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Comment by aksss | Hacker News Reader

This seems wrong on the face of it. The judge asks the rhetorical question of whether the logic changes based on whether he's president or not, and he answers his question with a "No". So this is saying that no public official can block others on Twitter. That seems like it's in the "suicide pact" column of rights defense, but then I'm not one that cares about Twitter personally. Just seems that plenty of other forums and even avenues on Twitter for expression remain after blockage from one person's feed. And given that blocking is part and parcel to the app, it would seem like everyone is buying into the terms of the environment when they start using it. Curious how this shakes out to other mediums.

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The limitations on government speech restrictions in public forums (including private venues used by government as such) are not new to this case [0], nor is it the first case (though it is by far the highest profile one) finding that those restrictions on government behavior apply to social media accounts controlled by government officials and agencies. [1]

[0] https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/criminal/what-s-a-public-...

[1] http://amp.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/07/28/federal_c...

> And given that blocking is part and parcel to the app, it would seem like everyone is buying into the terms of the environment when they start using it

That isn't how this works. Just because Twitter allows people to block stuff, doesn't mean Trump gets to block stuff.

In a "normal" government, they'd pick a vendor with software that would let them make official policy statements in a way that complied with the laws around people having the right to reach out to their government officials.

Just 'cause twitter's software lets him do something doesn't make actually doing that thing legal, moral, or ethical.

This judgement makes perfect sense and is completely reasonable when you remember that technology is a mere tool designed to serve humans. Just cause you can do something in a tool doesn't make it right.

> This judgement makes perfect sense and is completely reasonable when you remember that technology is a mere tool designed to serve humans. Just cause you can do something in a tool doesn't make it right.

Put more plainly:

The judgement makes perfect sense once you understand that government officials' actions are regulated in ways that private citizens' actions are not. If a government official uses a tool designed for private citizens, his actions may still be restricted compared to what private citizens can legally do.

Oh common.

Spam and a harassment is a problem. Let the people he blocks make a new account to follow him or open an incognito window.

> Spam and a harassment is a problem.

To the extent that's true, they aren't problems that require viewpoint censorship to combat.

No. He can mute them. But they should not be any more inconvenienced than anyone else who follows him.

Then they can still respond. I'm no fan of Trump, but I understand wanting to reduce the noise in my Twitter feed.

Right, but he's not going to see it. But regardless of whether or not Trump wants that noise on his twitter feed, he's stuck with it for as long as it's an official government account.

Of course they can - and he can mute them and never see their responses. Practically the same as a block from Trumps point of view but without the legal problem.

> Let the people he blocks make a new account to follow him or open an incognito window.

That's not how this works.

Trump a big boy playing a big boy game now. He can't just block anybody he wants on twitter and expect them to create a new account. What if that twitter handle he blocks is a well known journalist or something? You expect that person to create a new account just to call him out or retweet his stuff?

Seriously, spend 5 minutes and think about what you are arguing. You are saying that citizens might need to go into incognito mode to view the presidents posts because the president of the united states blocked their twitter account! Say that out loud and tell me how that isn't scary as hell. Governments should not do that sort of thing. That reads almost like a dystopian future sci-fi novel or something.

Yes there are spammers, bots and others and absolutely it is a hard problem to somehow filter out the non-human garbage that gets posted while also fulfilling your ethical and legal obligations to allow all citizens to participate in a democratic government. Who knows if that is even a solvable problem.

> Spam and a harassment is a problem. Let the people he blocks make a new account to follow him or open an incognito window.

The ruling would be completely different if he was still private citizen Trump. He'd be free to block whomever he chose.

But he is President Trump and he's the one who chose to make his own private Twitter account function as his Presidential outlet to the world. So, different rules apply.

He had a perfectly good presidential Twitter account, but he's the one who chose to not use it. Let the chips fall where they may.

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.

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)

I honestly have no idea; this was a hypothetical specifically meant to address the assertion that "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.

Yes! You can! Look at the twitter feeds of pretty much any elected official. Automated lobbyists won't have quite the reach of human ones, but it's still a worthwhile endeavor if that's something you care about.

Most politicians don't use their Twitter feed to make policy, like Trump does. If you run a widget business, and Trump makes a tweet that says, "I ban all widgets, especially widget company x", you should have the right to see that from the source.

That's the distinction the judge made - Trump uses his feed as an official government policy mouthpiece.

A mouthpiece yes, but an official way to "make policy" no. Policy is still created through official means like signing executive orders, etc.

> A mouthpiece yes, but an official way to "make policy" no

Sorry but you are wrong. Trump's administration has stated that his tweets are official statements. Meaning, he can't block people who reply to his tweets.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-officia...

Huh, I stand corrected. Good find.

See also @RealPressSecBot, which hammers home the point:

https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot

For those who don't want to click, it collects Trump's tweets in real-ish time, and reframes them into images of official-looking messages. The latest one as of the time I post this comment begins:

    THE WHITE HOUSE
    Office of the Press Secretary
    
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    May 23, 2018
    
    Statement by the President

And then puts the text of Trump's tweet immediately below.

This has to be my favourite:

https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/99928406869604761...

They count as official statements by the POTUS. No different if he were to go on TV, Radio, etc and make an announcement/proclamation.

These statements can have legal power behind them such as declassifying documents.

Is there a way to make a public statement as the POTUS that doesn't have legal force? Can the person who is the POTUS speak "as the man" rather than speaking "as the role"?

As far as I can tell, that's how President Obama used his personal Twitter account vs. the @POTUS twitter account. One was personal and the other official. The Trump administration has explicitly chosen not to draw that line (for whatever reason), which is what leads inevitably to decisions like this.

> So this is saying that no public official can block others on Twitter. That seems like it's in the "suicide pact" column of rights defense

Well, the important part is that the judge stuck it to Trump. That’s really all that matters to some people.

> That seems like it's in the "suicide pact" column of rights defense

Not if you consider the nature of a public official. It's not that Trump is The President, he's A President - one of many in a line stretching back to George Washington and hopefully, stretching forward for millennia to come. There's nothing singular or unique about his occupation of that office (well, hopefully you get my meaning there).

As such, he should be expected to behave by the laws governing the office, not the laws governing the individual in the office.

It would be different if he were a king, whose rights and powers supposedly descend from God (at least in European tradition). First, he would be making the laws up, possibly from the whole cloth, and second, a king, by divine right, is answerable to none but himself and God.

Let's forget about how polarizing he is for one minute: I would make the argument that he is the one who made his Twitter feed a public forum when he encouraged people to follow him to get information. It follows that public discourse is now taking place where the tools allow people to respond.

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