341–350 of 352 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fox News wouldn't violate the first amendment. At most, the POTUS might be prevented from using that website. (Nitpick: "free speech" is a general philosophical concept; we're talking about the 1st Amendment, which is a particular application of one of many views on that concept)
So if Trump isn't banned from using that website, where is the difference from this case?
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Death threats?
I wonder how many death threats Trump receives over Twitter and if that makes any significant portion of the total amounts of threats. (Plus now you entered the territory of "threaten a public official with death" which gets the high ranking legal authorities into gear)
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The parent wasn't saying that it does. The parent was pointing out why the logic is dubious, using a reductio: if you consider Twitter[1] a public square (as the court does), and thus you can't stop people from "petitioning the government" through it, then it's a double-edged sword: they must also protect the same speech that would be protected in a public square. It seems a more sane resolution is to treat Twitter l…
> The parent was pointing out why the logic is dubious, using a reductio: if you consider Twitter[1] a public square (as the court does The court emphatically did not find that, and, to address the footnote: > [1] technically, the subset of it involving interaction with government officials Nope, not even that. The court found the virtual space created by the @realDonaldTrump account, specifically, to be, as a result…
>The court emphatically did not find that [Twitter is a public square]
>>[1] technically, the subset of it involving interaction with government officials
>Nope, not even that
>The court found the virtual space created by the @realDonaldTrump account, specifically, to be, as a result of government action, a “public forum” under existing First Amendment case law,
Wait, what? You just said that the court did not find find Twitter to be a public square ... then you said that it found Twitter to be a public "forum". So... you're introducing a distinction between a public square and a public forum? It seems that obligates you to explain the difference between the two, or you're just contradicting yourself. And yet you didn't, or you expect it to be obvious, even though the chief way to resolve the disagreement would be to address precisely that distinction!
You also made a big show of objecting to my claim that the applicability was to a subset of Twitter, and then in the very next line said that the applicability is to "the virtual space created by the [Trump] account". Er ... yeah, that's a subset of Twitter!
Now, I agree I could have been more precise about the boundaries of this subset, but it seems either pedantic or confused on your part to object to that line right before you paraphrase the part of the decision that limits the applicability to a subset of Twitter! I honestly don't know what you think you're refuting there. Even if the bulk of my point is wrong, the footnote is correct insofar as it recognizes that the ruling is limited to certain government-related parts of Twitter, which you agree with.
>> It seems a more sane resolution is to treat Twitter like a private venue where an official addresses some members of the public
>The court hear is applying exactly the existing law of privately owned spaces in which the government opens a public interactive forum of the same type; this isn't a new rule for social media.
Yes, you can certainly claim that, and cite reasoning that says as much, but it's not responsive to my justification for why it doesn't make sense to begin with. As an attempt to ground my disagreement, I introduced a comparison to a press conference or the correspondent's dinner, and characterized Trump's Twitter interaction as being the same kind of thing "with more capacity". Many government pronouncements do not happen in an environment in which they have to permit everyone's comments -- certainly not announcements of new policy decisions.
I agree that you can copy-paste someone's decision that "hey, I'm calling this a public forum". But I gave a specific reason why it isn't. To further the discussion would require articulation of why that reasoning is flawed, not simply a repetition of the judge's original premises.
So, I appreciate that you think I erred and are trying to correct a mistake, but I just don't see how your comment makes headway: you're just introducing distinctions that you don't justify, denying claims and then apparently agreeing with them, and then reasserting things that I specifically objected to with reasoning without addressing said reasoning. I don't know what you expect such a comment to accomplish beyond showing that you can paraphrase a decision while not engaging with the precise objections to it.
Furthermore, the entire point of my comment was to clarify the OP's point, so any objection to the substance of said point should be directed at the OP's comment, armed with the greater clarity of their point that my comment offered, not to mine.
If your goal was to appear knowledgeable of the ruling and too informed for anyone to risk disagreeing with, your comment makes a lot more sense though. I don't find that to be as helpful as direct engagement with arguments though.
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I am arguing that the judge's conclusion was not soundly based on law. I am open to being shown to be incorrect.
I haven't had a chance to read the full ruling, but it seems fairly obvious that if a government official designates a particular two-way communications channel as a place for communicating official statements (the Trump administration claims his Twitter account is such a channel), then the government official is subject to some restrictions on how that channel can be policed. There was a case last year[1] where a fe…
> it seems fairly obvious that if a government official designates a particular two-way communications channel
I would not be opposed to such a law. One way or another, the first amendment is clearly not that law.
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If you truly believe having to log out to read a tweet is akin to giving up your passport, you are insane.
Yes, losing passport is exactly that. Logging out makes me unable to access normal abilities a twitter user(american citizen) has. If passport analogy doesn't suit you, try incarceration.
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I haven't had a chance to read the full ruling, but it seems fairly obvious that if a government official designates a particular two-way communications channel as a place for communicating official statements (the Trump administration claims his Twitter account is such a channel), then the government official is subject to some restrictions on how that channel can be policed. There was a case last year[1] where a fe…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibition the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemble, petition the government for redress of grievances. > it seems fairly obvious that if a government official designates a particular two-way communications channel I would not be opposed to such a law. One way or anothe…
Thank you and good night.
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We have the right to petition our government to redress grievances. As a public official, the bar for harassment is higher - for the President, I don't believe anything sent over twitter could be harassment.
so next democrat president I can write a harassment, err I mean opinion, bot to post useless opinions to everything they say blocking people with real discussion from having their floor time? OK, noted.
Surely that must mean that Twitter banning people is also a violation of the first amendment, since that prevents them from accessing the same "public square" this ruling is protecting their access to.
The first amendment doesn't apply to Twitter (the company). It applies to governments.
So, hypothetically speaking... if Trump would move to a social network owned by his friend... then Trump would not be allowed to block anyone, but it would be okay if the friend would take a hint and ban the person from the whole platform?
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…
You should try attending a city council session sometime. You'd be amazed at what council members put up with.
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Depends on how a judge rules. You could be required to find another venue or to admit women regardless. Either way, the fact that it is a private rule means it is not a public law. The government doesn't have to abide by laws you just made up for yourself on a whim. If I say "no shoes allowed on my private property" the police aren't forced to comply with that, so why would a government official at an event be requir…
The police can ignore your rules in certain special cases when they have a legal reason to enter your property without your consent. In normal circumstances, you can certainly deny them entrance if they don't take off their shoes.
If you permit them to enter, and you have a no shoes rule posted, they are free to enter with shoes. Because such a sign means fuck all in the world.