A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision may have substantial effects on social media censorship. Based on their content-moderation policies, social media platforms have taken actions to suppress certain categories of speech, such as speech deemed false and misleading. This movement was amped up during 2020 with the outbreak of COVID-19…
In what is either one of the more ironic acts in a year full of irony or one of the more expressive power moves of the Texas legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott announced on one social media platform that people can watch a livestream on another social media platform of…
In today’s political climate, the phrase “fake news” gets bandied about quite a bit. In addition to its more traditional meaning—news that is false, purposefully misrepresented or outright propaganda—fake news is also sometimes used to characterize any news published that the target or subject of disagrees with or dislikes. As…
As we previously discussed in our post “The ‘Commander-in-Tweet’ and the First Amendment,” the POTUS was criticized by the Knight First Amendment Institute for blocking certain Twitter users from his @realDonaldTrump account. According to the Knight First Amendment Institute, President Trump’s Twitter account functions like a town hall meeting where…
Can you violate the First Amendment by blocking people from your Twitter account? According to the Knight First Amendment Institute, it’s possible if that account is @realDonaldTrump. As we have mentioned before, Donald Trump’s Twitter habit has been a large part of his public persona in recent years. Unsurprisingly, his…
When the President of the United States, every governor, every member of Congress, and—as Justice Kagan remarked—virtually every under-30 and 35 year-old in the country has a Twitter account, it’s time for social media to be recognized as a pervasive and protectable form of speech. On Monday, during oral arguments…
Political campaigns have increasingly turned to social media as a channel to reach voters. Social media not only has the power to reach audiences numbering in the billions, but it also has the power to change the behavior of its users. This far-reaching influence is nothing new—advertisers pay lots of…