they draw a clear line between their personal and official accounts. Trump ran afoul of the law here because he didn’t do that.

Despite being downvotes, this is on the money. Had he maintained some kind of separation between himself and the office on Twitter, it’d have been fine, but he announces policy change first on Twitter, for example.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#25

Post by rpiguy »

The judiciary acting against Trump in this case may ultimately work against them. This judge just invented the concept of free speech rights on the internet, even on a private platform like Twitter.

I fully understand that legally this is very different the issue of Facebook or Twitter "censoring" conservatives (and as a conservative, I actually support their right as private companies to operate as they see fit), and that the judge's ruling is on the basis of access to information citing the first amendment right to free speech, but this ruling opens the door into an uncharted legal area.

Once the government gets intwined in these kinds of issues there are usually unforeseen consequences.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#26

Post by beager »

bumholio wrote: post #22

> Trump could “mute” users, meaning he would not see their tweets while they could still respond to his, she said, without violating their free speech rights. Herein lies the problem: Trump does not want to block his critics from expressing their thoughts - he can't do that anyway. Nor can he truly block them from seeing his tweets. He wants their replies not to be part of the conversation started by his tweets. They…

I wonder if the decision comes down to that some people have the ability to be a part of the conversation on Twitter, but not the people that Trump has blocked, and therefore that's considered unequal treatment.

To follow your analogy, nobody can post their podcast on the White House's website. If Donald Trump somehow had replies completely turned off for his Twitter, I don't think a case could be made that first amendment rights were being infringed.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#27

Post by jrockway »

mortenjorck wrote: post #7
chollida1 wrote: post #5

In a slightly related topic to blocking people on twitter, Elon Musk is being investigated by the SEC for a whole whack of things he shouldn't have done. 1) Release material information without alerting the exchange to stop trading and 2) and this is the tie in, releasing said information on his personal twitter account. Now this is normally fine based on RegFD but he has blocked people on twitter and RegFD is very c…

With Twitter’s gradual shift from chronological timeline to overeager algorithmic shuffle, even if Musk unblocks everyone, users could conceivably not be served a tweet that would fall under SEC regulation based solely on the algorithm deciding they would “engage” more with other content.

I'm not sure I agree. I assume that the SEC is fine if you take out an ad in the New York Times to announce your news, but that requires that people know to read the ads there, that they can afford a copy of the newspaper, etc. There is no such thing as a method of notifying everyone simultaneously. Posting to a public Twitter account is as good as anything else.

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#28

Post by bumholio »

beager wrote: post #26
bumholio wrote: post #22

> Trump could “mute” users, meaning he would not see their tweets while they could still respond to his, she said, without violating their free speech rights. Herein lies the problem: Trump does not want to block his critics from expressing their thoughts - he can't do that anyway. Nor can he truly block them from seeing his tweets. He wants their replies not to be part of the conversation started by his tweets. They…

I wonder if the decision comes down to that some people have the ability to be a part of the conversation on Twitter, but not the people that Trump has blocked, and therefore that's considered unequal treatment. To follow your analogy, nobody can post their podcast on the White House's website. If Donald Trump somehow had replies completely turned off for his Twitter, I don't think a case could be made that first ame…

Well, that discrimination exists on the current White House site. I just went there and on the front page I found this article, that quotes some people friendly to Trump's policies, many of them (ironically) sourced from tweets:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/wtas-support...

So why should these people be cited, but not others critical to the administration? Who gets to make that decision, and why can't they make a similar decision on Twitter itself?

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#29

Post by benmowa »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

In a slightly related topic to blocking people on twitter, Elon Musk is being investigated by the SEC for a whole whack of things he shouldn't have done. 1) Release material information without alerting the exchange to stop trading and 2) and this is the tie in, releasing said information on his personal twitter account. Now this is normally fine based on RegFD but he has blocked people on twitter and RegFD is very c…

if i can access the tweets via twitter without logging in, how can someone block me?

Re: Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling

#30

Post by lovich »

jrockway wrote: post #27
mortenjorck wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Twitter’s gradual shift from chronological timeline to overeager algorithmic shuffle, even if Musk unblocks everyone, users could conceivably not be served a tweet that would fall under SEC regulation based solely on the algorithm deciding they would “engage” more with other content.

I'm not sure I agree. I assume that the SEC is fine if you take out an ad in the New York Times to announce your news, but that requires that people know to read the ads there, that they can afford a copy of the newspaper, etc. There is no such thing as a method of notifying everyone simultaneously. Posting to a public Twitter account is as good as anything else.

There's a difference between you possibly being unaware of where to find such information vs someone actively blocking you.
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