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Supreme Court: Will Blocking on the SocialWeb Remain Legal for All in the USA?
- iudqnolq 4y ago> FYI: Will Blocking remain legal for all in the USA? Supreme Court to rule on issue. It's not currently legal for all. At the present moment whether blocking a constituent is legal depends on which circuit you live in. > While these cases address only issues related to an individual's explicit blocking of other individuals, I can't help wondering if a future case might limit an individual's freedom to choose which instance to use. If SCOTUS rules against blocking, might individuals with government roles be barred from using instances that provide instance-level blocking or either individuals or other instances? In a certain sense anything can happen. But there's no reason to think this is more likely than outlawing apple pie. The current case is about whether elected officials can click the block button when logged into official accounts for certain reasons. Note that platforms are still allowed to block for any reason regardless of the outcome in this case. Note also this case leaves open the possibility it might be permissible for an official to block constituents who broke neutral rules. There is nothing here to suggest any platform changes would be needed.
- sverhagen 4y agoWhat are "official accounts", may still be up for some debate? Both Trump and AOC were sued for blocking people on Twitter. I understand that if you manage the Twitter account of the Department of Blank, that you may be prevented from blocking citizens, but for Trump and AOC, were the accounts in question not as much a personal account as anything else?
- krapp 4y agoObviously @realDonaldTrump is a personal account and @POTUS is the account representing the office of President. But as far as I know, Trump never touched the official White House account, and mistrusted the press, and used his personal account as a primary source of communication, which is why the courts ruled as they did in his case. Being denied access to Trump's personal account became a Constitutional issue because of the way Trump was using it. If you do business on a personal account, at some point that's now a business account. I don't know about AOC but I assume the same situation applies.
- mschuster91 4y agoThe obvious fix to that would be to introduce a law mandating that communication with the general public by a government official has to be made on government-provided/managed social media and email accounts. Using "private" accounts to bypass legal requirements (archival, monitoring, insider trading, or blocking political opponents/critical citizens) should result in getting immediately booted from office. Even if it's the President.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y agoYeah, it's like running an email server in your basement, or bringing your laptop in for repair.
- orwin 4y agoagree for the first (Clinton got out easy imho, but as i understand, Republicans were afraid of setting a precedent), hard disagree on the second. Unless you think you can use politician children against them.
- Akronymus 4y ago[flagged]
- krapp 4y agoIf that were actually the case, the Republicans would be impeaching him with it as we speak. Fox News and all the right-leaning press would be running wall to wall coverage on it. It's getting pathetic at this point. Hunter Biden's laptop isn't going to take down the Biden administration. It isn't going to be Biden's Watergate. It isn't going to get Trump another term. Find something real that actually sticks.
- krapp 4y agoIt's become an autonomic response on HN at this point, if one mentions Trump in any capacity other than ebullient praise, the Trumpists show up to spread insinuations about the Bidens and Hillary Clinton. I guess in their heads somehow that "wins" the argument every time.
- rcme 4y agoI don't think it's a question of "official" vs. "personal" accounts. It's like if you use a personal email at work, you're still subject to regulatory information withholding guidelines. Using a personal account to conduct official business doesn't magically absolve you of your responsibilities under the law. If you use your personal Twitter account to talk with friends and personal interests, then go ahead and block whomever. But if you use your personal account for official business, e.g. to discuss your administration's policies and priorities, then you're acting in an official capacity and should not be allowed to block citizens.
- naasking 4y agoElected representatives should not be able to block real citizens [1]. However, not everyone posting on social is a citizen, or even human, and they should be able to block non-citizens. This has been the single consistent problem with social media. [1] However, citizens harassing them in real life can be handled by the police, what is the social media equivalent that doesn't block them outright?
- chrischen 4y agoMaybe disallow anonymous or only allow pseudo anonymous interaction?
- naasking 4y agoThat's one possibility, but pseudonmyous is the default on Twitter now unless you pay for the privilege. It's a tricky problem. We want some degree of anonymity but that also invites abuse. We need something like a zero-knowledge proof of citizenry, at the very least.
- btown 4y agoThis gets murky. How is a pseudonymous account, where I schedule posts, different from a bot account, legally? Should I lose rights to information just because my “main” account doesn’t have my full name and face?
- bilbo0s 4y agoWell, I mean, how else can we prove that a slimeball politician is blocking his constituents unless we can identify the constituents blocked. A politician in Wisconsin shouldn't be able to block Wisconsinites in his constituency, but I can see where it'd be legal for him to block Nebraskans. Fundamental to attribution here is determining the one from the other. Courts of law are generally sticklers about that sort of thing.
- papito 4y agoI am not blocking a person, I am blocking a random handle on the Internet.
- Jiro 4y ago>Note that platforms are still allowed to block for any reason regardless of the outcome in this case. What's to prevent the politician from just using social media run by a company who is friendly to him and will block people with opposing viewpoints even without him telling them to? (Aside from the fact that social media companies like some politicians more than others, which just makes the problem worse.)
- iudqnolq 4y agoNot much. In theory if a company acts under the direction of a govt official a court could find that it acted as part of the state. But that takes a very high degree of entanglement. If the company is simply persuaded the official has a good argument that isn't enough. You can see the miserable track record of Trump supporters sueing over govt programs to report "disinformation" to social media companies for examples of what isn't sufficient.
- roxgib 4y agoIt seems like platforms could solve this by making it possible for users to see the content of accounts run by government officials even when blocked, but merely prevent them from otherwise interacting with them.
- markdown 4y agoFor Twitter, a simpler solution would be to just disable the block button for govt accounts. They can use the mute function to ignore trolls.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoI would say a mute is as good as a block.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoWhen you mute people, they can still reply to your tweets and other people can still see those replies.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y agothat is the idea, yes the official can decide to cover their eyes, but not everyone else's eyes
- rcme 4y agoNot sure I agree. Citizens have a right to see the public information posted by their elected officials. But that doesn't mean the elected officials have to provide a billboard for all of their constituents. Let's say an elected official hung constituent letters outside their office. Would they be obligated to hang every letter received, or could they curate the letters in some way?
- markdown 4y agoWhat you're suggesting is that the govt should be allowed to only let sycophants post praise, while blocking any criticism or unwelcome comment. Ridiculous. Every announcement is made in a public square, and once said, every citizen has the right to also shout in that square. The government official is free to cover his ears.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoI have two problems with comparing Social Media accounts to the "Public Square". In a public square, I know who you are. You are right there in front of me. I can see you face and I can even follow you home. Now look on Twitter and Mastodon and even hacker news and see how many people even use their real name? Thesis a case where I would call for a publicly owned social media platform that adheres strictly to the first amendment but that needs I.D verification and you must use your real name. No blocking allowed at all and zero ranking, upvotes, or likes. And let twitter and facebook and mastodon be the places where people can live in their own verification bias. This makes me think as well, is the anonymity of social media discouraging the courage needed to state you feelings in public and to protect? Is the "safe space" of social media actually inhibiting public protest that could actually change things?
- amadeuspagel 4y agoYou're not really supposed to follow people home, and in cities public squares are (were? in the time when all these constitutional issues where hammered out?) quite anonymous. People don't know each other.
- jfengel 4y agoBut they also couldn't harass each other without consequences. The genuine anonymity of the Internet is a novel thing without easy analogies to the past.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y agocountless people are constantly harassed without consequences as a result of their names being known and participating in civics that seems like a worse alternative, especially considering it's hard to change your entire identity offline, and the harassment includes actual physical violence
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago> People don't know each other. I am sitting in a coffee shop I frequent every morning. Through the years I have been coming here I have made a lot of friendships. I know here these popped live, what they do for a living and many of their political and social views. We discuss a range of topics and we are rarely all in agreement, but it never turns into anything like on the Internet. I know people. You may not, and that is sad, but I know people.
- Akronymus 4y agoThere are two types of blocking. Blocking someone from appearing for you, and blocking someone from seeing what you post. IMO, the former should be legal in all cases, but the latter, CAN be problematic if it's an official. Tbh, I am not much of a fan of the latter one in any case.
- efitz 4y agoExactly this. Government employees should have some official channel that any constituent can use to communicate with them, but it doesn’t have to be every (or any) social media network. The ability to reply on social media networks is largely an amplification mechanism, not a meaningful avenue for redress of grievances. When I “block” you it variously means that (1) I don’t see your messages/replies and sometimes also (2) you don’t see my messages. I think that #2 is problematic for government accounts but #1 is reasonable.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoWhen you block people they can't reply to your tweets. Completely legitimate IMO, but different from just ignoring people's emails, or sending them to the spam folder, which is something you could do privately, and which AFAIK wouldn't be a constitutional issue in any case.
- iudqnolq 4y agoI think you might find the appeals court decision interesting. They look at other impacts of blocking. One thing they consider is that the blocked constituents can view public pages on Facebook, but not public profiles on Twitter. But they consider that blocked constituents can't reply.
- MrStonedOne 4y ago[dead]
- nonethewiser 4y agoOver-regulating and distracting from the truth that social media is an irredeemable cancer. Let’s not waste our time polishing a turd.
- matthewmacleod 4y agoWould it be worth pointing out that you used social media to share this view? There’s probably more nuance to this discussion.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoWhere else would you hear their point of view? Jesus himself walked into the temple and turned over the tables of the money changers.
- mikecoles 4y agoNah, HN is just another social cesspool, albeit with a different flavor.
- anoonmoose 4y agoI mean on the one hand, there's a pretty famous meme about "so you participate in society? Curious!" that is relevant to your comment. On the other hand, I do think your comment is more fair than most cases where that is deployed. The person you're responding to has commented on HN six times in the last few hours. They're not a casual user, the account is newer than mine but has much more karma. And the comparison elsewhere to Jesus in the temple...haha, no, this is just more vitriol on the pile.
- danaris 4y ago> there's a pretty famous meme about "so you participate in society? Curious!" that is relevant to your comment. In that meme, the know-it-all says this in response to the other person saying (something like) "we should improve society somewhat", not "society is an irredeemable cancer". That does change the context a bit.
- 64operator 4y agoThat’s a new neologism to me, SocialWeb. I don’t care for it.
- inphovore 4y ago[dead]
- andrewflnr 4y agoWorth pointing out that elected officials have always been able to block incoming (paper) messages by noting the address and throwing them in the trash unread. Someone pointed out that "blocking" tends to also imply preventing the blockee from seeing the blocker. Having this as the only option seems like a mistake in the design of a social media site.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoIf a public official posts a comment on HN, then is it protected from being flagged, downvoted, killed or its author being shadowbanned. What the heck is social media. How large does a website and its audience have to be before we call it "social media". Sorry, I was born before the internet. To me, it's still a WIP (work in progress).
- grumple 4y agoAre politicians required to accept all messages from all people regardless of content? If a person sends a package of, say, explicit images, is the politician required to accept and review them? Or any letter they receive? Obviously not. They can take your letter and throw it right in the trash. How is blocking any different? What if it was "quiet blocking", so the sender never knows their message wasn't read or received by the recipient? What if the politician or government doesn't have an account at all on a given site? Doesn't that mean they aren't accepting messages from anyone? Do they have to create an account on any site where any of their constituents may be? You have a right to freedom of speech in the US. As far as I can tell, you do not have a right to have others listen to everything you say, even elected government officials.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThe title is clickbait. The cases only apply to public officials blocking people. Not private citizens.
- Technotroll 4y agoI think the title is click bait. They will of course not outlaw blocking in general. Instead the case is about the legality of social media blocking by individuals who are also government officials. Personally I think this can be solved in a way that both takes care of the duty of the office, while also protecting the rights of individual officials. It should remain a right for individuals to block people from their private accounts. Meanwhile, the right to block should be limited on official accounts that act on behalf of the office they represent. By limited I mean that they should of course be allowed to block obvious bots or spam. The end result will be a new job opening for most public offices, which is that of the public relations officer in charge of public social media accounts.