Being banned still prevents you from interacting in more ways. Trump retweets and tags people/organizations all the time.

The key here is that the Twitter is under no responsibility to facilitate your first amendment rights. The government, solely and exclusively, cannot limit your free speech; Twitter can do whatever they want, and are under no legal obligation to provide any service whatsoever to you.

I see. The user anigbrowl clarifies further below:

> Allowing the government to use your service [as its preferred way of communicating] does not thereby make it part of the government.

So you are saying the judge's ruling is wrong then. Because you can't defend twitter banning someone making them unable to respond to Trump's tweets while saying that people have the right to respond to Trump's tweets.

there are requirements government officials must honor in the Constitution due to their role, a judge can force them to honor it.

a judge doesn't have the capability, however, to force a private entity unrelated to the government to honor those same requirements.

Yes, it does create a situation where the company can impact a person's capability to see the material, but it doesn't run afoul of anything legal. If anything, it gives a reason why public officials should not use in this capacity platforms they don't control.

The text of the ruling is out now and it shows the actual rationale:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2018/0...

It focuses on the impact to the blocked user’s ability to interact with those tweets and the ensuing public discussion but does not assume any obligation on Trump to read replies.

No, your understanding of it is wrong. Trump is limited from blocking people because he's the President. If he were to resign tomorrow and go back to being a private citizen, he could block away to his heart-s content. Twitter, the company, can do what it likes because it is not an organ of the government, notwithstanding the choice of some government officials to make use of it.

But you are missing the part where Trump is allowed to pick the private company, and is thus able to pick one which enforces a ToS that the government would not be able to enforce themselves. This creates a loophole where by the government only has to pick private companies that ban anyone who is against the current government to get a defacto censor on the public square that wouldn't otherwise be allowed.

I m not missing that part, because it hasn't happened yet. Imaginary injuries don't have evidentiary value, regardless of their potential possibility; thus it would be improper for a court to pronounce upon them - that's what legislators are for.

You're overlooking the fact that requiring Twitter to retroactively alter its own terms of service once it provided services to the government would be a violation of the takings clause. In your hypothetical example, it's more likely that a court would enjoin the government official from use of the company with the overly restrictive ToS for official business, rather than forcing the firm to alter its policy.

>I m not missing that part, because it hasn't happened yet.

I'm glad I don't live in a world where people refuse to prepare for court cases until the actual injury has happened. Many legal groups have built plans and arguments for potential injuries, either to test if their clients can do some behavior, or to have a proactive case against the government if the government takes some action. For example, many times when the ACLU challenges a law in court, they were planning for it long before the law actually passed. They can't engage in the actual challenge until there are injuries, but they sure can discuss it and plan for it.

In this particular instance, I'm not trying to launch an actual court case, so the court rules of when you have standing for a court case don't apply.

If you had read to the end of my post, you'd have seen the part where I addressed your objection.

Do you think federal courts would ban President Hillary from twitter because twitter has a policy of banning right-wing speech Hillary wouldnt be allowed to ban herself?

Twitter is not the only means of response.

And the ruling only applies to the President's (currently Trump) use of Twitter and says nothing about your interaction with that service.

As a private entity, they're free to make a ToS and you're free to agree or reject it, which governs your usage.

@PurbleBoxDragon - that seems more of a case that the government is leveraging a platform for purposes they should not. That isn't Twitter's fault.

But if I want to use the public forum that has been created, I'm forced to agree to those ToS. Imagine for a second if those ToS included something like banning all people from the state of New York or it banned all socialist. The government, by picking a service with a ToS to host a public forum, is there by enforcing the ToS as a requirement to participate in the public forum. So why can the government enforce a ToS that wouldn't be allowed without the 'private company' loophole?

Now, twitter banning someone from all other parts of its service wouldn't be impacted. But banning someone from participating in the public forum should no longer be allowed unless done for a reason that the government would be allowed to use as well.

If the President (doesn't matter who) showed up at your house, in your living room, would you still claim the right to deny entry to anyone you chose?

The judgement governs the President's use of Twitter, not the interaction between Twitter and other people. Twitter does not magically become a Public Forum, just because the President uses it.

Now, I'm not sure that is Right and Just, but I'm also not going to worry about it too much. I don't use it enough to get completely wound up about it.

>Twitter does not magically become a Public Forum, just because the President uses it.

If twitter isnt a public forum, then trump should be able to block whoever he wants.

>If the President (doesn't matter who) showed up at your house, in your living room, would you still claim the right to deny entry to anyone you chose?

Yes, including the ability to deny entry to anyone that Trump doesn't want there. But now a judge has ruled they have a right to be there if Trump was the one asking to ban them, but in doing so has created a loophole where as long as I want to deny them entry because Trump doesn't want them to be there (note that this isn't done on behalf of Trump, but because it is my own desire) they can be banned. It makes the judge's ruling extremely easy to work around, which indicates some fundamental problem with the ruling.