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Politicians Cannot Block Social Media Foes, US Appeals Court Rules (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court said on Monday a Virginia politician violated the Constitution by temporarily blocking a critic from her Facebook page, a decision that could affect President Donald Trump's appeal from a similar ruling in New York. In a 3-0 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Phyllis Randall, chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, violated the First Amendment free speech rights of Brian Davison by banning him for 12 hours from her "Chair Phyllis J. Randall" page.
The ban came after Davison had attended a 2016 town hall meeting, and then under his Facebook profile "Virginia SGP" accused school board members and their relatives of corruption and conflicts of interest. Randall had also removed her original post and all comments, including Davison's. Circuit Judge James Wynn rejected Randall's argument that her Facebook page was a private website, saying the "interactive component" was a public forum and that she engaged in illegal viewpoint discrimination. Davison's speech "occupies the core of the protection afforded by the First Amendment," Wynn wrote.
The ban came after Davison had attended a 2016 town hall meeting, and then under his Facebook profile "Virginia SGP" accused school board members and their relatives of corruption and conflicts of interest. Randall had also removed her original post and all comments, including Davison's. Circuit Judge James Wynn rejected Randall's argument that her Facebook page was a private website, saying the "interactive component" was a public forum and that she engaged in illegal viewpoint discrimination. Davison's speech "occupies the core of the protection afforded by the First Amendment," Wynn wrote.
Haha the Traitor in Chief is completely screwed. The little make believe world he lives in might have to allow visitors.
The next thing is that the politicians will call these people "trolls". Basically in 2019 anyone who doesn't agree with your thinking is a "troll". Rather than ignoring, or actual discussion, you just label the person a "troll".
You have a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to TROLL TRUMP! So get off of slashdot, and start playing in the BIG LEAGUE, trolls!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
... All those politically motivated Social media purges and restore all those accounts! If you can't block people as the a-hole in chief, then you should be able to as some corporate dickweed either. FREE SPEECH is FREE SPEECH. Nobody, should be able to shut it down. ANYWHERE in the USA.
Does free speech give me the right to go into private meetings? How about a politician's home? They are not being blocked from expressing themselves, but being blocked from expressing themselves in a specific place. The question is are the online accounts private or public places. If the answer is online is a public place, then there is little privacy online.
Blocking an obnoxious user from your page doesn't infringe on their speech. They can still post their comments, be they valid or obnoxious and obscene trolling on their own page as well as at other locations. I may be missing something but I see this akin to asking a police officer to remove someone who is heckling and disrupting a city council meeting. They aren't removed for having an opinion in opposition, but for disrupting the event. Similarly someone who never contributes anything but hate filled trolling should be block-able. The Government employee or elected official isn't throwing the person in jail or even cutting off their ability to post their information on other venues.
And blocking one individual or even a few from posting on the elected official's page does not deny anyone else the ability to read official statements or quasi-official opinions that may be posted there. The media will still carry the statements. Even if the individual is a reporter, blocking them does not prevent other journalists from participating on the site and reporting what is discussed there.
But this is an issue that really needs a Supreme Court review.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Every political opponent will now send swarms of trolls that will essentially disable the ability of any politician to reach an audience through social media. I am sure traditional media outlets will love this development since they will once again be able to control the narrative of any political discussion.
It only applies to politicians on their official pages, not to individuals or even a politician's personal account if they maintain a separate one.
The ruling was based on the politician's public page being considered a kind of public forum. It seems that the courts are finally starting to define which parts of the internet are a public forum, and it's worth noting that the ruling doesn't prevent social media platforms enforcing their terms of service.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Presto, all politicians social media pages are unusable! Great decision from the judge there!
Here's what I find interesting about this:
Facebook itself blocks people. It does it in a blanket fashion based on its terms of service, and it does it in a specific fashion if you do something they don't like and they decide you need to be stepped on. This has exactly the same chilling effect on political speech.
So there are people being prevented / forbidden from interacting on, or even reading, their politician's pages by Facebook, but here the court says the politician can't do that, because it is a 1st amendment issue. Will the courts say that Facebook can't do that either? Facebook is part of the mechanism that presents the information and facilitates the interaction – it doesn't seem like much of a leap from this ruling to telling Facebook it can't shut its doors on people (or telling politicians they can't use Facebook, because it's a limited speech forum.)
I wonder if, eventually, the courts will see the same argument, basically that Facebook has become a public forum and doesn't have the right to step on people's ability to interact with their politicians there.
On the one hand, Facebook is a private enterprise; but on the other, it's being used as a political pulpit, and that combination creates the lack of free access when people are prevented/forbidden to use the platform.
The argument accepted by the court is that this particular page is akin to a public forum debate, a kind of town-hall meeting, which is protected in the US.
The principal doesn't apply to almost anyone else or any other situation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The Supreme Court is allowed to block cameras in the court room but courts ruled that the White House couldn't revoke press credentials that they control. Seems like a double standard to me.
Facebook can't block trump
Blocking an obnoxious user from your page doesn't infringe on their speech.
Not true at all, particularly when it comes to a politician in a public context. And just because you think someone are obnoxious does not mean your sentiments are shared. Furthermore the entire point of the first amendment is that you have an iron clad right to be obnoxious provided you don't endanger anyone or cause material or economic damange by doing so.
They can still post their comments, be they valid or obnoxious and obscene trolling on their own page as well as at other locations.
That's like saying someone cannot petition their leaders because they are able to say what they want in a cornfield where no one is listening. If someone wants public office they don't get to pick and choose who gets to express their opinion or where they express it. If they allow comments from some they have to allow comments from all.
I may be missing something but I see this akin to asking a police officer to remove someone who is heckling and disrupting a city council meeting.
You are missing something. A city council meeting bears no resemblance whatsoever to an online forum nor is the purpose of them even vaguely similar. An page like the one in question here is effectively a public debate with the public. The politician chose to have a public page and there is some baggage that comes with that. There is a difference between interrupting the ability of the elected officials to do their job and elected officials selectively suppressing the free speech rights of people they don't care for or whose opinions they don't agree with.
Even if the individual is a reporter, blocking them does not prevent other journalists from participating on the site and reporting what is discussed there.
So now you are promoting censoring the press too. You seem to think that blocking one individual reporter somehow is justifiable and that it would stop there. You think politicians should have a right to only participate with the parts of the press who agree with them? BAD idea.
And blocking one individual or even a few from posting on the elected official's page does not deny anyone else the ability to read official statements or quasi-official opinions that may be posted there.
If the point of the page is to simply post official statements then there is no need for ANYONE to be able to post comments. They don't get to pick and choose only the comments or people they like. Elected officials represent everyone, whether or not they agree with them.
Does free speech give me the right to go into private meetings?
How is that relevant here? Where is the private meeting? We're talking about an online comment available to basically anyone in the general public.
They are not being blocked from expressing themselves, but being blocked from expressing themselves in a specific place.
The problem is that the politicians are discriminating who gets to express their opinion in that place/time. Allowing politicians complete control over every venue they interact with is a TERRIBLE idea. There is a compelling public interest in preventing politicians from blocking out people who don't agree with them in public venues. Either allow comments from all or from none but the point is they don't get to pick only the comments they agree with.
If the answer is online is a public place, then there is little privacy online.
Duh. Yes online is a public place and the politician should have no reasonable expectation of privacy there.
Uh, I'm pretty sure the White House could disallow cameras or reporters in general on premises.
They just can't throw out the ones that they don't like but allow the rest in.
You would only have a point if the Supreme Court allowed cameras from CNN but not from Fox, as-is you just failed to see the point.
Here's the thing: if a politician puts themselves out to the public in a place where the public can't get to them, then they have proactively limited access.
So either the politician is erring in using Facebook because it is not a public space, or Facebook has become a public space and is erring in limiting access to the public.
One way or another, there's a 1st amendment problem here.
Uh, I'm pretty sure the White House could disallow cameras or reporters in general on premises. They just can't throw out the ones that they don't like but allow the rest in. You would only have a point if the Supreme Court allowed cameras from CNN but not from Fox, as-is you just failed to see the point.
Actually.... You are mostly right, with just a bit of clarification..
The White House was told it couldn't subjectively decide who gets a press pass and who doesn't. It was told that it needed an objective set of rules that it follows in this decision making process and not some "You are being rude!" subjective criteria for tossing a reporter to the curb. I believe we have a set of rules now for White House press pass holders, and the craziness of press briefings has abated at least a bit.
Personally, I think we should just go to a press pool with three reporters (News Paper, TV, Radio) for normal White House briefings and take a given number of questions in turn from all three, allowing one follow-up each. But I seriously doubt the President and the Press would go for that as both want the spectacle for different reasons.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So if I use my account to interact with my politician, but also do things that causes FB or Twitter to close/suspend my account - then they are violating my ability to attend and participate in that town-hall meeting. It seems to me the best way to guarantee that FB/Twitter will not remove/ban/censor/suspend your account is to occasionally interact with an elected official.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The US Appeals court ruling is but a small step here. Yes, it means FOR NOW their ruling must be followed, but I seriously doubt this won't be appealed to SCOTUS. Will SCOTUS take it up? Who knows, but somebody is going to ask them to.
As they say, it's not over until it's over and if recent history of US Appeals court rulings is any indicator, even from district 4, this isn't really over quite yet.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1st amendment protections don't stop people ejecting you because of disruptive behaviour. Trying bringing your own megaphone to the next town hall meeting.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't think it goes that far. It's focused on the user, not the social media company. The user can't take actions to block and restrict based on viewpoint discrimination on their public pages. It doesn't obligate Facebook or Twitter to treat any particular parts of their services like public forums, though.
I can be 100% cordial to the politician; even a supporter of them! If FB/Twitter bans me for other actions, then they are explicitly stopping me from interacting with my politician. Now that there is a right to associate with a politician's official FB page, any action by FB that prevents me from doing so would be a 1st Amendment violation. So if FB finds my posts offensive and bans my account - then they are opening themselves up to a 1st Amendment lawsuit.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Could be a crack in the whole, "Facebook is private and can exclude and ban who it wants" thing.
If a politician can't block someone, how about a bureaucrat? Law enforcement? Can Facebook block someone posting on the pages of Politicians?What's the diff between a politician locking an Alex Jones and Facebook?
I bet it's just going to get messier from here.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
But maybe that's the goal of some trolls all long.
And even that standard is stupid.
The press is invited to the briefings. Only a limited number of the press get passes. You can bet there is no objective evaluation of who gets the passes and who doesn't. It's all going to be subjective, although admittedly carried out in a context of "tradition"...i.e. ABC has ALWAYS had a pass, etc.
I think the courts have generally over stepped their bounds with regards to the Executive Branch. One could argue that the Courts have no jurisdiction what-so-ever in this kind of matter because of the separation of powers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The old term which I feel should be relevant for Politician is "Public Servant". We as citizens are THEIR BOSS, not the other way around. We grant elected officials the power to create laws, enforce them, provide judgement... They may be bosses of down their government bureaucracy, however we are their boss, who should be electing them in and out of their position.
Being that we are their bosses, they shouldn't have the right to block negative feedback on the professional pages.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not a question of who, it's a question of the nature of the thing being blocked from.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
One could have said the same thing about politicians blocking people...until the decision.
Make no mistake...this has opened a Pandora's Box of litigation.
It should be fun and interesting.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You analogy is better and you make a good point. Lets try this one though.
Suppose you get your self banned from $ARENA for I don't know tampering with the smoke detectors or creating some other safety issues. Three weeks later $CANDIDATE rents the place out and schedules a town hall. Can security at $ARENA deny you entry?
So lets go back to facebook. You have been using your account for phishing and they ban you; but now you want to participate in the online town hall must they reinstate your account - create some sort of limited account where you can only access that one page? What?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Freedom of association.
Private social media platform.
And simply blocking someone IN NO WAY takes away their freedom of expression or freedom of speech.
This ruling kinda sounds like it make it okay for me to simply force my way into the presence of a politician and just heap endless abuse on them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That is what I have always said. It is something that is completely unneeded. And it serves no purpose except for government hacks to rant so as to control the people, and of course for the most sacred of all cows: advertisers. Marketing is a very unnecessary profession, like lawyer and politician.
Corporatism != Free Market
Well, yes, if they just arbitrarily banned you for no reason then they might be in trouble.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That's the first amendment. "Congress shall make no law ..."
The US Constitution says what the federal government may and may not do, and how it is to be run. It doesn't specify what MishMash can do.
Last I checked, Facebook isn't Congress, and doesn't make laws. ...", which is kinda reasonable since the Constitution generally is about the federal government. Facebook is not the federal government. The Constitution doesn't tell us how Facebook needs to be run.
The courts have expanded the text, pretending it says "the government may not in any way
I'm not in disagreement with you on this. I think the White House should have 100% say in who gets access to what and when for what ever reason they choose to do so as well. What I was trying to do was put a fine point on what the court ruling was, not what my opinion was.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Your argument is a reach, at best.
If your phone gets cut off because you don't pay the bill, the phone company is not infringing your first amendment rights, even though you are no longer able to call your chosen politicians. Similarly, if Facebook bans you for posting hate speech, they may close off this specific means of communication, but they are not preventing you from interacting with your chosen politicians. They're merely saying that you can't use their service to do so.
- The Sigless Wonder
I agree.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No, let's say I am a fundamentalist Muslim, and I support throwing homosexuals off of roofs. I post as much on my Facebook page. Facebook bans me because of hate speech. Now I can no longer interact and share support with re. Rashida Tlaib, because I don't have access to her Facebook page to post my words of encouragement. So Facebook is now violating my 1st Amendment rights to interact with an elected official.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Man does have a point. A politician cannot "block" you for being disruptive on his "public forum" page, but Facebook/Twitter can block you for being disruptive elsewhere on the site. Meaning in this case, Facebook/Twitter are by proxy blocking you from access to your politician's public forum.
This can't be either/or. Either Facebook/Twitter are public forums and thus need to be open to everyone based on 1st Amendment rights, or Facebook/Twitter need to simply shut down all Politician pages to remain private entities free to censor any one they dislike as they have been doing.
Any sort of "half measure" is just again the Left trying to have its cake and eat it too.
Also, why are you all over this discussion replying to every thread ? You're not even an American.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Try going to a physical public forum with a tin of red paint, a megaphone and an inflatable sex doll (inflated). See if your 1st Amendment rights stop them booting you out of the mall.
The 1st doesn't mean you have an unlimited right to troll as much as you want, it just gives you a great deal of leeway before that line is crossed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Candidates routinely reject or bar people from attending their rallies, either by selling tickets or simply tossing them out.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Hey at least they show it some love, unlike the right.
They haven't shown it any respect since 9/11.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Try going to a physical public forum with a tin of red paint, a megaphone and an inflatable sex doll (inflated). See if your 1st Amendment rights stop them booting you out of the mall.
You're missing the point. If Trump is holding a Town Hall meeting at said Mall. But Mall cops are preventing from entering the Mall because I'm banned from it, then they are technically infringing the spirit of this ruling if not the letter. This is what people are trying to explain to you, but you are refusing to accept because it taints your anti-trump narrative.
The 1st doesn't mean you have an unlimited right to troll as much as you want, it just gives you a great deal of leeway before that line is crossed.
Except this ruling just said the opposite. You can troll Trump as much as you want, and there's nothing he can do about it. He has no right to block you. By proxy, this should extend to anyone doing the blocking, including the "hosts" of the public forum, aka Facebook/Twitter themselves.
I know this is complicated and you want to spin it to ORANGE MAN BAD! / EVERYONE ELSE GOOD!, but that's not how life works.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
There's nothing preventing a politician from doing that now, within some constraints. What do you think lobbying is all about if not to have effectively have a limited-membership private club that specifically has the politician's ear? The problem isn't per se with that. The problem comes when politicians provide a mechanism that ostensibly is to allow all constitutes to engage that politician in dialog and then specifically bans them from communicating. This, of course, happens all the time in real life where people who mail a politician a lot with opposing views may have their mail unopened put into a junk pile. But if it came to the point of actually having the USPS block even sending the mail? That'd almost certainly also be illegal. A town hall where "anyone" can enter but they specifically ban people for political views? Almost certainly illegal too. But you could create a town hall of just supporters if you want because it's not expected that you must include anyone and everyone at every event. So long as you still provide a means for people to join in and are not substantially exclusive in all ways, the courts will probably okay what you're doing.
It seems clear to me that blocking on Facebook is much more the "open town hall", not a private club. Politicians can just not appear on Facebook at all if they don't like it, just like lots of other relatively public spaces. If they start paying off Facebook or a local mall where they speak to specifically exclude people, they're opening themselves and the private company to legal trouble. It's not enough that of its own accord a private company would choose to ban people so long as it's consistent, generally apolitical policy. Now, if that last point is what you're wondering about, I'd just note that malls are notoriously for having substantially "apolitical" policy that clearly aim to exclude large swaths of the population, and courts have been very reluctant (AFAIK) to do anything about it. I don't think what Facebook has done really is greater in scope of rules, nor meaningfully could it be said to have more effect (as malls were for a time a substantial influence in local areas).
Anyways, that's my 2 cents.
When Florida State Representative Kimberly Daniels (https://www.facebook.com/State-Representative-Kimberly-Daniels-189630017733619/) asked the congregation the church that she leads (where she's an "apostle") to vote for HB303, which gives students and teachers the freedom to hold religious gatherings during school hours, I politely reminded her that it would give as much freedom to Muslims and Pagans and Satanists as it would to Christians - something that I'm completely okay with, but that I figured she might not be. In response, she blocked me from her official state representative FB page and deleted my comments.
Looks like, with this ruling, I should be able to ask her to unblock me?
folks who are actually trolling get equal time in a discussion. You get this with left wing candidates being "concern trolled" by the media a lot. Right now there's a ton of stories about how "concerned" CNN and MSNBC are with various aspects of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez's politics, daily life, staffing, etc. It's the political equivalent to "Netcraft confirms it!".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you ask to borrow my cell phone to call Rashida Tlaib, and I decline to loan it to you, am I violating your 1st amendment rights?
- The Sigless Wonder
Politicians worried about this will just shut down all feedback on social media if they can't silence trolls. They should probably be doing this anyway.
This ruling would seem to have no effect on the owners of the forums - rather it's focused on the *users* of the forum. If you're a user using the forum for official government business/public communication, then you are not allowed to unilaterally silence your political rivals there, any more than you can do so with ads on privately owned television networks.
If on the other hand it's the owners of the forum who decide to block your rivals - that's a different issue, but you should probably expect an investigation to make sure there was no collusion on your part.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nope because you never enter anybody is properly all you do is ask them if they will send you things. And then the servers transmit that information out into the public infrastructure. You never enter their server at all all you do is send Messages to ask their servers for information. And then that server then sends you a message. Internet is a public forum made of privately owned equipment. The equipment may be privately owned but the entity known as the internet is public, buy measure of interaction if not intent. Anything connected to the internet is fair game. You can't connect to a public network and still claim privacy because it's unenforceable and not supported by physical reality
The separation of powers is not there to keep the branches of government from stepping on each other's toes, quite the opposite in fact - it's there to make sure no one branch of government can get anything done without the cooperation of the others. The Executive has the power to command the military, but only Congress has the power to declare war, or pay the soldiers (admittedly, Congress has let the President get away with effectively declaring war unilaterally for a number of decades now), and the Supreme court can shut the whole thing down on constitutional grounds if it so chooses (though it needs a volunteer with standing to bring a relevant case against the government).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's not a strict separation of powers it's a strategic overlapping of powers, enable any one part of the government to check the other to eventually Force the cooperation so we don't have parts of the government at war with each other instead of spending the money on helping citizen welfare.
An appropriate analogy would be you and another person are in the Town Square arguing . the Town Square is made up of various businesses and the surrounding parking lots ,access roads, and Landscaping. But Town Square is the only way across town. Therefore Town Square is considered a public thoroughfare. Even though the land is privately owned because it's the only way for the public to get across town. and therefore the greater need of the public is recognized and those routes become public. You and the person you are arguing with ar private people arguing on a public thoroughfare. And so neither of you have any greater right than the other to be heard or to silence the other. Internet interactions happened on across the public thoroughfare. Nobody ever actually enters anyone else's property. As its agents of the server, that choose to propagate the requests from the public network to their databases and then proactively transmit it back across. and so nobody enters your server ever they just ask your server if it'll kindly give it up.
How does one opposed A malignant regime without being disruptive? are we to never fix problems because it would require us to disrupt those problems, as well as the comfort of the people maintaining those problems?
The end game here is for every politician's pages to simply have commenting suspended. What does that achieve?
If you can't ban people you can't ban spam posting bots so what's the point in having comments at all?
As I already said, if they banned you from the mall for taking a dump on the floor or something, your 1st amendment rights aren't going to get you back in even if a politician is there.
You can't troll Trump all you want, your rights don't extend to entering the Oval Office with a megaphone whenever you please. The courts are currently deciding where the boundaries are, and it seems that his Twitter account and some other pages may qualify as public spaces. Even then, Twitter can still ban you for ToS violations.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yea. I'm thinking if you go post download links to all of the latest movies and they can't ban your "free speech" then what happens?
Then the "industry" (mpaa) starts going after the platform (facebook) and hilarity ensues. But I'm assuming that it's still OK to delete posts, but not banish people, which gets little done other than producing busy work for someone. If it's a moderated thing then posts don't show up until OK'd anyhow. Banning someone is just an easy way to filter out the trash.
So if I can't ban them then I just need a way to auto-decline or auto-delete for a blacklisted user. And a way to maintain a blacklist. Problem solved.
I refuse to sign
So Facebook is now violating my 1st Amendment rights to interact with an elected official.
No, the elected official—not Facebook—is violating your 1st Amendment right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" by insisting that all interaction occurs through Facebook, a forum which is not open to all that official's constituents... unless, as is usually the case, the official does accept other forms of interaction equivalent to Facebook, in which case no one's constitutional rights are being violated.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Agreed. If the courts would make such a ruling (or Congress would pass such a law), then I would be required to comply.
This decision doesn't look like that to me though. This decision says that the politician has to treat Facebook as it does any other public forum, and may not censor people simply because they have a different viewpoint. It doesn't look like it says anything about what Facebook must or must not do.
To quote part of a prior post of yours:
Now that there is a right to associate with a politician's official FB page, any action by FB that prevents me from doing so would be a 1st Amendment violation.
I think this is where you went wrong. The decision doesn't provide a "right to associate with a politician" on Facebook. It says that politicians can't censor people on their public FB (and presumably other social media) pages:
Circuit Judge James Wynn rejected Randall’s argument that her Facebook page was a private website, saying the “interactive component” was a public forum and that she engaged in illegal viewpoint discrimination. [emphasis mine]
The judge is only saying that the politician did something wrong, not that there are any more or less "rights" as far as Facebook or its users are concerned.
- The Sigless Wonder
So if the issue is the politician banned someone, could the politician cut a deal with Facebook/Twitter to ban people of a certain demographic or political ideology? For example, I don't like blue-haired people communicating to me (as I opposed the blue-haired wing of politics). So I tell Facebook or Twitter I plan to leave their platform because I'm not happy with blue-haired people. So then Facebook or Twitter ban blue-haired people from my feeds - and so I stay on Facebook and Twitter.
I haven't banned the people - Facebook/Twitter has done so.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
the Supreme court can shut the whole thing down on constitutional grounds if it so chooses (though it needs a volunteer with standing to bring a relevant case against the government).
It also needs an executive branch who is willing to abide by its rulings. We take that mostly for granted, since it's so rare in US history that the other branches have chosen to ignore court decisions. You can bet that the courts don't take it for granted, though. They know full well that they have to be seen as the reasonable, apolitical branch or they'll lose their power, because if the other branches ignore them and the voters don't care there's nothing they can do about it.
The history of this is fascinating. We all accept now that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality, but it's worth noting that the Constitution itself doesn't say that, and it wasn't a foregone conclusion that it would be so. Our tradition of accepting SCOTUS as the interpreter of the Constitution began with Marbury v Madison and Chief Justice John C. Marshall's decision that the Supreme Court had no constitutional authority to enforce judicial appointments made by President John Adams, which his successor, President Thomas Jefferson, ordered not to be delivered. To understand the power of that decision, it's crucial to understand that Marshall was not only a close ally of Adams and political opponent of Jefferson, but that Marshall himself had personally signed the appointment commissions in question when he was Adams' Secretary of State. Marshall had even hired his younger brother to deliver the commissions.
So, the country pretty much expected Marshall to support his political ally and defy his political opponent by ordering the opponent to carry out the commissions he himself had worked to create and distribute. Adams certainly expected it. But Marshall instead took the position that the court had no constitutional authority to do so, despite the fact that Congress had given the court that authority in Jucidiary Act of 1789, ruling that portion of the Judiciary Act unconstitutional. It was the fact that he essentially opposed himself made the decision politically powerful and thereby effectively created the role of the Supreme Court as the body whose job it is to read the Constitution and decide whether executive and legislative actions accord with it. It was the carefully selfless nature of that decision that led everyone to accept it and established the precedent that the other branches fall in line.
But they haven't always, and the court would have no recourse if they were to stop. Only the voters could intervene.
And note that voter intervention assumes we continue the tradition of accepting the results of elections. The whole system rests on a foundation of traditional expectations. Things are the way they are because we all expect them to be that way.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Social media will say they are a "publisher" and still have the political ability to use their staff to ban, shadow ban, report and remove accounts.
:)
Then demand to be treated like a "utility" on all content they feel can to be published so they have none of the legal problems of been a publisher.
The problem was the need to make social media grow and allow so many US gov, city "official website" to get set up on social media.
Now everyone can claim they are interacting with their gov and that all random "comments" are a petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The next part is some US states/cities have powerful public documents laws eg what was the Florida Sunshine Law.
Suddenly social media cannot remove, ban comments as people have a right to see what their city/state is doing and such public comments/documents can be requested.
A city is now "on" social media and social media has the full responsibility of the paper work just as any city office. Open to the public.
The ability to request public documents and that is the random "comments" on any city/police/gov social media "page".
This could have all been avoided by:
A US city/state/federal gov gets its own GUI web site to look after/accept comments/post news.
Social media stays a "utility" and has no need to ban/remove comments as they are just connecting users, like an ISP. Full protection of the law.
The fail was social media wanted to become a publisher of users comments. Now they have less of that powerful utility protection.
The next total fail was social media wanted to become a city/state gov site. Now they are the keeper of US gov paperwork. No utility protection and the full US rights of the people to interact with their local/city/gov have to be respected.
Should have stayed a utility selling ads and just connecting people.
The branding prestige of all the US city and gov interaction on a site now comes with the full responsibility of gov
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"