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Donald Trump can’t block naysayers on Twitter says court

The longer you’re on Twitter the more you feel the need to block certain people from interacting with you. Unfortunately for US president Donald Trump, he is no longer allowed to block folks on Twitter.

This is because a US appeals court ruled that Trump cannot infringe on US citizen’s first amendment rights by blocking users from seeing his tweets or tweeting at him.

“The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilises a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” circuit judge Barrington D Parker said according to Aljazeera.

While judges in the US Court of Appeals agree that Trump’s Twitter account is a public forum and folks shouldn’t be able to be banned from participating, there are some caveats to the ruling that warrant mentioning.

As reported by the Independent, the court did not consider whether public officials should be allowed to ban people on their private account. It also didn’t consider whether the first amendment applies to technology and social media companies

That having been said, the court adds that Trump’s aides have portrayed Trump’s Twitter account as a vehicle for official statements adding that the National Archives considers the president’s tweets as official records.

[Image – CC BY SA 2.0 Gage Skidmore]

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