Blocking people who are harassing you seems like a reasonable balance to free speech.
Just because you are saying things doesn’t mean another citizen has to listen to them.
Just because you are saying things doesn’t mean another citizen has to listen to them.
We're not talking about private people or private enterprise. We're talking about appointed, elected and employed government officials acting in their capacity as a government official. Far too often, public officials believe anything negative is abuse, and I for one want them to hear the wingnut who is angry because their kid was beat up by the cops or the kook who is still mad because they lost his paperwork.
There was a whole bunch of mass shooting last weekend, as you probably know. But policy discourse is almost impossible on social media, because one side just endlessly spams 'it's the guns' and the other side endlessly spams 'shall not be infringed'. The people attempting to address the issue substantively can't make headway because the zone is continually flooded with shit.
I grumbled long ago that the very short-format of services like Twitter was going to end up making discourse dumber because it favored slogans and bumper-sticker cliches, and sadly that level of stupid has become the norm now.
Disagreeing with a stated position of a government official - loudly and strongly - is not harassment.
Just because it’s written, doesn’t mean you have to read it.
Sure but you have to read it to know if it goes too far no? If these people use the accounts for official business they might want to read the comments to know what their constituents say. If every time you ask a question you have one person constantly berating you and insulting you in bad faith, i could understand wanting to block him. Constantly reading these messages can take a huge toll on people.
Especially because these people do not see one or two messages. They have thousands of followers. The amount of hate message these people get dwarfs anything a normal person sees.
If the SCOTUS rules that they cannot block people then they will need to employee somebody to filter the messages. Otherwise you will destroy your mental just reading the toxic messages.
As for unelected officials, anything that would affect government duties should be going through official channels.
I mean until the moment you're a minority which is something elected officials have continually had issues with, especially in the south, here in the US.
If an elected official is using a private channel as a means of 'public' information dissemination things get messy.
That sounds more like an problem of issuing public information only through private channels.
This is a right of the people, not of the government.