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If the company is pre-emptively blocking comments for the politican, then it would depend on whether or not the politican was aware of the company's action. If
by ep103 8y ago
If the company is pre-emptively blocking comments for the politican, then it would depend on whether or not the politican was aware of the company's action.
If the company was doing it on behalf of the politican, it would still be illegal (though harder to prove). If the company was doing it as blanket policy as part of the product, or for all politicans, then yeah, that's probably a loophole.
- tropo 8y agoTrivial example: Alex Jones is blocked. Anybody who would antagonize the left is pre-emptively blocked by the platform. Since this is well-known, and it is purposely done on behalf of the politicians, following your logic it is illegal for politicians on the left to use social media. Somehow I don't see that ever getting enforced.
- tptacek 8y agoThat example isn't trivial at all, because the reason he was blocked is ostensibly viewpoint-neutral: he was blocked for harassing reporters and using the platform as vehicle for doing so. You can disagree that that's what actually happened, and if the same thing happened to you you could sue your (I don't know) county supervisor over it, but given the clear evidence, you'll lose. Twitter kept Alex Jones on the platform far longer than his insane viewpoints merited; they went out of their way not to block him. Further, the way the platform is used matters. The county official in this case advertised her Facebook Page as a way to communicate with her about the job she was doing. If you don't promote your page (or Twitter account) as a public forum, but rather as either a personal profile or a broadcast medium, it mightn't much matter how you moderate.