internet
Is blocking on twitter censoring in the USA when elected officials does it
<p>Let's say an elected official have a Twitter account.</p>

<p>And let's say this elected official is using twitter to communicate information to the public relevant to the elected position.</p>

<p>And let's say this elected official decides to block users.</p>

<p>This means he is in that case actively withholding information from selected individuals.</p>

<p>It that censoring?</p>

<p>Of course there is a big loophole here if the elected officials private Twitter account is not used in any way to tweet information about the government office he holds. But the minute he tweets about his work as the position he holds after he entered the office things would change.</p>

<p>I am asking because there was a case in Sweden where a government organisation (just one of the many organisations within the government) had a Twitter account and for some reason blocked a user. Then, without even going to court, a judge said and I am paraphrasing: "You may not block users on a medium you are communication official information with because that is censoring." The kicker in that case was because Twitter was used to give information from the government and thus they could not block people and they have to unblock everyone. Would the same thing apply in the USA?</p>

<p>Edit:</p>

<p>1.5 years later: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-23/trump-told-by-judge-not-to-block-users-from-his-twitter-feed" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-23/trump-told-by-judge-not-to-block-users-from-his-twitter-feed</a></p>

<p>2.5 years later: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-twitter-first-amendment.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-twitter-first-amendment.html</a></p>

<p>In general, the U.S. understanding of "censorship" occurs when the government decides what information party A can communicate to some other party B. For example, if Alice wants to publish a book, but the government refuses to let her do so, that is a kind of censorship. If Bob wants to tell his friend, "The government made me surrender the access log to my website," but the government places a gag order on him, that is a kind of censorship as well. (I will place discussion of what kind of censorship are legally permissible outside the scope of this answer.)</p>

<p>When User A blocks User B on Twitter, then User B can no longer see tweets from User A (and vice versa). This does not appear to be censorship, as it only concerns communication directly between the blocking and blocked party. In my definition above, there must be three parties: two communicating parties, and the government who interferes with their communication. If an official government channel were to block some user, that does not appear to be censorship of that user, because the user has in no way had their freedom of speech limited.</p>

<p>Suppose, for example, a government agency sent out a piece of mail to every single citizen of the U.S., except Bob. For whatever reason, this agency decided Bob should not get this letter. They do not stop Bob from reading someone else's copy of the letter, or from discussing the letter (or discussing anything else, for that matter) with other people. This simply doesn't seem to fit any reasonable definition of censorship I'm aware of.</p>

<p>The particular reason <em>why</em> they chose not to send Bob the letter <em>might</em> be illegally discriminatory (e.g., the letter would have been helpful to Bob, but they chose not to send it to him purely because of his race/religion/etc.), but even this would not categorize the block on Bob as censorship.</p>
