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>Not unless the government is the entity doing the banning (or collaborating with Twitter to ban accounts at its request). But twitter is working with the gove
by PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
>Not unless the government is the entity doing the banning (or collaborating with Twitter to ban accounts at its request).
But twitter is working with the government in hosting the tweets and thus assumes responsibility to provide a public square, in which case it cannot ban people.
Otherwise government should be banned from using twitter because by picking a private company to put government messages on, the government official (in this case Trump) is picking that company's existing policy (what ever it may be) as a means of banning people, which the government isn't allowed to do.
- jsgo 8y ago> Otherwise government should be banned from using twitter because by picking a private company to put government messages on, the government official (in this case Trump) is picking that company's existing policy (what ever it may be) as a means of banning people, which the government isn't allowed to do. Bingo. I'm assuming you're a developer. Have you ever wanted to leverage a piece of code, say GPL licensed, that does everything you want it to, checks off all of the development boxes, would make your life amazing.... but were forced to go with something else because of compliance? Same thing here. Just because Twitter does everything functionally they need, if it forces them into situations that would run afoul of their requirements, then they're forced to go a different avenue.
- anigbrowl 8y agoBut twitter is working with the government in hosting the tweets and thus assumes responsibility to provide a public square No. No it doesn't. Allowing the government to use your service does not thereby make it part of the government.
- echotango 8y agoSo you're saying if fox news set up a 'private' website to host trump's posts and only allowed pro-trump people to comment that wouldnt violate free speech because it is a private website and the government itself isn't banning people who criticize it.
- icebraining 8y agoFox News wouldn't violate the first amendment. At most, the POTUS might be prevented from using that website. (Nitpick: "free speech" is a general philosophical concept; we're talking about the 1st Amendment, which is a particular application of one of many views on that concept)
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoSo if Trump isn't banned from using that website, where is the difference from this case?
- icebraining 8y agoI'm confused, what website? The hypothetical one? Who said he wouldn't be?