As a government official, you cannot take action to try to impede someone's access to your official statements. That is independent of the platform, and independent of how much work someone has to do to still access the information.
But a private company can take action to impede everyone’s access to an official’s statements if they “suppress” those statements... that would mean Twitter has to allow anything any public official, at least in the US, broadcasts via that medium...
This fundamental question has already been addressed by the courts many times.
The answer is yes to your first question. A private company is not required to make available "Official Statements" (whatever that means) using its own resources. The government (in the US at least) must pay for publication and dissemination of "Official Statements."
Fantastic, despite looking, I hadn't found a decision along those lines. Can you give me a case to read? Just the name, I'm happy to do the research myself. Thanks in advance!
And to be clear, I've read the DOJ position asserting that "Trump's tweets are official government statements" (linked in this thread) but wasn't aware of court rulings.
Please don't imply gamblor956 is just making things up. That's inappropriate. I'm looking forward to reading one of the many cases. It's always good to understand a) what the law says and b) how it's interpreted. They're rarely 1:1.
The answers you want are the first search result in Google and Bing for first amendment and compelled speech and are covered by the Wikipedia page on the First Amendment.
The Rumsfield case is literally on point: the government cannot force a private party to present government speech. I don't know how much more on point than they can be.
Twitter is not a legally recognized method of presenting Official Statements, as a matter of law (which sets forth the prescribed methods for making Official Statements). They have no responsibilities to present Official Statements, which means they can "impede" access to those statements on their platform all they like, in whatever manner that takes, from simply deleting such posts to providing fact checks to outright editorializing against the official statements.
As noted, I suspect this is not a 1st Amendment issue as the "speech" is present regardless and you have organizations, not necessarily people.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. This is definitely a First Amendment issue...even the White House acknowledges that this is a First Amendment issue. This order is entirely about trying to violate Twitter's First Amendment rights as a private non-governmental organization.
> Twitter is not a legally recognized method of presenting Official Statements
The Trump DOJ disagrees. Further, the ruling that he had to unblock people on Twitter established exactly that. He had to unblock people because he's making statements about government policy.
Therefore, them muting/hiding/blocking him is impeding access to official government statements.
Further, once they mute/hide/block some of his tweets, they're presenting some but not all.
They would probably be safer to allow all or none. This middle ground is editorial control over government statements which is a bizarre middle ground.. imagine a major announcement or policy change not being reported? Or actively being quashed?
Twitter isn't suppressing Trump's tweets. They're still publishing them...along with a notice that the statements in those tweets are lies, with links to sources documenting the falsity of those statements and the true state of reality (i.e., that mail-in voting is not unconstitutional).
But when Trump tweets, are those official statements? (IANAL, and I don't know. I can see why they might be considered to be so, and I can see why they wouldn't.)
