Twitter Users Blocked By Trump Draw Support

Twitter users who were blocked by President Donald Trump after criticizing him are drawing support from free speech advocates, including the digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, known for coining the phrase "net neutrality."

"Efforts to block users based on their criticism of the government threaten the very dangers that the First Amendment’s ban on viewpoint discrimination seeks to prevent: allowing the government to silence its critics, foster warped perceptions of officials’ popularity, and chill dissenting voices who may avoid speaking out for fear of reprisal," Wu and other academics, including UC Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe, argue in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted Monday to U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in New York.

The EFF adds in a separate brief that people have free speech rights "to receive governmental messages transmitted through social media as well as to participate in the communicative forums created by them."

The groups are weighing in on a lawsuit filed in July by Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute and seven Twitter users. The users say they were unlawfully blocked after expressing criticism of Trump. Twitter users who are blocked from Trump's account can't view his tweets or replies while logged in; if those users sign out of Twitter, they may still be able to view the posts. Blocked users are also restricted from commenting in some threads -- though there are workarounds.

The users, who also sued White House Director of Social Media Daniel Scavino and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, want Buchwald to declare the blocks unconstitutional. The users also are asking for an injunction requiring the White House to unblock them.

The EFF argues in its brief that Twitter and other social media sites serve as public formus, where the government can't suppress speech based on the speaker's views. The group argues that Twitter exchanges between politicians and users are shaping public policy debates.

For instance, the EFF notes, last week Trump posted on Twitter that the person responsible for the Halloween terror attack in New York came into the country through the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," which Trump called "a Chuck Schumer" beauty.

That tweet prompted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) to point out via Twitter that Schumer, a New York Democrat, was one of eight senators who unsuccessfully tried to end the lottery program in 2013, as part of an overhaul of immigration laws. Other Twitter users then responded to Flake's tweet.

"It is clear then that in practice, social media platforms like Twitter that allow for the general public to comment upon governmental posts, or communicate directly with officials, agencies, or to otherwise participate in a publicly viewable debate, function like the paradigmatic speakers’ corner in a public park," the EFF writes.

Wu and the other law professors make similar arguments. "In light of social media’s importance to modern life, President Trump’s practice of blocking individual users robs them of a singularly valuable opportunity to make their speech heard," they write.

The professors add that Trump's Twitter blocks, which filter out criticism, could skew public perception by making it look like Twitter users agree with him.

"If so permitted, defendants will be able to continue distorting the President’s predominant means of dialogue with the American public into an unchallenged podium in which only applause greets his proclamations," they write. "This is not what Americans expect when they scroll through a government official’s Twitter feed ... They believe -- indeed, they are entitled to believe -- that they are viewing something of a cross-section of the interested public’s reactions to the official’s pronouncements and approach to governance."

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