President Donald Trump may be the nation’s tweeter-in-chief, but some Twitter users say he’s violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his feed after they posted scornful comments.
Lawyers for two Twitter users sent the White House a letter Tuesday demanding they be un-blocked from the Republican president’s @realDonaldTrump account.
The White House hasn’t responded.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York wrote the letter on behalf of the blocked tweeters.
Although Trump started @realDonaldTrump as a private citizen, the institute’s lawyers argue he’s made it a government-designated public forum by using it to discuss polices and engage with citizens. They say it’s unconstitutional to exclude people from such a forum based on their views.
Blocking people on Twitter means they can’t easily see and comment on your tweets.
(AP)
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4 Responses
If Twitter was a government agency, they probably would be blocked from selectively deciding who can post nasty comments on the presidents’ newflow. However, Twitter is private, and those whining are free to open their own accounts and tweet all the disparaging things they like. The lawsuit is in accordance with the left-wing/Democrat/liberal view that conservatives (i.e. anyone not ultra-leftist) should be banished from public discourse as a matter of government policy (as you will note, many institutions under Democrat control are doing).
This is a typical day: akuperma gets this all wrong.
In the pre-twitter era, if a president (or anyone else) posted his opinion (informed or otherwise) on a piece of paper taped to a private fence abutting a public sidewalk for all to see, he/she could not control who looks at the piece of paper.
And as a liberal, I can assure you that I (who am not authorized to speak for any other liberals) do not think conservatives should be banished from public discourse. For one thing, how else would we know how wrong many of them are.
And just one small point: liberals are not ultra-leftists. Ultra-leftists mistrust liberals more than main-stream conservatives mistrust the alt-right.
The liberals are wrong and mislead, and no-one should follow them.
huju: Anyone is free to open their own twitter account and say whatever they want about Trump. At issue is whether Trump is allowed to control his own Twitter account. In your analogy, if Trump owns a private fence, he can control what is posted to the fence, even though your are free to stand in front of the fence on public grounds and do what you please.