[HN Gopher] SCOTUS to decide if public officials can block criti...
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SCOTUS to decide if public officials can block critics online
Author : fortran77
Score : 34 points
Date : 2023-10-30 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thefire.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thefire.org)
| DaniloDias wrote:
| Blocking people who are harassing you seems like a reasonable
| balance to free speech.
|
| Just because you are saying things doesn't mean another citizen
| has to listen to them.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Someone being blocked doesn't mean harassment occurred. That
| will sometimes be the case and sometimes not, depending on the
| blocker.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Does it matter? It's freedom of association. Ignore enough of
| the people you presumably represent, and that gets shown
| through elections.
|
| As for unelected officials, anything that would affect
| government duties should be going through official channels.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's freedom of association_
|
| This is a right of the people, _not_ of the government.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > Ignore enough of the people you presumably represent, and
| that gets shown through elections.
|
| I mean until the moment you're a minority which is
| something elected officials have continually had issues
| with, especially in the south, here in the US.
|
| If an elected official is using a private channel as a
| means of 'public' information dissemination things get
| messy.
| ryaneager wrote:
| Who's to keep them from blocking actual critics? They serve the
| public, so isn't a harsh or critical opinion about them still
| valid?
|
| Just because it's written, doesn't mean you have to read it.
| almatabata wrote:
| > Just because it's written, doesn't mean you have to read
| it.
|
| Sure but you have to read it to know if it goes too far no?
| If these people use the accounts for official business they
| might want to read the comments to know what their
| constituents say. If every time you ask a question you have
| one person constantly berating you and insulting you in bad
| faith, i could understand wanting to block him. Constantly
| reading these messages can take a huge toll on people.
|
| Especially because these people do not see one or two
| messages. They have thousands of followers. The amount of
| hate message these people get dwarfs anything a normal person
| sees.
|
| If the SCOTUS rules that they cannot block people then they
| will need to employee somebody to filter the messages.
| Otherwise you will destroy your mental just reading the toxic
| messages.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think all public figures have this issue if they're on
| social media. The trick is to not read it, I think.
| ejb999 wrote:
| ok - now define 'harass', and also tell me who gets to decide
| what is 'harassment' is and isn't - that is the crux of the
| problem.
|
| Disagreeing with a stated position of a government official -
| loudly and strongly - is not harassment.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| OK, but suppose you're a public official and I just keep
| leaving slurs on your timeline, perhaps even by automated
| means.
| indymike wrote:
| > Blocking people who are harassing you seems like a reasonable
| balance to free speech.
|
| We're not talking about private people or private enterprise.
| We're talking about appointed, elected and employed government
| officials acting in their capacity as a government official.
| Far too often, public officials believe anything negative is
| abuse, and I for one want them to hear the wingnut who is angry
| because their kid was beat up by the cops or the kook who is
| still mad because they lost his paperwork.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We certainly want to hear _reasoned_ opposition, but I think
| a lot of people in this thread are ducking the elephant in
| the room, which is unreasoned spam. I don 't think that 1000x
| posts of 'fuck joe biden' or 'dump= cheeto hitler' advance
| public deabte. Never mind whether the politicians feel
| offended by such remarks; consider the position of the people
| who want to engage with politicians in good faith (regardless
| of whether it's for support or opposition) but are drowned by
| the endless tide of low-IQ/bot spam from both supporters and
| opponents.
|
| There was a whole bunch of mass shooting last weekend, as you
| probably know. But policy discourse is almost impossible on
| social media, because one side just endlessly spams 'it's the
| guns' and the other side endlessly spams 'shall not be
| infringed'. The people attempting to address the issue
| substantively can't make headway because the zone is
| continually flooded with shit.
|
| I grumbled long ago that the very short-format of services
| like Twitter was going to end up making discourse dumber
| because it favored slogans and bumper-sticker cliches, and
| sadly that level of stupid has become the norm now.
| einpoklum wrote:
| They effectively already do, indirectly:
|
| * Through legislation
|
| * Through impugning them as foreign agents
|
| * Through various political policing bodies (in the US - FBI,
| CISA, maybe others)
|
| * Through media pressure on online platforms
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| If I were a person of any kind of importance there's no way I
| would be running my own social media accounts. If I did, I would
| do my best to segregate those onto specific devices which I only
| used for making posts, but not replying to them. If community
| engagement was important, I'd hire someone else to respond to
| comments for me.
|
| If a senator blocks you on Twitter, there's very little chance
| that they were going to ever see your comments in the first place
| COOL_DUDE_2112 wrote:
| >If a senator blocks you on Twitter, there's very little chance
| that they were going to ever see your comments in the first
| place
|
| You over-estimate the narcissism and under estimate the opsec
| of most senators and in turn, most juris doctorates (from whose
| ranks many so called public servants are pulled)... it was not
| long ago it was a common mini-scandal for someone, usually on
| the right, to accidentally heart some porn on their "work"
| device[1].
|
| I wish I'd known when younger I could simply refuse to be
| imparted esoteric knowledge and live a life of error. If
| they're not on their phone, they're on their office computer
| name searching constantly when they're not editing their own
| Wikipedias.
|
| This case will be decided long after folks who, if it is
| decided such silencing is undemocratic, have been driven to
| post in ways that have them booted off whole networks.
|
| *The decision to become a public figure, like to become a
| dissident, is a forever decision*, and when folks try to
| "curate their timeline" like a teenager, they are no longer
| members of civil society and lose the protections granted to
| such persons.
|
| TL;DR: They see these comments, and that is _why_ they block.
|
| [1] Married Texas senator, who once defended a ban on sex toys,
| asked to explain how his account came to like the graphic post
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/12/ted-cruz-twi...
| burkaman wrote:
| Counterpoint: https://twitter.com/ChuckGrassley
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| So if I mail my senator a list of complaints every week, and
| the government bans any letters from my address reaching the
| senator, do you think my best course of action would be to
| simply throw my hands up in the air and say, "Well, it was
| unlikely he was going to read those letters anyway!" ?
| paxys wrote:
| The bigger problem here is that public officials are increasingly
| using privately-owned social media channels to conduct day to day
| business. If my local politician or police department is posting
| photos of their kids I don't really care if they block me. If
| their Twitter account is the only place I can hear about active
| shooter threats in my area or submit feedback on an upcoming
| piece of legislation, then yeah, they have an obligation to allow
| public access even if I say something that offends them.
| ajkjk wrote:
| It is not that different from using television or radio or
| private phone lines to conduct business in the past. I would
| not ask public officials to communicate in silly suboptimal
| ways out of an imagined principle that it's important that
| their communication only be on public channels.
| paxys wrote:
| It's very different than using (broadcast) TV or radio or
| phone lines. All of those are still strictly regulated, and
| you can't be arbitrarily barred access. Your only obligation
| as a citizen is to own a receiver. This does not apply to
| random websites on the internet.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| They don't really "use" television and radio though, do they?
|
| They hold a press conference and television and radio
| stations show up and broadcast them. The stations aren't
| under any obligation to show up and if they declined to do so
| the officials would get no airtime without using the
| emergency broadcast option.
| pixl97 wrote:
| At least in the more distant past in the time of the
| fairness act the broadcast stations had somewhat of an
| obligation if they were showing news/politics they had to
| have a somewhat 'balanced' showing.
| lolinder wrote:
| The government is and always has been tightly involved in
| television, radio, and phone services. The first two were
| traditionally broadcast through the airwaves for anyone to
| pick up and listen to, and the latter is a tightly regulated
| public utility that unfortunately functions as a government-
| ordained monopoly. All three are widely regarded as part of
| the commons.
|
| Twitter never has been treated that way, and is rapidly
| becoming more and more private and less and less a communal
| resource that is equally accessible to all.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Television and radio were literally unencrypted public
| channels, I don't think that person would object to a public
| broadcast of that nature.
| redeux wrote:
| Which of these is silly and suboptimal?
|
| 1. Communication on a novelty social media platform that
| limits the amount of I formation you can relay at any one
| point, by design and that [probably] less than 25% of
| Americans use.
|
| 2. Communication over a set of public frequencies that nearly
| every American can access free of charge from their home.
|
| 3. Communication over a regulated public utility that every
| American with a home can access?
| count wrote:
| Would you rather they call you on the privately owned telephone
| network, or print a story in the privately owned newspaper?
| There are functionally ZERO non-private methods of
| communication from the govt to citizens in the US.
| xhci wrote:
| It transmits over privately owned networks, but isn't this
| what's the FCC's Emergency Alert System is for?
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/emergency-alert-system
| admax88qqq wrote:
| > If their Twitter account is the only place I can hear about
| active shooter threats in my area
|
| ??? Do you actually use your local politicians Twitter to see
| if there's an active shooter?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| This is a less extreme example, but my town uses its Facebook
| page as the primary means of reporting concerns (e.g.
| potholes and other road maintenance issues, parking
| exceptions).
| tomohawk wrote:
| Many local governments post things to social media sites
| instead of on their own infrastructure, so blocking access to
| these sites prevents people from these important
| communications.
| warner25 wrote:
| I've been beating this drum for a few years now, and the
| key point that upsets me is precisely that they _already
| have their own infrastructure,_ like you said, but they
| have practically abandoned those official .gov, .mil, .org
| websites (leaving behind stale information and dead links)
| to use Facebook and Twitter instead.
|
| I think this is mostly a problem among small towns,
| counties, etc. so residents of big cities may not notice it
| as much (like the death of real local journalism). I think
| it usually boils down to the fact that it's easier for a
| lay person to update a Facebook or Twitter page than it is
| to maintain their own website, and IT people are expensive.
|
| I'm in the US Army, and "Big Army" at the top level does OK
| with its websites (e.g. army.mil), but it also consists of
| many geographically distributed, semi-independent, sub-
| organizations (units) that each have a handful of people
| doing public affairs work. The official websites at those
| lower levels have been rotting for years, and public
| affairs folks have freely admitted to me that they don't
| know how to update their official websites besides changing
| the photo and biography of the new commander once every two
| years.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This may be easier to relate to:
|
| During the pandemic, my state governor had an official Q&A
| regarding the state's policies, on Facebook.
|
| I couldn't participate without accepting Facebook's T&Cs.
|
| I'm not sure if that was illegal, but I'd like it to be.
| tayo42 wrote:
| What's the alternative though? Can we expect local
| governments to develop and run qa websites and apps? The
| only realistic option is to have them rely on a 3rd party
| service and and service is going to have some kind of sign
| up agreement you need to accept before using.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Can we expect local governments to develop and run_
|
| Why not just have a template app that's open source and
| publicly financed, and the only local part is
| configuration data like name of the mayor, specific phone
| #s etc. US local government is already massively
| duplicative and wasteful.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| One possible alternative would be a moderated, call-in
| group phone call, like companies sometimes have for
| quarterly investor / analyst calls.
|
| Open governance sometimes requires considerations, e.g.
| public access, that aren't always crucial for private
| commerce.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Can we expect local governments to develop and run qa
| websites and apps?
|
| Actually, yes, we should expect this.
| xorcist wrote:
| A working website that every citizen can use would be the
| least of my expectations in a democratic society.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I think it's less about the practical use case and more about
| if there is an official government agency whose
| responsibility it is to make the public aware of dangerous
| events, that agency should not have the right to selectively
| choose who may or may not be able to access that information,
| based on the sole discretion of the police department's
| social media manager.
| shinjitsu wrote:
| Well The local governor of Hawaii used twitter to cancel a
| missile alert - so it isn't that wild an idea
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16923080/hawaii-
| governor-...
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I feel like you're identifying two distinct issues here -
| preventing you from commenting on posts, and preventing you
| from seeing them at all. It depends on the platform whether you
| can actually separate the two though (regardless of whether
| either should be legal).
| paxys wrote:
| Not sure why there should be a legal distinction between the
| two. There are many possible ways to interact with stuff
| online (view it, "like" it, comment on it, save it, share it
| etc.), and if it is government-sponsored content then no one
| should be barred from doing any of this.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I would somewhat disagree with this and say that if someone
| is to be barred from doing any of this, there needs to be
| some semblance of due process in the form of clearly
| defined circumstances when that can happen, for how long,
| etc.
| underseacables wrote:
| I agree, public officials should not be using private accounts
| - email social, etc. - for public/government work. It seems a
| lot of politicians are doing this, and quite possibly to avoid
| public records requests and scrutiny
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I'm always surprised that government officials and official
| whitehouse memos n such keep comments enabled. It's not like the
| president (besides Trump maybe lol) is gonna read the comments
| and respond, plus the value of those first replies is so
| ridiculously high, why on earth would you risk it. The point of
| twitter and facebook for political officials is get the message
| across, not create engaging content. It would also be nice if all
| 'fact checkers' from facebook, to twitters community notes would
| get permanently disabled for elected officials. Absolutely
| bonkers we let tech companies decide that stuff for us IMO.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I don't think most people posting on social media actually
| expect the politician/official to respond to a message - its
| more that it adds color, or perhaps another view, to the
| official message that is posted, so that others reading the
| original message can (perhaps) get another side - of course it
| can be - and certainly is - abused, but not sure blocking
| people is the right solution here - anymore than it would be to
| allow a government official to post an op-ed piece in a
| newspaper, and the forbid anyone who had a different opinion
| from responding either in another op-ed, or in a letter-to-the-
| editor.
| wombatpm wrote:
| When a politician speaks in public the public can immediately
| respond to lies and falsehoods. Why should politicians be
| protected from feedback online?
|
| But I do agree that anonymous posts to politicians should
| eligible for blocking.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I can't even have a strong opinion on this one, it seems like one
| of the central wedge issues of the internet age. I just hope the
| Supreme Court wrestles with this responsibly and looks past
| whatever automatic biases they have, because this one is hard.
| Trolling and harrassment is weaponized and automated in a way
| that was never possible before, and it still seems just about
| impossible to reliably define what is critique vs what is abuse.
| I suppose the only path is the one that looks at it in terms of
| behavior rather than content.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I suppose the only path is the one that looks at it in terms
| of behavior rather than content.
|
| This is a key point that I hope they recognize and carefully
| consider. The difference between speech and behavior. In
| meatspace, these are different things, so the government can
| punish someone for their behavior but cannot punish someone for
| their speech. Online, speech and behavior are the same thing.
| So when someone gets blocked for, say, spamming the n-word over
| and over, are you blocking them for their speech or for their
| behavior? The blocker will claim it's for their behavior, and
| the blockee will claim he was censored because of his speech.
| Who's right?
| ajkjk wrote:
| Eh. Hard to be annoyed about this. It would be quite another
| thing if they can deplatform critics entirely, but just blocking
| them? Who cares?
|
| Even the policies at city-council meetings feel silly. Free
| speech to me means that you can say whatever you want in the
| press and in public in general. It doesn't need to guarantee your
| right to be annoying at a particular venue. When good principles
| like free speech are distorted into unreasonable and bizarre
| policies it undermines the principles themselves. It also just
| undermines the basic idea of government: it's hard to want to
| support a system that does obviously-silly things all the time
| because it's too zealous about its own rules.
|
| Indeed, often people who want less government make a point of
| enforcing rules to the point of absurdity so that people are
| disenchanted with the rules themselves: obviously if a system
| seems to work in stupid ways people are more likely to oppose it,
| yet the actual solution is for it to not work in stupid ways, not
| to get rid of it.
| psychlops wrote:
| > It doesn't need to guarantee your right to be annoying at a
| particular venue. When good principles like free speech are
| distorted into unreasonable and bizarre policies it undermines
| the principles themselves.
|
| Some might say that banning speech that is "annoying at a
| particular venue" is a unreasonable and bizarre policy.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Mouth off in court and see how the judge explains it to you.
|
| Honestly, there's probably court transcripts of judges
| explaining in clear, reasonable terms exactly why they're
| silencing somebody. That's the job they supposed to do, after
| all.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Now all you need to do to bring the argument home is to
| show us why Twitter is the same as a courtroom in session.
| h2odragon wrote:
| insofar as official business is being conducted there,
| the analogy would hold.
|
| there's absolutely no reason that official business
| _should_ be conducted on twitter; but good luck (a)
| getting officials to admit error and (b) getting
| government IT to stand up a comment board and keep it
| alive under fierce debate.
| ender341341 wrote:
| If you're disruptive enough in court it's one of the few
| reasons you can be tried in absentia in the US.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > but just blocking them? Who cares?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition
|
| The government cannot listen to some citizens and not others.
| It's one of the enumerated rights in the First Amendment.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Yes, my complaint is over how "petition" is translated into a
| modern setting.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
|
| If you can't take criticism that alone, should, disqualify you
| from public office.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I sure as hell wish this were the case, excluding abuse like
| actual death threats, of course.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I would argue that a death threat, is not a "criticism", but
| something well beyond that.
| arp242 wrote:
| There's "criticism" and there's "abuse", and copy/pasting the
| same message to hundreds on Twitter posts is "abuse".
|
| This kind of attitude is why politicians seem to slowly skew
| more towards over-confident aggressive brash loudmouths who are
| very good at shouting and dealing with an endless stream of
| abuse, rather than the actual business of running things.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| It basically means politicians can't have any genuine
| conversation with constituents on social media because it'll be
| drowning in trolls. Which I guess is fine, but it seems less
| than the ideal outcome.
|
| An uncensored media feed for any politician with any power at
| all is just going to be an uninterrupted stream of vitriol.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Whenever this comes up, one of the justifications is "death
| threats". Any anonymous account or bot can make a "death threat"
| ... but its being often used in political theater and discourse
| to sow division, real or not.
| jcranmer wrote:
| So the headline here is kind of wrong. The question isn't whether
| or not a government account can block people on social media--
| it's pretty well conceded that's a First Amendment violation,
| although there's no direct SCOTUS precedent on the matter. The
| actual question is when is an account a government account.
|
| Note the specific questions in the cases at issue:
| https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/oconnor-ratcliff...
|
| > Whether a public official engages in state action subject to
| the First Amendment by blocking an individual from the official's
| personal social media account, when the official uses the account
| to feature their job and communicate about job-related matters
| with the public, but does not do so pursuant to any governmental
| authority or duty.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/lindke-v-freed/
|
| > Whether a public official's social media activity can
| constitute state action only if the official used the account to
| perform a governmental duty or under the authority of his or her
| office.
|
| (While SCOTUSblog color-codes all of the filings depending on if
| they're for the respondents or for the petitioners, it's a little
| messed up here since some organizations filed one amicus brief
| for both cases, and the nature of petitioner and respondent are
| different in the two cases).
|
| It'll be interesting to see what test SCOTUS comes up with in
| this oral argument; it's not an easy as you might think to draw a
| clear line between personal account of an elected official and an
| account with official government imprimatur.
| duxup wrote:
| I agree this is all very muddy.
|
| Not far from me local officials during riots were giving out
| warnings (some hilariously wrong) about places to avoid and
| etc. Very much in the realm of public safety warnings,
| sometimes they retweeted them, sometimes copied and pasted, and
| sometimes it wasn't clear if they were "official" or "personal
| experiences" or just a bizarre rumor they heard (that was the
| case).
|
| It certainly seems like some healthy "personal" and "work"
| account usage would make life a lit easier to deal with all
| this.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's important to understand that the Supreme Court has _never_
| been some impartial body that operates above politics. Even the
| "originalist" or "textualist" movement embodied by the Federalist
| Society was simply invented in the 1980s. Some examples:
|
| 1. (1A) The Supreme Court has refused to strike down anti-BDS
| laws that exist in ~37 states. For example, to be a teacher in
| Texas public schools, you have to sign a contract saying you
| won't support or engage in anti-BDS activities [1];
|
| 2. (2A) An individual "right" to own firearms was only created in
| 2008 [2], over 200 years after it was enacted, ignoring all
| history and interpretation of 2A;
|
| 3. (4A) Civil asset forfeiture should be unconstitutional under
| 4A. It is not;
|
| 4. (1A) In the Redeemer era, the Supreme Court vacated hate
| crimes convictions for the Califax massacre that involved a very
| restrictive reading of 1A [3];
|
| 5. In the Filburn decision in 1942, The Supreme Court ruled that
| growing wheat for personal use counted as interstate commerce
| because growing such wheat meant you _didn 't_ participate in
| interstate wheat markets when you otherwise would [4]; and
|
| 6. Citizens United decided that money was protected political
| speech [5].
|
| I could go on. The point is though that _all of this is
| completely made up_ and it 's done so to protect government and
| capital owner interests almost all of the time.
|
| Some of the more controversial decisions of the last few years
| have relied upon the "major questions doctrine" [6]. What is
| that? It's a principle of statutory interpretation that simply
| says that if an issue is big enough, the court gets to overrule
| the executive and legislative decisions if the court decides the
| language wasn't sufficiently clear (for the court). Where did
| this principle come from? They just made it up.
|
| So, the decision regarding officials blocking critics will be a
| political one. Personally I don't think a government employee
| blocking someone on Twitter is a 1S issue. I guess we'll see.
|
| [1]: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181218-texas-teacher-
| fir...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
|
| [3]: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/united-states-v-
| crui...
|
| [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
|
| [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
|
| [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >An individual "right" to own firearms was only created in 2008
|
| You are conflating a SCOTUS ruling with a "right". The right
| was always there since the constitution was adopted.
|
| It just wasn't a right that was challenged all the way up to
| the SCOTUS until 2008. That doesn't mean the right didn't exist
| before hand. It only means the SCOTUS confirmed a right that
| has existed all along.
| pixl97 wrote:
| And if they did not confirm it, then the right would not have
| had existed the entire time...
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's a Schrodinger Right: The right is a superposition of
| "exists" and "doesn't exist" until ruled on by the court.
| gustavus wrote:
| The details of the actual cases.
|
| > The first case, O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, involves school
| board trustees who used their personal Facebook and Twitter
| accounts to solicit feedback from constituents, invite the public
| to board meetings, and answer questions. But when the trustees
| got tired of two concerned parents' probing commentary, the
| trustees blocked the parents.
|
| > In an attempt to justify their censorship, the trustees argued
| they were acting as private citizens, not as government
| officials. These were just personal accounts, they claimed. But
| the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, like most courts
| judging similar cases, didn't buy this argument. Instead, it
| correctly examined the content and appearance of their pages and
| determined the trustees had "clothed their pages in the authority
| of their offices and used their pages to communicate their
| official duties."
|
| > The second case, Lindke v. Freed, diverged from that
| commonsense rule. There, a city manager used his Facebook page to
| conduct official business but blocked a critic whose comments he
| disliked. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
| departed from other courts that have considered similar cases,
| holding that the city manager's censorship did not violate the
| First Amendment. It's his personal page, the court said, and
| "presenting himself as city manager" and "talking about his job"
| isn't enough "to transform a personal page into an official one."
|
| So my layman opinion is then that the question is when does a
| social media account become an official account?
| 34679 wrote:
| A lot of people only seem to be considering this in the context
| of individual bans. The real concern is the possibility of
| blanket bans on everyone discussing a specific topic or view.
| Right now, the words "ceasefire" and "genocide" come to mind.
| arp242 wrote:
| Where does "criticism" stop and "heckling" begin?
|
| The article says that _" politicians cannot use their social
| media account as a public forum and then block their critics from
| that forum. That's not how it works in real life"_ but ... it
| kind of does? If you have nothing to offer other than a stream of
| abuse then you can expected to be shown the door.
|
| Real-life interactions are "rate limited" both artificially ( _n_
| minutes of speaking time) and more naturally (you can 't follow
| politician everywhere to criticise them). A small group of online
| critics/hecklers can completely dominate the conversation because
| there is no rate limit. This includes posting about your pet
| peeve on every unrelated thread.
|
| Have you seen the accounts of most politicians, even fairly
| moderate and uncontroversial ones? It's such a shitstorm that I
| wonder why they even have these accounts. As Peter Mannion MP
| already discovered many years ago: "this is the problem with the
| public, they're fucking horrible".
|
| The article mentions O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, and _" when
| the trustees got tired of two concerned parents' probing
| commentary, the trustees blocked the parents."_ Sounds kinda bad
| and childish from the trustees, but then you read the details[1]
| and that tells a somewhat different story: "Garnier had once left
| near-identical comments on 42 separate posts on O'Connor-
| Ratcliff's Facebook page. He had also left 226 identical replies
| over the span of 10 minutes to each tweet O'Connor-Ratcliff had
| ever posted on her public Twitter account." Describing that as
| merely "commentary" they "got tired" of is so woefully incomplete
| that it's hard to take this in good faith.
|
| The second case is also rather more nuanced than presented; Freed
| was a civil servant and used his Facebook page mainly for
| personal matters, and occasionally also occasionally "posted
| administrative directives and press releases he issued as the
| City Manager that had already been released to the public
| elsewhere prior to being posted on his personal Facebook page."
| When COVID started this took up a lot of Freed's attention on
| Facebook, like for all of us, and "Lindke made Facebook posts on
| other accounts personally attacking Freed". I can't really find
| an account of what exactly was posted though, but this also
| sounds a bit more than "criticism".
|
| And there is a legitimate discussion to be had where "personal
| space" begins, and "city manager used his Facebook page to
| conduct official business", as the article describes it, seems
| excessively simplistic.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Connor-Ratcliff_v._Garnier
|
| [2]:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-611/256157/2023...
| mbostleman wrote:
| I know that constitutional law is complex and most certainly
| above my pay grade, but from a fundamental human perspective,
| that this is even a question in a modern liberal society sends
| shivers up my spine.
| mbostleman wrote:
| Actually, nevermind. I should have read the article first. This
| is concerning feedback to social media accounts owned and
| managed by a public official. I thought this was about
| (federal) government actors pressuring platforms to censor
| users across the board.
| croisillon wrote:
| i wish it would also set a precedent for further so-called
| democratic countries, instead of having the french center-right
| ruling party block everyone on twitter
| ericfrazier wrote:
| Pass a federal law that no elected official, state or federal is
| allowed to use social media while in office, at all. See how many
| politicians are in it for the clout or in it for the civics.
| Politicians can communicate using existing resources like the
| state websites set up for their office.
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