This is very disturbing to me:
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, addressing a novel issue about how the Constitution applies to social media platforms and public officials, found that the president’s Twitter feed is a public forum. As a result, she ruled that when Mr. Trump or an aide blocked seven plaintiffs from viewing and replying to his posts, he violated the First Amendment.
I don’t give a drat about Trump’s Twitter or the freakazoids he blocked from it. (Read the quoted article to find out why they are freakazoids.) But the idea that people’s social media accounts are “public forums” over which the authors should have no control is anathema to me.
I’m a public employee, so it can be argued that I owe access to my passworded posts to the taxpayers who pay my salary. The likelihood of somebody wanting to make this argument is tiny but even the shadow of the possibility that somebody is entitled to interacting with me online, whether I want it or not, is enough to scare me off line.
If you are a popular blogger, you know that “this is a public forum” is the favorite phrase of trolls and harassers online. Once an actual judge supports this vision of individual social media accounts, one more step is made towards demolishing online freedom.
Trumps come and go. And rulings that chip away at our freedoms remain.
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