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Twitter Users Blocked By Trump Sue, Claim @realDonaldTrump Is Public Forum (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A handful of Twitter users, backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday, claiming their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump handle. The suit claims that Trump's Twitter feed is a public forum and an official voice of the president. Excluding people from reading or replying to his tweets -- especially because they tweeted critical comments -- amounts to a First Amendment breach, according to the lawsuit.
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
@realDonaldTrump IS NOT a public forum. Is the personal Twitter account of Mr. Donald J. Trump.
@POTUS is a public forum, as is the account of the President Of The United States.
The lawsuit soud be about Mr. Donald J. Trump using his PERSONAL twitter Account to conduct matters of state and public interest...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I've heard this multiple times, and I don't get it.
I hate Trump, but this is ridiculous.
If Trump chooses to ignore them... that's fine. They don't have a right to be heard by Trump.
They're still free to use Twitter.
This is the kind of utter nonsense that's likely to get us a second Trump term, making everybody on the ant-Trump side look like complete morons.
(And no, I didn't vote for the SOB.)
I don't think that's going to work. The White House and most if not all Senators and Congressmen have web pages for many years and have never given up the right to control what goes on them.
Free speech does not mean that the government has to publish whatever you want to say. When the president gives a speech he does not have to give up the microphone to you.
Further, if this actually got to court they could point out that the plaintiffs have multiple other avenues to having their voiced heard. There is no constitutional reason it has to be on the president's twitter feed.
Big Meh
It's a private forum when the left uses to censor people. But it's suddenly a public forum when they are the ones being censored.
I mean, I laughed at first, but then I thought to myself, can't politicians have people removed during town halls if they feel they are being belligerent?
maybe the WH should turn the video back on.
we need snaps for the #WinterIsHere snap filter
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. If we succeed in getting rid of Cheeto Benito, the 63 million voters who elected him will just elect somebody even less ethical, less intelligent, and less qualified.
The real question is, how can we disenfranchise 63 million heavily-armed idiots without starting a civil war? If we do nothing, these Bible-thumping assmonkeys will destroy our country as certainly as any civil war would.
This lawsuit will legitimize the idea that American citizens can criticize the President without consequences. The reason they were blocked on Twitter was because they said unkind or unfavorable things about our Dear Leader. The Great Orange Clown simply cannot have that.
/s tag?)
The media is so unkind. And so unfair! And people say bad things about the president. And life is unfair!
All past presidents have had bad things said about them. Look back at the things said of Obama. Or Bill Clinton. Or Republican presidents like George W Bush, or H W Bush, or Regan. That was then. Today the Great Orange Clown should not have to abide any negative remarks, thoughts, or political cartoons. This criticism must be stopped! Waaaaah! I need to have a nap before my Twitter meltdown! Waaaaah!
(do I need to put an
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
... just breathe... in.... out.... breathe. This too shall pass.
Donald Trump is no different than anyone else to the extent that he has every right to have a personal social media account and some measure of privacy for that. But the problem is when he mixes his personal platform to talk with the bully pulpit of a public office (remember Hillary Clinton's private email server?) If you want to have a Twitter account, make it @DJtheprez and then get into petty public feuds with *that* and make your other account private.
"Creimer and the Dick Pics on Slashdot"
(Tamarian for "pubic forum")
2671!
With any luck, Hillary will run again. If not, the Ds will pivot left.
and on and on - why dont they just go and shoot the guy. At least we would not have to watch this nonsense go on.
The fascinating thing is that nobody seems to be bothered by how rotten the USA political system is and about the actual damaging information on Clinton as if the fact that Russians delivered anything nulled these other facts. Well guess USians deserve the system they live in.
What I see as a problem is that the political caste has alienated itself from the rest of the society everywhere else too. Whoever gets elected the same shit goes on. Not even referendum is being respected as the last on in Holland shows. If things go on like this we will need a proper war or some other disaster to divert attention from shenanigans of the new nobles. This or proper surveillance suits that can also drop stuff like child pr0n into people's accounts or disable access to liquidity.
If you want to talk about a love/hate relationship, don't look at the media, look at them and Trump :P
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-tweets-official-statements-spicer-says-n768931
by Ali Vitali
WASHINGTON — It's official — the president's tweets, that is.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump's tweets should be taken as official statements, contradicting other White House officials who have tamped down on the official nature of the tweets in recent days.
"The president is president of the United States," Spicer said, "so they are considered official statements by the president of the United States."
The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another
Shouldn't they be arguing that Twitter is the "digital town hall" and @realDonaldTrump is a corner where Trump stands on his soap box to make their analogy more fitting? Just because I am on Twitter (I'm not) doesn't mean I am listening to Trump.
"Twitter is a kind of digital town hall in which people use the tweet function to communicate news and information to each other and use the reply function to respond to each other and exchange views with one another"
If that is the case they are more arguing that Twitter should be impartial like other public accommodations. It isn't hard to translate the above to use the same justification for the impartiality of phone lines/companies.
"AT&T is a kind of digital town hall in which people use the phone to communicate news and information to each other and use the phone to respond to each other and exchange views with one another"
AT&T can't ban you for *wrong thing* but Twitter can. If your first reaction is "use a different Twitter". How many other Twitters host nearly every elected official of government?
The fundamental problem here is that the first amendment let's you say what want without being jailed. What it doesn't do is ensure that anyone has to listen to you. Secondly, you are talking about twitter, a private forum that can make up any rules that it wants or even violate it own rules without cause.
Like it or not, that's the reality.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The idiots who are whining about being blocked would, in a more perfect world, be sentenced to 5 years hard labor. After that they would understand the difference between a REAL problem and an imaginary one.
I voted for Obama twice. Then I voted for Trump. I have to say the whining from the losers' side has been very entertaining ! All the people who are so worried about Trump are a bunch of clueless fuckwits. The system carries on whether Obama, Trump, or Groucho Marx is president. Of course people who have some intelligence and some real-world experience understand this.
But keep on whining ! I enjoy the shit out of it.
It's like Christmas every day, when I see all you pathetic SJW pussies so upset.
All past presidents have had bad things said about them.
I think there's a difference between saying bad things, and saying false things.
Do you think there's a difference? Should the MSM be allowed to print just any old thing they make up?
Also, I think there's a difference between saying bad things, and saying things that make someone fear for their life.
Do you think there's a difference? Should celebrities be allowed to say they want to kill someone, blow up their house, or kill them in effigy?
The interesting part of this case is that it most likely will be decided upon whether or not the court system considers Trump's Twitter account to be the official word of the POTUS, or if it's considered a private account. His own staff has already muddied the water by stating that his tweets are official words of the administration. And his POTUS account is practically silent in comparison to his own personal account. I don't personally have a horse in this race, but I am quite interested in the outcome because either way the decision goes, it's going to be a significant decision.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
That Pence guy must be so busy. Aside from ducking, he needs to identify thousands of political appointees, put together a real cabinet, create a communications team and a legal team, build bridges with Congress, and do many other basic things that Trump's amateurish incompetence got in the way of getting accomplished to be a real president and leader. His "winging it" candidacy is now such a heavy burden to his "winging it" presidency.
They don't let the public into press briefings (I'm not sure if they let the press in these days), and they wouldn't put up with them heckling if they did, and when POTUS makes a televised address he isn't forced to take phone calls from viewers afterwards.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Not funny, but I never get any mod points so I can't give you the "insight" mod you earned. Actually, I was confused by your subject, but now I have probed and see that the Subject: was inherited from one of Putin's paid trolls. (Why are you feeding the troll?) This is a topic with LOTS of room for humor and insight, but I couldn't find any of the first and little of the second, especially in the comments so modded.
Actually I'm interested in "saving" Twitter. Probably impossible, but can you imagine the use of a dual icon system on Twitter? In some ways, the structured data of the Twitter might make it especially convenient to do the analysis. It's the same basic idea, with the left icon being your avatar and linked to your profile and whatever private information you want to share, and the right icon being a graphic summary of your public reputation and linked to an analysis of how people see you and the data (in the form of tweets, liked tweets, and RTs) that explains that public reputation. Might not even the multiple dimensions, but just a simple color code. Green for a reputable person, perhaps a verified authority or celebrity or someone who gets favorable reactions from such, yellow for a small amount of bad comments mixed in, orange for mostly negative reactions, and red for probably trolls, both the amateurs and Putin's professionals.
(On a "recovered" or page-one-rewritten Slashdot, I think multiple dimensions would be needed, but the basic color coding could still be used. As the joke goes, DAUPR. (Also, I like sincerity and I hate liars.))
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
There's an interesting alignment here:
(a) Democrats in the sawmp want to kill Trump's use of Twitter
(b) Establishment Republicans in the swamp want Trump off of Twitter
(c) The press in the swamp want Trump off of Twitter
(d) People across the county who love the swamp and/or are dependents of the swamp want Trump off of Twitter
Methinks this is because Trump is most-effective against the swamp when he uses Twitter.
As with all dangerous swamp creatures, there can be real and very bad consequences from letting them get their way:
If these jerks win their lawsuit, it's gonna make a grand mess of First Amendment law re new technologies - it'll destroy the idea that different platforms can have their own policies and onnovative new features. I guess we'll all have to get used to government-mandated Twitter features and policies and any new internet startups will need a platoon of lawyers and lobbyists to get their policies and features approved (or all new startups will just have to offer the same features and limitations and policies and effectively be the same with slightly different wallpaper).
NOTE: Trump is NOT blocking anybody's use of their own Twitter accounts, he is blocking their ability to use HIS Twitter feed for THEIR speech.
I'm down with anyone that says Trump is the worst ever... but like..
The first amendment says the government can't prevent you from talking.
It doesn't say the government (Trump's Twitter account) has to listen.
If the government had forced Twitter to ban your account so you couldn't speak to anyone at all, then maybe, if we used that as evidence that Twitter isn't private (which it is), such that the 1st amendment would apply... then maybe.
But if Trump doesn't want to hear you, that isn't 1st amendment stuff.
Sorry. He's a tool, but he can block you on Twitter. Please rage about something useful instead.
Once again, slurs against the mentally ill.
You leftists are all the same, hurling bigoted insults left and right when you hate someone, acting like hurt little pissants when someone disagrees with you in any way.
Do you understand that using words like 'retarded' as a slur and insult, when you would probably shit your pants if someone used the N-word or C-word in a public conversation, exposes you as the hypocrites you are? Do you understand that your hate completely invalidates your positions?
Nothing you say has any meaning because you can't and won't live up to even your own basic standards.
People who are blocked from commenting on his feed arent blocked from commenting on twitter as a whole. They are also not blocked from reading his tweets. So this lawsuit is foolish and hypocritical.
Doesnt the the whitehouse have locks on its doors? Oh noes someone is being blocked from entry!
Methinks people are showing their stupidity again.
The POTUS should block anyone who doesn't play nice on his twitter feed. Its no different to locking idiots out. There should be boundaries and those who want entry should consider that boundary. The mainstream media are very guilty of this themselves. How many articles are selectively "locked for comments"? Isnt that stopping me from commenting? Oh noes I'm blocked! Sue sue sue!
and at most take comments. The president's twitter feed does not belong to the Republican party. If it did you might have a point. He's been using it more or less to conduct official business. He's made it public with his own actions. It's a little late to back out now.
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The lawsuit is frivolous and makes absolutely no sense, but it calls attention to something way more serious.
Twitter, or a Twitter account is NOT public forum, it should never be consider public forum, and people advocating for something like this are crazy for doing so.
The very basis for something to be considered public forum is that it has to be government owned.
@realDonaldTrump not only is a personal account, it also belongs to a private service. It can't and won't be considered public forum because if that happens, the consequences of that would be far reaching and a plain nightmare.
It would automatically call for regulation and monitoring of private channels.
But it indeed calls attention on how mismanaged the current administration is. A personal account on a private service should not and cannot be used to make official governmental statements. This is not only unprofessional, it's downright irresponsible.
I know lots of people nowadays scoff at the notion of proper procedures, but there's a reason why they are in place, and it has to do not only with the proper distance that has to be kept between government and private businesses, but also with security and management.
That is to say, of course governmental branches and individuals can and should keep open line of communications in all relevant platforms, but not conduct business and use them as official channels. It's an entirely other discussion, but there you are.
Being blocked from Trump's Twitter feed, they said, was illegal and akin to a mayor ejecting critics from city hall meetings.
There's critics and there's critics. Being kicked out from a town hall meeting for merely disagreeing with the mayor would be an outrage. Being kicked out for calling the mayor an orange haired, small handed (and we all know what that means), brainless, right wing nut job that wouldn't know how to dump piss from a boot if the instructions were written on the heel, and then proceeded to list all their "grievances" from the lack of government funded healthcare to the lack of paper towels in the ladies room, would not be an outrage.
I don't know what lead POTUS to ban these people from Twitter but I can imagine that there are some that were more than just "being critical" of POTUS.
President Trump needs to learn some care in what he sends on Twitter. He may learn in time but he's spent much of his life being free to do pretty much as he pleases. I fear this is an old habit that will be hard to break.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You are correct and orangetide doesn't know what he is talking about.
Does that apply to emails written by the Secretary of State? Asking for a friend.
Not unless they can find enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing to prosecute.
Get over it already. NOTHINGBURGER.
But, hey, what's that they found with Donnie Jr, there? You know Sr's behind it and it leads right to Putin and the Russian mob.
Lock him up!!
A tweet is an announcement NOT a conversation
Will someone at twitter please put a random password on that account and conveniently loose it?
Both are owned by twitter, a private company. This lawsuit is heading to be a loss...
The complainants imagine high-level officials are busy reading everyone's replies to Trump's tweets...
Twitter isn't built for 'conversations', it's built for monologues.
Ken
Someone should start a petition to get Twitter to implement a 20hr delay on Trumps twitter account as an example of what happens when you loose net neutrality.
This fucking colossterfuck of an administration gets more delectable every day.
Scrumptious as hell. Fucking awesome that 45, a wretch who has been involved in what - 250,000? - lawsuits, is getting sued yet another time for his actions as president.
The entire mainstream media that provides you with your 'insight' into Red America is in the leftist media bubble. Your information is bad, so your conclusion is wrong.
I'm not going to waste time on padding this with worthless prose. You are wrong. You could not be more wrong.
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At least DJT, Jr. released his emails...