Select date
Judge Rules Social Media Companies Cannot Stifle Free Speech
A federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that social media companies must allow free speech on their platforms and cease the practise of censoring conservative and independent voices.
In a landmark ruling, ironically brought by aggrieved members of “Verified Liberal Twitter,” the judge said that public figures, including President Trump, cannot block people on Twitter as it violates the First Amendment.
Breitbart.com reports: Given Trump’s enormous Twitter following, the top reply to his tweets often receives a great deal of attention. As Twitter favors verified users on the platform, while often shadowbanning conservative accounts, liberal and left-leaning responses to the President often appear at the top of his replies.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has even expressed openness to using Google’s hopelessly flawed, politically biased AI “hate speech” filter on reply threads beneath Trump tweets, which would privilege the replies of left-leaning users to the president even further.
With or without the filter, left-leaning users frequently attract thousands of retweets with their replies to the president:
To be fair you didn't win the WH: Russia won it for you. pic.twitter.com/iPUXKopd9B
— RPBP (@rpbp) June 6, 2017
Thus the incentive for Verified Liberal Twitter.
There’s just one snag. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which brought the case on behalf of the blocked Verified Liberals, argued that the President had violated the rights of the blocked users by limiting their participation in a public forum.
If Twitter is a public forum where users have First Amendment rights, that could make Twitter bans unconstitutional as well. It might also have knock-on implications for other social media platforms, like Facebook. That would present a huge problem for Jack Dorsey and other Masters of the Universe, who continue to purge conservative users from their platforms.
The wording of the judge’s ruling is unambiguous on this point, stating “the viewpoint-based exclusion of the individual plaintiffs from that designated public forum is prescribed by the First Amendment.”
Furthermore, the second part of the judge’s ruling, that public figures have no right to block users on social media in response to their political views, also has implications that range far beyond Trump.
For example:
Rep. Keith Ellison has blocked me.
According to a federal court opinion today, this is unconstitutional.
I'll give his office 48 hours to unblock me, in order to comply with the law, before taking further action. pic.twitter.com/6rtdISLfEi
— Mike Cernovich
