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More than a few years back, we had a client that had an aversion to social media.
A small government agency, it was intrigued by the idea of being able to post its news directly to its constituencies on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. After all, such tools were changing—and have changed—the face of public relations and put several target-seeking arrows into the PR quiver.
Yet, when the agency realized that citizens would be able to comment on its otherwise positive news, it put on the brakes, recoiling over the prospect of John Q. Public not responding with the appropriate hosannas. Then it had another thought: What if it just deleted the negative comments as soon as they were posted?
Think again.
The U.S. Court of Appeals recently said as much. It ruled in favor of a Virginia citizen gadfly who had been critical of a local elected official on her Facebook page, only to find himself subsequently blocked from continuing to post on it. President Trump is involved in a similar case for muting critics on his Twitter feed. Back in May, the court ruled that he couldn’t block his critics.
In both cases, the defendants argued that their accounts were personal and do not belong to the government, and so they should be free to run them as they please. The court obviously did not agree.
As reported by Ann E. Marimow in The Washington Post, the head of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection explained the ruling this