Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

Do his Gmail emails need to be open to all the public? His Slack messages? His Facebook posts?

I don't see how anyone, president or otherwise, can't chose whom they send messages to.

> Do his Gmail emails need to be open to all the public? His Slack messages? His Facebook posts?

If they are being used to conduct official business, most likely yes. They will need to comply with federal regulations for data retention, public disclosure (or confidentiality as the case may be), etc.

You may recall another candidate who was running for president in 2016 getting raked under the coals for using personal email to conduct federal business.

> I don't see how anyone, president or otherwise, can't chose whom they send messages to.

What's to not understand? They are acting in an official capacity. Thus they are legally and ethically bound to a higher standard.

> You may recall another candidate who was running for president in 2016 getting raked under the coals for using personal email to conduct federal business.

I thought the other candidate was raked over the coals for jeopardizing national security?

In any case, I speak of Trump's "government" Twitter, "government" Gmail, "government" Slack, and "government" Facebook. (IDK how such a distinction is made, but I would like to compare apples to apples.)

His official communications are in fact required to comply with federal records law. Obviously that’s not the same as being public now but they would need to be given to the National Archives at the end of his term and eventually released following the standard process for handling secrecy concerns.

He can send messages at his discretion. With Twitter, however, tweets are (in this case) considered public announcements, with blocked people being exceptions on a personal level, and the ruling is that he is not allowed to make those exceptions. He still has access to direct messages, AFAIK. With Slack and Facebook, I can imagine comparable situations arising with similar principles.

He can certainly send private emails, Slack messages, or even Twitter DMs. What he can't do is publicly broadcast his tweets to the world, and then exclude people from them on political grounds.

> He can certainly send private emails, Slack messages, or even Twitter DMs.

Pretty sure he can't and if he is, he better be complying with federal records laws or else he'd be living a double standard. You may recall him blasting another, very popular candidate in the 2016 election for using personal email to conduct official business. Using slack / private email / twitter DM's is basically the same damn thing.

> What he can't do is publicly broadcast his tweets to the world, and then exclude people from them on political grounds.

What if he blocks them on non-political grounds. Maybe they made fun of his mother, or dog, or threatened to throw dirty socks on his lawn, should be be able to block them then?

While I realize the article/judge's opinion specifically calls out political speech, I'm fairly sure that applies to all speech, and the political speech subset was probably chosen by the plaintiffs as an easier path to victory.

> publicly broadcast his tweets to the world, and then exclude people

Are they really public in that case?

The President can share information with 1 person, 2 people, 3 people, or 336m people (the number of Twitter users). But he can't share information with 335m people?

It should be noted that the problem identified by the judge was the fact that blocking prevents users from replying to the tweets, therefore restricting their speech.

That said, excluding certain people from official communications based on their opinions might be illegal too: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/us/politics/white-house-b...

Actually, yes. Every single one of those should be recorded, and made available after declassified. All communications of the President are to be recorded for that reason.

Please look up what the Republicans were saying about Hillary Clinton's private email server.

For years.

And years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com