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posted by martyb on Friday May 25 2018, @03:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the rejection-rejected dept.

President Trump's practice of blocking Twitter users who are critical of him from seeing his posts on the social media platform violates the First Amendment, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday.

The ruling came in a case brought by seven Twitter users who had been blocked by the @realDonaldTrump account after they criticized the president.

The plaintiffs, who were joined in the suit by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, claimed that Mr. Trump's Twitter feed is an official government account and that blocking users from following it was a violation of their First Amendment rights.

In her ruling, Federal District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote of the plaintiffs that "the speech in which they seek to engage is protected by the First Amendment" and that Mr. Trump and Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, "exert governmental control over certain aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/media/trump-twitter-block.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

See also: http://time.com/4808270/sean-spicer-donald-trump-twitter-statements/:

When asked at a press briefing whether Trump's tweets qualify as official statements on behalf of the White House, Spicer said that he "is the President of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the President of the United States."


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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 25 2018, @07:01PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday May 25 2018, @07:01PM (#684148)

    You knobs are all interpreting "public vs. private" as "can people see when I do this vs. is it secret" instead of "is this a part of my job vs. is this something I am doing personally."

    Maybe my terminology was suboptimal, but come on. Use a brain cell or two.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
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