Social Media and the First Amendment

In July 2019, an appeals court upheld a ruling that says President Trump can't block people on Twitter because it's a violation of the First Amendment. We look at the tricky, complicated issue of the freedom of speech in the digital age.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I am your host, executive producer Jonathan Strickland. I'm with
How Stuff Works and iHeart Radio and a lot of
all things tech, and boy, how they we have a
story to talk about today. So in the United States,

(00:26):
a Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from two thousand
eighteen that stated that it was a violation of the
First Amendment for Donald Trump, the President of the United States,
to block users on Twitter. So in this episode, I'm
going to tackle the very complicated issue of social media,
free speech, government communication, and more. And this is not

(00:48):
going to be a political episode in the sense that
I am going to espouse a particular political philosophy. So
in other words, I'm not going to use this episode
to argue that one political outlook is better than any
other political outlook. That's I'm not interested in doing that
on this show ever. So Rather, this is about the
concept of free speech and why the digital age has

(01:11):
made it an even more complicated subject than it was before.
And it was already pretty thorny, So this is sort
of an unbiased approach to it. Now I'm going to
start off with the actual news story that prompted this episode,
and then we'll dive into a deeper look into the
First Amendment before he transitioned to the complications of applying
that concept to social media networks. It all stems from

(01:35):
a lawsuit that was first filed on July eleven, two
thousand seventeen, in the United States District Court for the
Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs were Twitter users
who had been blocked by Donald Trump on Twitter after
he had taken the position of President of the United States,
and it meant that they could no longer see what

(01:55):
he posted, nor would their messages be visible to him.
The Night Institute at Columbia University would represent this group
and argue that this amounted to a violation of the
First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The judge in that
case found in favor of the plaintiffs, saying that yes,

(02:15):
this is a violation of their First Amendment, and then
the government filed an appeal and this case then went
to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
and that court upheld the earlier ruling. Now, at this stage,
the government may either drop the matter and presumably obey

(02:35):
the court, or it may appeal to the Supreme Court,
which would be the final arbiter in matters of justice
in the United States. But the Supreme Court in the
United States here's only a small percentage of all the
cases that are submitted to it. It's submitted thousands of
cases each year, and it will hear something like less

(02:56):
than three percent of all the cases that have been
submitted to it. So there's no guarantee that the Supreme
Court would choose to hear this case, and if it did,
there's no guarantee that it would find any differently than
the earlier courts had. So the ruling says the president
and presumably any elected official cannot use social media to

(03:17):
communicate matters relating to government activities in any sort of
official way and still block citizens because that infringes on
the First Amendment rights of those citizens. So now let's
start breaking down what all this means before we get
into how it's really complicated in the digital age. First,
for those not versed in the Constitution of the United

(03:39):
States of America, let's have a quick civics lesson the constitution.
Is the basic foundation of law in the United States.
It is the bedrock upon which all other law is built.
Should a law be challenged in court to violate the Constitution,
the court is to strike down that law. The body

(04:00):
of the Constitution includes seven articles that lay out the
basic structure of the American government, and they cover such
things as the three branches of government. That includes the
legislative branch that makes the laws. That would be the
Senate and the House of Representatives. Then you have the
executive branch that executes the laws and access commander of
chief in chief of the Armed forces that would be

(04:22):
the president, vice president that group. Then you have the
judicial branch that well judges, and they're the ones who
actually decide if laws are constitutional or not, as well
as decide the individual cases federal cases that come up
in courts. And the other articles lay out the basic

(04:42):
rules that bind states together and establish where the federal
system fits in with the state system, as well as
the procedures for the government has to follow to amend
the Constitution and to ratify it. So that's the basic document.
Then you have the first ten amendments to the Institution,
also known as the Bill of Rights, and we're only

(05:03):
concerned with the First Amendment, which reads as follows. This
is the actual wording on the Constitution. Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or
of the press, or the right of the people peaceably

(05:23):
to a symbol and the and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances. Now we need to get
a few other things out of the way. The First
Amendment only applies to the public sector and the government's
role in those matters. So, according to the U. S Constitution,
no government in the States may restrict or deny a
citizens speech or right to redress grievances. Now that's not

(05:47):
to say a private sector company couldn't do the same.
So if I have a business and own some land,
and I create a whole corporation, I can to some
extent tell my employees or even customers that certain types
of expression are not tolerated. This is what allows social
media platforms to take action and ban users. The First

(06:10):
Amendment protects against the government violating freedom of speech, but
it doesn't protect against Facebook or Twitter taking away your
ability to post on those platforms. Now, this too has limitations,
since there are other laws, such as anti discrimination laws,
to make it illegal to act in a discriminatory manner,

(06:31):
even in the private sector. So if I said, people
of a certain religion, we're not allowed in my space,
I'd be violating anti discrimination laws, even though the First
Amendment itself wouldn't be a factor because I'm not a
government agent. I'm a representative of the private sector. But
the anti discrimination laws still cover that particular UH arena.

(06:55):
So further, in court cases, judges have determined that the
free him of speech in itself has limitations. It is
not without its own restrictions, which sounds like a contradiction
right freedom of speech with restrictions. Well, you have to
think about the specific cases. So, for one thing, you
could use your own freedom of expression to restrict someone

(07:19):
else's same freedoms, such as by intimidating them into silence
or otherwise harassing them or being a problem. So things
like threats are not protected by the First Amendment. You
cannot make threats to people and claim First Amendment protection. UH.
That is not protected free speech in general. You're not

(07:40):
allowed to use freedom of speech to harm others. In
order to get whatever it is that you want. They're
also not allowed to make claims that you know to
be false, because that's fraud. Uh. Similarly, you can't make
claims about people like in libel or slander. It's where
you defame someone using untrue or uns stantiated information. That's

(08:02):
not protected by free speech either. Now that's not the
same thing as saying that it will always be punished.
It could be punished, but it isn't necessarily going to
be punished. Really, it's just saying that if you were
found guilty of acting in that way, you could not
claim the First Amendment for protection. You couldn't say it's
my freedom of speech to say these things if in

(08:24):
fact you were found guilty of committing libel or slander, or,
as a well known and frequently erroneously attributed phrase goes,
the right to swing your arm ends at the other
man's nose. The rights of one person cannot be interpreted
as such that they infringe upon the rights of another person.

(08:48):
So you do have rights up to the point where
you could, uh, you know, act in such a way
that you're not causing harm to other people. But if
you start causing harm to other people that's not within
your because that would be a violation of their rights. Okay,
So the First Amendment states that the government shall not
restrict expression, and it further states that Congress cannot restrict

(09:09):
the rights of citizens to quote petition the government for
a redress of grievances end quote. These are important concepts
that come into play with the legal rulings around Twitter
and other social media platforms. The next complication we need
to look at is the nature of social media accounts.
So Donald Trump has had his Twitter account since March

(09:31):
two thousand nine, which was many years before he became
president of the United States. So when he established his
Twitter account, he was a private citizen. He wasn't a
member of the public sector, and as such, as a
private citizen, he could block anyone he chose, just as
any other user can for any reason he or she likes.

(09:54):
This is not a violation of the First Amendment. As
a private user, just because people have the right to
say stuff doesn't mean you're obligated to listen to it.
At least if you're a private citizen, you're not you
can ignore it. And we all know how communication on
the Internet can quickly become little more than a flame
war or worse. I'm sure many of you out there have,

(10:17):
at some point or another blocked someone in an effort
to preserve at least some sense of sanity at one
time or another. I know that I have. Now, if
Trump had refrained from using his Twitter account to communicate
matters of official government business, perhaps this ruling would have

(10:37):
gone another way. Now, it's impossible to say for certain
it would have gone another way. It requires a what
if scenario, and that what if scenario did not happen.
If Trump as president had operated his Twitter account as
a private citizen and not included anything that remotely lated

(11:00):
to his official capacity as president, it would be hard
to argue that he violated anyone's First Amendment rights by
blocking them. This would assume a total separation of Trump
the person and Trump the president, which I think would
be challenging to argue, but I am no expert on
that matter. However, the courts have stated that the way

(11:22):
Trump has used his Twitter account since becoming president has
an overwhelming amount of evidence that it counts as presidential
communication to the public. As such, he cannot block members
of that public from being able to see or respond
to his messaging. As the First Amendment states, he can't
prevent citizens from petitioning the government for a redress of grievances.

(11:47):
Since he uses Twitter to communicate government activities, including such
stuff as hiring or firing members of his staff, intended
changes to policies, or announcing executive orders, he has constant
atitutionally obligated to keep those channels open. Now, this is
an issue that goes beyond Trump. People from both the

(12:09):
Republican and Democrat parties have had similar cases brought against them.
The Secretary of State for Alabama, guy named John Merrill,
had a lawsuit against him still does have a lawsuit
against him from plaintiffs who argue that his blocking them
on Twitter constitutes much the same matter as Trump's case,

(12:30):
though Merrill disputes this, and that lawsuit has seen no
resolution as of the recording of this podcast. In two
thousands seventeen, a Virginia District Court judge ruled against chairwoman
of the Loudon County Board of Supervisors, h Phyllis Randall
is her name. She had banned a man named Brian
Davison from her Facebook page after Davison had left critical

(12:53):
comments in the messages when she was talking to voters.
Randall had argued that this was her personal Facebook page,
it wasn't the official page for her as in her
role as chairwoman, but the judge stated that she clearly
was using it in an official capacity because she would
solicit comment from the voting public in her posts, and

(13:15):
therefore she could not exclude members of the public from
that activity. Very recently, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasia Cortez has been
sued for blocking Joseph Saladino, a YouTube personality who is
currently seeking office in the United States, and she blocked
him on Twitter. Saladino's argument is that the same rules

(13:36):
that apply to Trump have to apply to all elected officials. Now,
when we come back, we'll look at some of these
issues a little more closely and talk about the difficult
landscape we now find ourselves in. But first I'm going
to take a quick break. I'm going to guess that

(14:00):
most of you listening to this podcast have spent a
decent amount of time on the Internet. You've probably all
heard the common wisdom, never read the comments. You know
that the Internet, while it can give us access to entertainment, information,
channels of communication also facilitates trolling, hate speech, harassment, all

(14:22):
sorts of unpleasantness. The old adage of ignore them and
they'll go away hasn't proven to be very effective, particularly
in an age where some people will go to such
lengths as do sing, digging up and then sharing private
information about people, or swatting in which a malicious person
would give false information to law enforcement officials to initiate

(14:44):
what amounts to an attack on a person's home or office.
It can be an ugly world out there, and there
are lots of different reasons why these things happen, and
I'll have to have a more in depth discussion about
that at some point, about the psychology of trolling and
the culture of trolling and what enables it and what
feeds it. But that's a matter for a different episode.

(15:05):
The reason I bring it up here is that the
ability to block or ban people is for some of
us what makes it bearable to even use the platforms
available on the Internet in the first place. And the
courts recognized this as well. And here's where we encounter
one of the many sticky points that are hard to resolve.
Before the break, I mentioned the case of Phyllis Randall,

(15:28):
the politician in Virginia who was reprimanded for blocking a
voter on her Facebook page. Now, I should point out
she only instituted a twelve hour ban, and the judge
in the case took that into account. And the judge
also stated that quote government officials have at least a
reasonably strong interest in moderating discussion on their Facebook pages

(15:51):
in an expeditious manner. By permitting a commenter to repeatedly
post inappropriate content pending a review process, a government of
official could easily fail to preserve their online forum for
its intended purpose end quote. So, in other words, a
politician has the right and arguably the responsibility to at

(16:12):
least block or delete certain comments that pop up because
they may not be germane to the matter at hand,
or they may be meant to derail the discussion or
even attack other people involved in that discussion. These actions
would quote impinge on the First Amendment rights end quote
of the other folks who are using that forum. So

(16:34):
now we're talking about a case by case basis issue,
and elected official can't ban a voter from participating in
a public forum, even if that public forum is the
officials own social media account page, whether it's on Twitter
or Facebook or whatever, So you can think of that
as a private platform, but a public forum. This is

(16:55):
another issue that is a problem here. But the official
is allowed to moderate comments, but that means the official
has to be able to determine whether or not a
comment counts as being relative or being disruptive. Now, we
need to remember that elected officials, despite occasional evidence to

(17:16):
the contrary, are human beings. Some of them are awful people. Sure,
some of them are wonderful people. Some of them may
not show their awfulness or wonderfulness in their capacity as
an elected official. But people, as a general rule are
not super happy when other people disagree with them. Some

(17:37):
of us, and I'm including myself in this particular category,
I can get a bit huffy about it. Now, later on,
when the initial and often irrational reaction has settled, I
will find myself acknowledging them maybe, just maybe I was wrong.

(17:57):
That's not a fun realization, But I wish it were
one that would occur to me earlier in the process,
because it could have saved me from some nasty exchanges
that I otherwise could have avoided. I would have ruffled
fewer feathers, and I would have strained fewer friendships. But
what I'm really getting at is I could easily imagine
myself being in one of these situations in which I

(18:19):
post something as an elected official, and then I see
a dissenting opinion worded in such a way that I
consider it an attack or an insult, and so boop,
I delete the comment. But I can also imagine that
later on I might cool down and realize, you know,
maybe the comment was worded in a confrontational way, but
ultimately that was a voter expressing a point of view

(18:42):
that's different from my own, but it's no less valid
than my own. So I imagine that for at least
some people, being able to be objective and separate the
critical comments that have validity from the disruptive or insulting
or irrelevant comments can sometimes be a challenge, And to
those people, I suggest you get a social media manager

(19:04):
who isn't the person directly making the statements, but rather
connect as a more objective judge on the matter. Goodness knows,
I wouldn't be able to do this for myself, and
this is one of many reasons why everyone should be
glad I am not a politician. I also want to
acknowledge there are plenty of remarkably cool headed people in

(19:26):
politics who can handle this sort of stuff a billion
times better than I can. So if an elected official
in the United States uses a social media platform in
any capacity related to their office, they should, in theory
obey these rules. On Twitter that can get a little tricky.
There are verified accounts, which are great because you know

(19:48):
for a fact who you're dealing with, since Twitter has
verified that the account belongs to a particular person, and
you could say, oh, this is actually a citizen, this
is someone I cannot block. This person they are sit
is in. I'm elected official, this person represents one of
my constituents. Uh, they either are voting for me or
against me, so they need to have this channel. But

(20:09):
there are a lot of accounts that could be dummy
accounts or bots, or even foreign agents attempting to sow
discord and chaos and more. There are troublemakers who just
want to stir stuff up, either because they have a
specific agenda that involves derailing a politician, or because they
just get a kick out of being a nuisance. And
then you've got the truly toxic stuff out there. People

(20:32):
who threaten, intimidate, insult, and harass mercilessly. These are behaviors
that wouldn't be tolerated in public spaces in the real world,
So how do you handle it in the online world. Well,
one thing that could happen is the platforms themselves could
step up and enforce some of the rules they've said
are in place. Twitter representatives occasionally talk about forming new rules,

(20:57):
while several critics have in the past pointed out that
new rules weren't necessarily needed. Rather, what was needed was
enforcement of the rules that were already in place. But
I do want to be fair to Twitter. One of
the issues the service has had is that it's hate
speech policy was previously only applied at the individual level,
So if someone were to direct hate speech at me personally,

(21:20):
Twitter then could step in and intervene because that would
be a violation of Twitter's policy. However, if someone were
to attack a general group of people, like a specific
race or a religious group, but was not targeting a
specific individual that was not covered by Twitter's policies, it
wasn't explicitly against the rules. So the company has since

(21:43):
revised those rules so that the hate speech rules have
a more broad application. The platforms, being the private sector
and offering a service, aren't bound by the same restrictions
that the elected officials have to comply with. I've used
this analogy conversations with friends. So imagine for a moment, then,
an official government facility. Let's say it's a state legislature

(22:06):
building is actually built on private land, and you are
the landowner, and you've drawn up in an agreement that
gives you the right to close that land off to
anyone you like at any time, and somehow no one
really noticed or objected to that clause, and it was
all signed in the agreement, and then one day you
just arbitrarily decided to shut off access to the legislature building,

(22:27):
and you prevent lawmakers from going to work. It's a
rather implausible example, but it's kind of similar to what
we have with these social platforms, and that raises some
alarm flags or red warning flags. I guess I should
say not alarms flags can't alarm very much, but red
warning flags to the minds of people who see potential
for problems in the future. With this, now, I can't

(22:49):
imagine any reality in which Facebook or Twitter makes a
move to completely remove a government account or the account
of an elected official. You could make the argument that
the elected officials themselves wouldn't be allowed to do that either,
because it would be equivalent to destroying the records of
public discourse on official matters. So if you happen to

(23:10):
be an elected official and you've created a Twitter account,
deleting that Twitter account could be a big problem because
there's going to be records of communication with actual constituents
in that account. But the social media networks are in
the private sector, so they're not bound by the rules
that the government is. They're not likely to act in

(23:30):
this way because, for one thing, these are companies operating
and headquartered in the United States. Both Facebook and Twitter
and others have been active with lobbyists to try and
shape policy that favors these companies. It would be a
bit counterproductive to take such an antagonistic stance against the
government of their home country. Banning individual users who aren't

(23:53):
government officials is a little less controversial, though most social
platforms aren't keen to do that very frequently either. If
Twitter figures out an account is a duplicate and is
spreading disinformation or being used to attack people. It can
ban those accounts, and it certainly has banned plenty of
empty shell accounts that were created simply for the purpose

(24:14):
of boosting follower accounts. But in the case of those
empty accounts, this was an easy call because they didn't
represent real people and they were creating a fake sense
of influence. Celebrities who had millions of followers saw those
numbers reduced dramatically in the wake of these bands, and
that suggested that a large number of those followers weren't

(24:35):
real people. But making that call was easy. Going after
troublemakers appears to be more difficult, or at the very least,
the platforms seemed more reluctant to take action in those cases.
Part of that might be due to a fear that
taking action would result in a backlash against the platforms. Now,
in an ideal world, from the point of view of
a company like Twitter or Facebook, the platform would remain unbiased, objective,

(25:00):
and hands off. It wouldn't interfere at all. It would
just be a place for discussion, free of responsibility for
the content of those discussions. Hey, it's not my fault
if hate speech is going across this platform. I just
made the platform I didn't make the hate speech, but
in the wake of various controversies involving misinformation and manipulation,
that position is largely untenable. Now. There has been a

(25:23):
fear among organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation also known
as the e f F, that the courts could find
that a private sector platform like Facebook or Twitter could
be viewed as a public forum itself, and thus the
First Amendment restrictions would apply to those platforms as acting
in that capacity. But in June two thousand nineteen, the

(25:44):
Supreme Court of the United States made a decision that
appears to alleviate that concerned somewhat. The case was one
in which a nonprofit organization was essentially hired by the
City of New York to operate public access channels in
the city, and a bull of producers created a film
for those public access channels, and that led to some

(26:04):
complaints against the producers, and the nonprofit organization disciplined the
producers as a result. The producers then sued this nonprofit organization,
claiming that their First Amendment rights were being violated, and
this prompted an argument over whether the nonprofit should be
held to those standards. Is it at all relevant with

(26:26):
the First Amendment and h on its own. The nonprofit
isn't a government office or agency. It's a nonprofit organization,
but it's not it's not related to the government, but
argued the plaintiffs, since the nonprofit was working on behalf
of the city, and the city is a government agency,

(26:47):
it should be held to the same rules that the
government is. Now that could also apply to social networks.
They are not created to be channels of communication between
governments and their citizens. They're just munication channels, period. But
the Supreme Court had ruled that the nonprofit was effectively
a surrogate for the government. The same could be argued

(27:09):
for Twitter or Facebook. However, the Supreme Court didn't rule
that way. The five conservative judges ruled that the nonprofit
did not constitute a governmental agent and therefore the First
Amendment rules weren't applicable. The liberal judges, by the way,
ruled the opposite way, arguing that the nonprofit was in
fact effectively a government agent in its role of overseeing

(27:32):
public access channels. And I could see the merits of
either side of this argument. It's not that easy. It's
not It's not something that I could quickly make a
judgment on I would really have to think on this,
and it's complicated. Moreover, I can definitely imagine how big
a mess it would be if the ruling had gone
the other way and all online platforms suddenly could be

(27:53):
bound by those restrictions whenever any elected official or any
government agency was making use of those in official way.
It's a pretty tough, complicated issue. Now I have more
to say on the matter, but first let's take another
quick break. Let's get back to the concept of blocking

(28:17):
folks on Twitter and how that relates to politics. I
want to be fair to the judge for the original
case against President Trump, because the judge recognized that there
is another option besides whether or not you can ban someone,
or whether or not you have to endure an enormous
amount of abuse because you aren't allowed to ban or
block anybody. The judge stated that officials could mute people

(28:41):
on Twitter, not block them, but mute them, and muting
is different from blocking. So when user A blocks User
B on Twitter, not only will user A no longer
see any posts from user B, whether they were directed
at user A or not, User B will no longer
be able to read any of user a's posts. It

(29:02):
will be as if each user appeared to stop existing
in the eyes of the other one, at least on Twitter.
And that was the crux of one of the arguments
was that if Trump blocks voters, they can't see what
Trump is posting. And if Trump is posting in an
official capacity as president, and those people are voters in America,

(29:23):
that violates the First Amendment. But let's say User A
dozen't block User B. Instead user A mutes User B.
In that instance, user A won't see any of user
b's posts because they've been muted, but User B will
still be able to see all of user a's posts.
The judge stated that this would be like a real

(29:44):
world setting in which a politician addresses a crowd and
chooses to ignore someone who is speaking out against that politician. Yes,
the outspoken person has the right to be part of
that public forum, and yes, that person also has the
freedom of expression, but the politician isn't obligated to actually
pay attention to it. Now, I appreciate that argument. It

(30:07):
is a little more complicated than that, though, because of course,
in the public setting, the politician would still be able
to hear the person who was protesting. They might not
give it any acknowledgement, they might not pay much attention
to it, but they'll still be able to hear it
on Twitter. If you mute someone, you never hear anything
from them again. So it's not the same thing at all. Right,

(30:30):
it would be as if you were suddenly able to
effectively tune out the frequencies of the protester in that
public setting. So I'm not entirely convinced that this is
uh a legit argument, but it is what the judge found.
So according to that original ruling, officials at the moment
still have an out on Twitter. They can mute voters,

(30:54):
they just can't block them. So that might work for Twitter,
but it is a different story on Facebook, where moderation
is all all about making sure someone isn't trying to
undermine an entire discussion. Twitter exchanges are more like overhearing
a few people talking at a party, rather than someone
standing on the stage and talking to a crowd. As
it is frequently the case with legal matters that revolve

(31:14):
around the heart of a country's system of laws. There
have been battles involving some pretty dark stuff that have
really tested this subject In two thousand and seventeen, the
Supreme Court weighed in on another case involving social media
and First Amendment rights. The case was Packingham versus North Carolina,
and the crux of the story again, it's pretty darn dark.

(31:37):
So in North Carolina, the state government passed a law
that prohibited convicted sex offenders from being allowed to access
social media websites. The state argued that social media enabled
and facilitated the very offenses these people had been convicted
of in the past, but the Supreme Court ruled that
the law violated the First Amendment and that it would

(31:58):
effectively criminalize is a lot of otherwise legal activities. In
that decision, the Court stated, while in the past there
may have been difficulty in identifying the most important places
in a spatial sense for the exchange of views, today
the answer is clear. It is cyberspace, the vast democratic
forums of the Internet in general and social media in particular.

(32:23):
Now that argument has prompted some people like David L.
Hudson Jr. Of the American Bar Association to call for
a re examination and expansion of the First Amendment with
regard to the digital space. Hudson argues that platforms like
Facebook and Twitter have the ability to manipulate and sensor
public discourse on a level equal to or perhaps beyond

(32:44):
that of government agencies. That the First Amendment is not
expanded to include such platforms, that these protections guaranteed by
the Amendment will be moot because everyone's going to be
communicating in those places and the Amendment doesn't apply there.
So he says, we've got to change that. Now. Obviously
that's not a point of view that everyone shares. Not

(33:05):
everybody thinks that these private entities or entities in the
private sector should be held to those restrictions, but it
does show how this concept is really complicated and thorny. Recently,
after I recorded a short radio segment about this subject,
the producer for that segment suggested something I thought was
really interesting. He suggested that perhaps we'll see a future

(33:26):
in which social media networks create special verified accounts for
government use only or government used to the public, and
these accounts will by default have certain features disabled on them,
such as the ability to block a Twitter account. Presumably,
these accounts would have some sort of indication akin to
a verified Twitter check mark, to let people know they

(33:48):
represent actual official government accounts, and I certainly see the
value in that, though even with such a system in place,
it would still be the responsibility of the public officials
to make certain they weren't using their of have it
accounts in a way that could be seen as part
of their public role, or else they would be held
to the same restrictions. Now, from a personal perspective, I
do think that if you are in a public office

(34:10):
in the United States, and if you operate one or
more social accounts in a way that is meant to
engage with the public you represent in a way that
relates to your public role, you should not be able
to block people from seeing what you post. I can't
imagine a scenario where you could hold a public forum
but then say, oh, but these members of the public

(34:31):
aren't allowed to hear or see anything that happens in there.
Only this other select group of the public will get
that privilege, because if it's a public forum, it has
to be public for everyone. This matter, by the way,
is far from settled. I'm sure we'll continue to see
complications in the digital space regarding the freedom of speech
and the government's responsibilities in that space, and will probably

(34:52):
see more actions like the time departing Twitter contract worker
on his last day at Twitter set into most in
the deletion of President Trump's Twitter account. You might remember
when that happened. Now. In that case, according to the
departing employee, he did it as sort of a gesture.
He didn't think it was actually gonna happen. People had

(35:13):
flagged Trump's account as having violated the terms of service
of Twitter. So this former employee, just as before he
was ready to clock out for his last day, initiated
the process needed to delete Trump's account. And he had
stated he never thought it would go so far as
to actually happen, that somehow there had to be protections

(35:34):
in place to prevent it without further authorization. So he
did it as sort of a symbolic gesture, thinking nothing
would happen. But it actually did end up deleting President
Trump's account, though only temporarily. It's these sorts of actions,
by the way, that lead to advocates arguing that the
social media networks have a huge responsibility to those who

(35:56):
utilize the services. Hopefully, this episode has highlighted how challenging
this issue is, and for people outside the United States,
illuminated some of the arguments behind the whole thing and
why it's such a big deal. Um, I'm not entirely
convinced that there is a right way to move forward.

(36:16):
I think no matter what we choose, it's going to
be a solution that is not going to be satisfactory
for all parties involved. I think the courts have ruled
in the right way, and I do think it should
apply to politicians across the board, not just ones that
are of one party or another. Uh. I also think

(36:40):
that we have to have some means that they can
take in order to avoid being, you know, attacked. Politicians
are people too. I don't know how many of you
out there have had to withstand online attacks. It is
never a pleasant experience, and it can be really, really demoralizing.

(37:04):
It can certainly create real sense of trauma. I have
friends in the space who have had real hard times
dealing with this stuff. I've been pretty fortunate. I've dealt
with a little bit of harassment, but nothing on the
scale of some of my colleagues, and that's not even
being a publicly elected official. So there needs to be

(37:26):
a balance. Obviously, social media is going to continue being
a major communications channel moving forward. It's not likely that
we're going to see people back off of it. But
I honestly don't have the answer to this. UM. I
think that we're making steps in the right direction, but
I don't know that we're ever going to come up
with the perfect solution. But what do you guys think?

(37:47):
And if you have any suggestions for future episodes, you
should reach out to me and let me know about those.
You can email me the addresses text stuff at how
stuff works dot com or pop on over to our
website that's text stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find
links to where we are on social media over there,
and uh, I promise I probably won't block you. You

(38:08):
will also find an archive of all of our previous
episodes and a link to our online store, where everything
you purchase goes to help the show and we greatly
appreciate it. And I will talk to you again really soon.
Hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How

(38:29):
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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