Trump asks U.S. judge to force Twitter to restart his account | Hacker News Reader

Trump asks U.S. judge to force Twitter to restart his account

reuters.com

22 pointsawb14 comments

Its been a marvelous time not having hundreds of news outlets flooding my feeds with his inane tweets.

Issues with Trump aside, this lawsuit can be a great thing. Having a judge declare that Twitter, and other social media are public space and have to follow US free speech laws instead of their own vague "Terms and Conditions" would be a huge improvement.

"Social media are public space and have to follow US free speech laws" is legal nonsense and there is a 0% chance that this lawsuit will succeed.

Which, on the other hand, would be a great thing because maybe it would finally put that stupid idea to rest.

I just got down on my knees and prayed that Trump having this lawsuit fail would finally put that stupid idea to rest.

To rest?

Look at the thread.

This publicity stunt is working well already.

People used to say the same thing, prohibiting people of various races from entering their private establishments. These establishments, such as restaurants, provided public services.

You're referring to the Civil Rights Act, and as soon as Trump is denied access to a public accommodation because of his race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, that analogy might start to make sense. In the meantime he can still get kicked out of a restaurant for any other reason.

Inciting violence in a public space isn't tolerated either. There was no "vague" TOS here, the reason was pretty clear.

Disneyland should be deemed a public space so I don't have pay high prices to enter. LOL, keep dreaming...

If we really want a digital public square for citizens, maybe people should just support the creation of tax-funded social media? It would be kind of odd if Oracle owned your public library, right?

A tax-funded public square would be one where citizens and their elected officials are responsible for its upkeep and proper conduct, and where citizens have official recourse for addressing how things are run. This would also pave the way to discussing internet access as as a public utility which ought be publicly funded.

> Issues with Trump aside, this lawsuit can be a great thing. Having a judge declare that Twitter, and other social media are public space and have to follow US free speech laws instead of their own vague "Terms and Conditions" would be a huge improvement.

No, that would be hell. Literal spam is speech, too. Do you really want anti-spam technologies to be illegal?

If by "Literal spam" you mean something machine-generated and sent in millions of copies then it is pretty clear that can be differentiated from posts that are actually made by humans.

> If by "Literal spam" you mean something machine-generated and sent in millions of copies then it is pretty clear that can be differentiated from posts that are actually made by humans.

What are you talking about? Spam isn't machine-generated (not that it matters) and why would something sent in "millions of copies" get less protection from "US free speech laws"?

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