Hacker News Reader

Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

Stunning. Regardless of political lean, and the inevitable Supreme Court hearing on this action, it is unprecedented that a company has the power to silence a sitting president.

Twitter holds the power, but do they not also by definition hold the responsibility of the content on their platform when it costs lives?

View on HN

Didn't any media company in US history have at all times the power not to publish statements by the US President? Why should the US President have command over their printing press/servers? It's not like Twitter has a monopoly, either.

Why is $ELECTED_OFFICIAL using a private platform to disseminate communications related to the office, instead of using a public service to do the same? Did Twitter ask for that? Does a private company have to allow public officials (esp. non-law-enforcement) to use its platform as they wish--don't we have a 3rd amendment for a reason?

Twitter is not the U.S. government's property.

What can the Supreme Court do to force a private company to publish whatever the president wants to say?

Same kinda of thing they have done in the past the First Amendment trumps companies rights

> ... noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

IANAL, but I think there’s a pretty substantial difference between “prevent distribution” and “refuse to publish”. There are some cases in 1A caselaw where mandatory publishing is a thing, but they’re extraordinarily limited and generally public health/safety oriented and proscribed by the state.

I’d be shocked if even this court went so far as to mandate a private company devote its resources to providing content that violates its own rules.

Whoa. Thank you so much for this, I had no idea!

Twitter is a private entity that can do whatever they want with their platform. If he or his supporters don’t like that he’s welcome to leave for another platform.. parler was created for this.

Perhaps grab a mirror and look for some personal responsibility?

Inciting violence is not protected speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

If only the President had some sort of way to get a message out…perhaps something like a conference…with the press…I don’t know, it’s obviously an idea ripe for disruption.

(Or he could post a message to the White House website.)

I mean ... they don't. Twitter is really not that big of a deal. Removing his ability to tweet means ... almost nothing. He can still talk to the press, post to other social media, hold press conferences from the white house press room, he has no shortage of ways of getting his message out there.

Trump can call a press conference and be on every TV network in the United States that same day, perhaps even the same hour

Trump can and has called in for long interviews on various cable news shows. He obviously has media outlets.

> ...it is unprecedented that a company has the power to silence a sitting president.

Trump can dial up Fox News and be on the air in 10 minutes.

Not what most people would consider "silenced".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com