Well, here is the thing: maybe a troll can use the idea that a comments on a government official's account is a public forum and demand that the third party remove the troll flag, or demand that the troll flag be ignored for government accounts.

> U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled on May 23 that comments on the president's account, and those of other government officials, were public forums and that blocking Twitter Inc TWTR.N users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-twitter-idINKBN1KV...

In the above case, the block was executed by the account holder who was a government official. Having the service provider flag a user as a troll and degrading their experience might be acceptable for comments on non-government accounts, but if a federal judge "flags" government accounts as public forums in a US court of law, then the service provider is now creating additional friction for a user participating in a public forum.

We have had political candidates and politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing AMAs on Reddit, so what I am describing is not a far-fetched hypothetical: https://old.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/6ftvhu... .

Surely the solution then is to block government officials from the platform. Bad for engagement but keeps your "no, really, this is a private forum" status.

(Rather like how lots of non-US banks block US nationals from having an account even if they're resident in the bank's country, because of the paperwork overhead)

It's really useful for fast moving emergent stuff like wildfires where there is patchy information from multiple sources (some people report smoke, some fire etc.)

You'd be probably slapped with a law banning exactly that, which I'm surprised if it doesn't already exist.

It's not the same thing as a bank in another country refusing to open an account to an average Joe because of too many hurdles involved with reporting your balance the the IRS.

It has come to my attention that govevnment use of social media creates a designated public forum.

However, the 2nd and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals have ruled that "blocking individuals because of their political expression constitutes viewpoint discrimination". However, the troll is being blocked because of past ToS violations. The system could block their ability to comment on any thread. Then they'll need to create a new throwaway account, which limits their ability to comment on government threads until a certain karma level is reached. It's not "discrimination" but rather "safeguarding". They can challenge it in court if they like.

If you have users with the required karma level trolling, they'll be downvoted anyway, so just mute their posts or hide them under a collapsed flagged thread.

This is quite different than the Trump case removing users' comments from Twitter.