
Trump unblocks more Twitter users after U.S. court ruling - tareqak
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-twitter/trump-unblocks-more-twitter-users-after-u-s-court-ruling-idUSKCN1LE08Q
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chollida1
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 clear that information can't not be disseminated in
a way that isn't available to everyone at the same time.

being the two major ones pertinent to twitter.

Other things like claiming "funding secured" when your board, bankers and
supposed funders all claim otherwise are also bad and likely to get him in
more trouble, but are not important to the twitter disclosure.

The solution to this is to use the newswire like everyone else in the US stock
market but if he wants to use twitter, and it looks like he may no longer be
able to after the SEC is done, then he'll most likely not be able to block
anyone from seeing his tweets.

I'm not sure how else you can fulfill the very reasonable requirement of equal
disclosure to everyone otherwise.

~~~
yosito
In traditional media, there are different rules for public figures than there
are for private citizens. I think the same thing should apply to Twitter.
Verified accounts should not be able to block anyone.

~~~
slg
In hindsight it is a little weird that blocking exists as a concept at all.
When you tweet from a public account you are putting that information out into
the public. It seems silly to try to prevent certain people from seeing that
content and it is trivially easy for a user to circumvent that block by
logging out or creating a new account. Muting seems like the most logical way
for people to control who they interact with on Twitter.

~~~
danbolt
Wasn’t it removed at some point? I remember the nature of it changing but then
being reversed due to negative responses. At the time I realized people were
starting to use Twitter in ways not originally intended.

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Mithorium
Someone have a readable version? Article shows up for 250ms on my screen then
disappears leaving only the reuters header, tried switching browsers and
everything

~~~
jrace
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled on May 23 that
comments on the president’s account, and those of other government officials,
were public forums and that blocking Twitter Inc users for their views
violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on August 10 sent
the Justice Department a list of 41 accounts that had remained blocked from
Trump’s @RealDonaldTrump account. The seven users who filed suit had their
accounts unblocked in June.

The 41 blocked users include a film producer, screenwriter, photographer and
author who had criticized President Trump or his policies. At least 20 of
those individuals said on Twitter that Trump had unblocked them on Tuesday.

The 41 users were not a comprehensive list of those blocked by Trump. Rosie
O’Donnell, a comedian, said on Twitter late Tuesday that she remained blocked.

The White House did not immediately comment late Tuesday.

The ruling has raised novel legal issues. The Internet Association, a trade
group that represents Twitter, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com, and Alphabet Inc,
filed a brief in the case earlier this month that did not back Trump or the
blocked users but urged the court to “limit its decision to the unique facts
of this case so that its decision does not reach further than necessary or
unintentionally disrupt the modern, innovative Internet.”

Trump has made his Twitter account, with 54.1 million followers, an integral
and controversial part of his presidency, using it to promote his agenda,
announce policy and attack critics. He has blocked many critics, preventing
them from directly responding to his tweets.

The U.S. Justice Department said the ruling was “fundamentally misconceived”
arguing Trump’s account “belongs to Donald Trump in his personal capacity and
is subject to his personal control, not the control of the government.”

Buchwald rejected the argument that Trump’s First Amendment rights allowed him
to block people with whom he did not wish to interact.

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.

The Internet Association said the court “should make clear that this case does
not implicate the overwhelming majority of social media accounts throughout
the Internet.”

“Despite any First Amendment status that this court might find in the
‘interactive spaces’ associated with President Trump’s account, Twitter
retains authority to revoke access to both his account and the account of any
user seeking

to comment on President Trump’s account,” the group said.

FILE PHOTO: The masthead of U.S. President Donald Trump's @realDonaldTrump
Twitter account with a message about OPEC policy is seen on April 20, 2018.
@realDonaldTrump/Handout via REUTERS It also warned “there is a considerable
risk that any decision that may recognize isolated public forums on Twitter
will be misunderstood to hold that Twitter, too, can be subject to First
Amendment scrutiny. ...Twitter itself is not a state actor when it blocks or
withdraws access to its account-holders or users, and it is therefore not
subject to the First Amendment’s restraints.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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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.

~~~
hello_marmalade
Sure, but that's exactly the problem. The President having direct control over
the visibility of somoene's speech. It's one thing if someone simply isn't
popular, and therefore their speech isn't widely seen. It's another for the
President to specifically suppress your speech.

It really does constitute a first amendment violation, because it is an active
decision to suppress the specific speech of specific individuals.

~~~
iand
How does one account muting another suppress their speech? Everyone else still
sees the tweet.

~~~
skybrian
Apparently, muting is fine. Blocking prevents comments from showing up in
replies. It's a form of moderation.

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jasonkostempski
I get blocking incoming messages. Why is there a feature for blocking publicly
broadcast messages available even to annonymos users?

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

~~~
mikeash
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.

~~~
psergeant
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.

~~~
FireBeyond
The issue is that he had no interest in using the @potus account, because his
narcissism wanted the follower bump on his personal Twitter account.

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allthenews
I don't know what is more absurd: that the president uses a private medium
like twitter as a seemingly primary channel to communicate with the nation, or
that a private entity is being forced to operate as a public, regulated forum.

~~~
dexen
>that the president uses a private medium like twitter as a seemingly primary
channel to communicate with the nation

This has happened several times in the history, as new technologies became
common. Newspapers, radio, (live) TV, social media. Each expansion into the
new communication channel caused major change in campaigning style, and
(re-)connected the candidates with the common citizen, as the new medium
owners had relatively small influence on popular opinion by themselves [1].
Also each time the political old guard was caught by surprise, still focusing
on the medium of yesteryear, very much like the 2016 presidential elections.

It's worth noting Obama was a social media savvy candidate and to large extent
his campaign pre-saged what went down in the 2016 elections.

[1] IMO all the Twitters and Facebooks _owners_ still have relatively less
sway than the TV and older media.

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paulpauper
If Trump (or anyone) blocks you but you still want to read his tweets:

Chrome incognito mode or log out of Twitter

problem fixed lol

~~~
craftyguy
El Presidente should not have the power to exclude certain citizens from their
communications.

~~~
jamesrom
You must not have read the post you are replying too.

~~~
craftyguy
Yea, I read it. It was a workaround for something that shouldn't happen in the
first place. I assume you read it too?

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factsaresacred
So how does this fit into the "Twitter is a private company" argument when
users complain about their free speech rights after being suspended?

If one's account is suspended they cannot - by definition - access Trump's
tweets. This is similar reasoning as that given in court: "comments on the
president’s account [are] public forums and that blocking Twitter Inc users
for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution".

If Twitter suspends someone for their views are they violating free speech
under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

Obviously there's many ways to interact with Twitter while suspended -
similarly there are many ways to read Trump's tweets while blocked.

I don't have a take, I'm just curious as to what this may lead to.

~~~
bumholio
> If one's account is suspended they cannot - by definition - access Trump's
> tweets.

Since that is clearly not true, one practical effect is that it's setting a
very low bar the difficulty one should overcome before claiming they are
excluded from official communication by the government.

If the necessity of logging out then logging back in (or merely opening an
Incognito window with _a single click_ ) is a rights violation, then surely
not having any kind of access to online communication by the government is a
much worse violation. So the government should either cease to use the
internet or should make it available to all citizens as a basic citizen right.

------
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.

~~~
bertil
The amicus brief from the Internet Alliance makes that fear very clear: they
demanded clarification that those decisions only apply to interactions with
accounts that are clearly used as policy tool by the US Government.

For me, the fact that this is the personal account and not @potus is the
outlying factor. The court was explicit that, because policy was announced
from that account, it made it a Government tool, subject to a lot of rules. To
me, this is a smart move, warning the next President: make sure that all
communications where you use the power of the office are from @potus, because
otherwise, National Archive will get into your DMs. If encourages to define a
line between the West and the East Wing (the personal residency) and extend it
to social media.

~~~
rpiguy
Yes but if the primary argument is based around the idea that everyone must
have access to these “public channels” because their first amendment rights
guarantee them a right to the information from the President and to be part of
the conversation then a plausible argument can be made that Twitter, etc.
cannot ban anyone from their site, or Facebook for that matter since Trump
also uses it as a public forum. Even Nazis get their first amendment rights.

Furthermore this opens the door for a President to turn any private space into
a “public forum” by using it for official government business.

The whole amicus just opens a Pandora’s box and would likely be struck down if
the President cared enough to challenge it. It benefits Trump more to let this
ruling stand as he attempts to muscle Twitter, Facebook, etc. into changing
the hate speech rules they use to suspend conservative accounts.

~~~
bertil
The argument in the First Amendment is that _the Government_ cannot limit the
right to access those public channels. If the paper mill union thinks that
your opinions are abhorrent, they can refuse to sell you paper. Even if the
Government demands that all communication be written.

Otherwise, because you can reach the Government by phone, you logic would mean
phone companies are not allow to cut you the service for not paying it.

