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Has the judge read some of the comments being made? Absolute craziness in there. Some accounts should absolutely be blocked, they are repeatedly spamming and saying things you would never say in a meeting face to face.

-EDIT- Funny that my comment is being down-voted. Seen everyone wants to moderate comments. If someone says something you don't like on your personal page, you should be able to stop that. You've just exercise your rights to drop my comment to the bottom.



I guess the issue would be what happens when these comments are said face to face.

If they are punishable, they should be, wether done on twitter or face to face.

I they are not, they shouldn’t be banned, as you wouldn’t ban them from the public place IRL.

Note that anyone can still mute them, just as you can ignore people IRL.


There are all sorts of sticky issues that come up with no good solution when you use a private account for official business. I remember many years ago, when this was a major issue in a long-forgotten US presidential election.


That's not how it works. Who gets to say what is crazy?


You could technically call Trump a shithead to his face and that is not unlawful. Where the Secret Service would (rightly) draw the line is at threats to his safety (like if you threatened the president).

So it's not true that you could say things on social media that you couldn't say in person. You can say a lot of things to the president in person ("you didn't get legitimately elected" "you're an idiot"). Now is that the best use of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? No. But it's definitely legal.


Free speech rights apply to more than just those words one would say face to face.


This is the key. If no one is allowed to moderate this stuff, legitimate replies will simply be drowned in a sea of garbage.

(Not that I personally care, since I've already dumped Twitter.)


> Has the judge read some of the comments being made? Absolute craziness in there. Some accounts should absolutely be blocked, they are repeatedly spamming and saying things you would never say in a meeting face to face.

Wouldn't many say the same about Trump's comments? I don't meant that to be provocative, but to point out that standards of behavior get complicated.

At the same time, I'm happy that craziness isn't on HN!


It's not Trump's personal account, though. It's become an official account of the Office of the President.

And anyone who's upset at the content of replies to Trump should probably go and look at the content of replies to Obama.




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