When politicians block people on Twitter does it violate the first amendment? [View all]

[Jonny Appleseed]

Last edited Mon Apr 10, 2017, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Edit: Some of you don't seem to understand how Twitter works, or just aren't reading the post, but blocking someone on Twitter makes it so the person you block cannot SEE your posts. Making it harder for a blocked citizen to gain access to the representatives public statements.

Tweets have become all but official press releases/public statements at this point. So does choosing who gets to view those statements constitute a violation of a person's right to express themselves? When a politician blocks somebody it is usually a response to that somebody offering a dissenting opinion, a view contrary to their own. So as the politician in question grows and grows their block list it effectively becomes a selection of who can and can't view information pertinent to the United States Government based on views, beliefs, and ideologies. Choosing who can and can't receive public information from their government, excluding those people from aspects of the government. I suppose state officials, congresspeople and senators would be able to get away with it by claiming they only want direct channels to their constituents, but I doubt federal appointees and office-holders would be able to do the same.

This is a very counter-clockwise view of the first amendment I know, many people would not immediately pick up on it, but I think it may apply nonetheless. Unless somebody can provide some kind of Supreme Court precedent that would refute my opinion (I'm sure people more scholarly will know one off the top of their heads and I'll have egg on my face).
Trump violated presidential record keeping laws by deleting Tweets, so the convergence between Twitter and federal law isn't so outlandish.