Comments on: Politician Can’t Ban Constituent From Her Official Facebook Page–Davison v. Loudoun County Supervisors

By: tom

tom — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 03:14:00 +0000

In reply to Brian Davison. Brian, this is a year old now so I have no idea of you’ll get this, but I just ran into the same issue with my state senator. He disagreed with my response to his Facebook post and said I resorted to personal attacks, which I did not. In searching for legal precedent, came across your case. My question is how you found legal representation. I reached out to the ACLU and free speech organizations only to not hear back. Thanks in advance if you get this and respond.

By: theweblv

theweblv — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 10:08:00 +0000

The absence of clearness around what precisely fake news is makes understanding the social damages that it makes and making answers for these damages troublesome. This report adds lucidity to these exchanges by recognizing a few unmistakable sorts of fake news: trick, publicity, trolling, and parody

By: Brian Davison

Brian Davison — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:44:00 +0000

In reply to banshee.

For the same reasons you cannot co-mingle campaign funds and personal funds, politicians need to learn to separate private social media/email/newsletter accounts from public ones. Otherwise, courts must decide if each communication was public or private in nature.

When you have to create multiple accounts to post and read Twitter, it’s a big hindrance. I read a Tweet on my anonymous account, but then must copy the URL, shift to my verified account and link the URL into my Tweet to join the conversation. At the very least, that is an equal protection issue as you are treating some folks differently.

None of this applies to truly private accounts (e.g. a partisan Republican caucus account). But officials need to make their communications explicit. Are you speaking as a gov’t official, as a party spokesperson, or a private citizen. There are real differences.

And we all effectively compensate Facebook/Twitter for these pages. They derive ad revenue from the use of our personal info and screening ads. Thus, you cannot say that a gov’t Facebook page is not provided by Facebook in return for some consideration.

By: banshee

banshee — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 16:55:00 +0000

In reply to PaulAlanLevy. I agree. If @realdonaldtrump is irrefutably NOW an official government account (which sounds refutable to me), what is the difference between @realdonaldtrump and @potus? To comment on Twitter , all a blocked user would have to do is make a new account. That takes all of 30 seconds. Meh. Runaway trial judge.

By: Brian Davison

Brian Davison — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 04:38:00 +0000

I am the litigant in the case. One of the central questions is what resources are used in maintain the forum. As I understand it, Trump uses staff paid for by the US gov’t to help maintain his Twitter account, just like the Maryland Governor does. Since public resources are barred from being used for personal use, the page almost certainly constitutes a public forum.

By: Tom Donahue

Tom Donahue — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 21:56:00 +0000

Venkat is right about @POTUS, and I don’t think anyone has been banned from @POTUS.

As noted by Paul Levy, @RealDonaldTrump is a tougher question, and it involves facts different than those in the highlighted case.

By: PaulAlanLevy

PaulAlanLevy — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 17:03:00 +0000

With respect, I don’t think that it is “irrefutable” that @RealDonaldTrump is an official government account. We at Public Citizen thought long and hard about taking that case on, ultimately decided there was no need for two separate cases because the best client finked out and in any event Knight Institute will do a fine job. But whether it is an official government account will be a hard fought issue in that case that will likely depend on what discovery reveals (although I am working on a theory that might avoid that fact question — hope to be able to blog it soon)

Thanks for pointing to this ruling