A few thoughts on Twitter's suspension of Trump's account, a thread.
Twitter is a private company and it can do what it wants. Twitter is selling a product in a free market, and it's up to Twitter what the product is like. If they want to enforce certain rules, even unfairly, that's their call. They're a company, not the government.
True, companies like Twitter impact what today's media
environment is like. As a citizen, it's easier to reach a large audience if you play by the rules of the big tech companies. So the inevitable editorial decisions of the providers will shape that media environment.
But I'm not particularly worried that will limit the range of voices. Social media is a market for eyeballs and attention. I gather the financial incentive for the big tech companies over time is not to cross customers, especially large groups of customers. Big tent = big $.
Plus, where customers really want to hear from someone, they will. In the case of Trump, for example, a lot of people want to know what he is saying. His words will be shared widely on Twitter whether he can tweet directly or have an account.
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If you're wondering if the Senate has the power to order social media to preserve online accounts in response to the Capitol Riot, I have just the article for you: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Here Warner seems to be acting as a single Senator, though, not as an agent of the Senate as a whole. Can he do that? The 2703(f) authority is granted to any "governmental entity," defined in relevant part as "a department or agency of the United States." Can 1 Senator do that?
As I read Warner's letter, though, he's probably not trying to formally invoke 2703(f): It's more an informal request to help the (likely already issued) formal requests from law enforcement.
The incredible part, as always, is not that Trump did this. It's who he is and has always been. Rather, the incredible part is how many Americans will think this is totally fine, if not pretty awesome. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Law school is more interesting if you find line-drawing important than if you don't.
A lot of learning about legal rules is learning about where a decisionmaker drew a line, and why. There were some competing values or interests, and a line had to be drawn somewhere: The question is where to draw the line, and if it was drawn in the right place.
To some, this is a really interesting problem. It is about how to address conflicts among competing values. It is about how to operationalize that conflict into legal rules. Super interesting.
If you're a Supreme Court Justice, do you want to get rid of the Texas case without any comment or do you want to say something about this strange creature that has appeared before you?
My own instinct would be to get rid of it without comment, except I would worry that this is rewarding a political strategy you're likely to see again. (If a state AG can file crazy lawsuits for the base, being news story #1, and face no pushback, this will def happen again.)
Although it's fun to ponder the suits that might come in future years if the Court just quietly says no. Will Texas sue Delaware for not criminally prosecuting Hunter Biden for being a Chinese spy? The possibilities are endless.
Still annoyed by my loss in the 1988 high school class President election. Thinking of filing a cert petition.
Or at least setting up a GoFundMe or something, which will go to my personal bank account, or, if I decide to file, help defray my very high legal costs.
BTW, the responses to this so far are brilliant. Well done, everyone.