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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the silence-all-disagreement-and-only-agreement-will-be-seen dept.

Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute has filed a lawsuit against President Trump for blocking seven users on Twitter, claiming that the action violates the users' First Amendment right to participate in a public political forum:

The institute filed suit today on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by the president, which prevents them from seeing or replying to his tweets. It threatened legal action in a letter to Trump in June, and now "asks the court to declare that the viewpoint-based blocking of people from the @realDonaldTrump account is unconstitutional."

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, elaborates on the Knight Institute's earlier letter. It contends that Trump's Twitter account is a public political forum where citizens have a First Amendment right to speak. Under this theory, blocking users impedes their right to participate in a political conversation and stops them from viewing official government communication. Therefore, if Trump blocks people for criticizing his political viewpoints, he'd be doing the equivalent of kicking them out of a digital town hall.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:35PM (#538107)

    Twitter actively promotes people that hold a certain point of view (anti-Trump) while suppressing and sometimes cutting others out of the conversation entirely. I understand Twitter is a private company and I think this entire issue is pointless but if the POTUS blocking people on Twitter is unconstitutional then what will be done about Twitter choosing what the rest of us see on his comments? During the election cycle it would be back and forth on his account where there was plenty of supporters as well as those that were in favor of Hillary or Bernie. Now there's not a single tweet that isn't bombarded with bullshit comments from the same authenticated asshats that Twitter deemed worthy of speaking on behalf of the rest of us. Where's the public outcry for his supporters having their views suppressed by Twitter?