Unblock
Trump can lie cheat and steal but at least he can’t block his critics on Twitter.
U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald cited First Amendment principles in holding that the social media platform offered a forum in which people could not only consume information and opinion from public figures but offer feedback to elected officials — just as they have the right to do in newsprint or in person in public spaces.
Buchwald boiled down the case to two simple questions: Can a public official block someone from seeing her or his Twitter feed given First Amendment protections of free speech? And does it matter if that public official is the president?
“The answer to both questions is no,” Buchwald wrote at the top of her opinion.
The case was technically filed against Trump, his former communications director Hope Hicks, his chief press secretary Sarah Sanders, and his social media director, Daniel Scavino. The White House did not give any indication to NPR or others whether the administration will appeal the decision.
Buchwald did not order any compensation for damages but instead offered a declarative judgment — one that involved declarative statements from the judge. “[N]o government official — including the President — is above the law,” she wrote, “and all government officials are presumed to follow the law as has been declared.” The judge wrote she expects Scavino to unblock critics and to not block others in the future.
He uses it (a lot) to make presidential assertions and blurts and insults, so it’s only reasonable that that means he can’t wall it off.
Of all the things I am not sure about Trump, I know that he is a coward.
Wait, how does blocking on Twitter work? (I don’t use it myself.)
I always imagined that if you blocked someone, you’d never see anything they wrote. That’s fine. If Donnie Twoscoops blocks someone, that would be fine. He’s not restricting their ability to say something, he’s just deciding that he personally doesn’t want to read it. Even for POTUS, that has to be OK, doesn’t it? Just because people have the right to offer feedback to elected officials in newsprint, that doesn’t mean that elected officials are legally required to read all the newspapers!
But this makes it sound like if you block someone, they can’t see what you write? Even though your posts are public and viewable by anonymous users – or, by anyone using a private browsing window. That seems… totally pointless. I don’t understand how that type of blocking could possibly be agreed on as “working”, on a basic technical level.
Blocking does mean you don’t see the blockee’s tweets unless you seek them out…but it also means the blockee can’t see yours (without more elaborate seeking out) and that the blockee can’t reply to you or annotate your tweets while retweeting them. There is also muting, which means you don’t see the muted person’s tweets but none of the rest of it.
It’s not really that elaborate to seek out someone’s tweets, though. I don’t have a Twitter account at all, and can still read Trump’s timeline, or anyone else’s unless it’s been made private. If it were actually inconvenient, I would have just signed up for an account by now.
I’ll be curious to see if this decision holds up on appeal, assuming it is appealed. I sort of skimmed through the ruling, and nothing strikes me as obviously wrong, but it’s not very persuasive, either. Not that it has to be — it’s a trial court ruling, the purpose is more to explain the court’s reasoning to the parties than to persuade random internet commenters. But I’ll be interested to read a good critique of it if anyone’s seen one.
Well yes, if you don’t have an account there’s nothing to block, but if you do have one you have to sign out or else use incognito window.