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Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate via T

Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate via Twitter in an official capacity. Some agencies post things to Twitter (and Facebook) but nowhere else — not even on their own government websites. I’ve had government officials ignore emails but respond to tweets (as someone who no longer uses Twitter, this is now quite frustrating). At some point Twitter can no longer hide behind the “private entity” flag. A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to be had whether it now should be. Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication.

jakelazaroff 7y ago
> A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to be had whether it now should be. That’s fair, and I’m up for that ideological debate (although my position would still be that Twitter shouldn’t feel obligated to disseminate speech it doesn’t want to). But the parent was arguing that the legal standing should be created. > Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication. There are actors with the resources of nation-states wielding hundreds of thousands of fake accounts to run massive propaganda campaigns… and your position is that allowing that is the way to make social media an equalizing force?