What Is Twitter?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/24/trump-twitter-ruling-what-it-takes-to-get-blocked-by-the-president/

Seattle Times published the same article for those of you who subscribe to the Seattle Times but not WaPo:

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-twitter-ruling-what-it-takes-to-get-blocked-by-the-president/

The defendant’s argument was that he is exercising his right as a private citizen to block people at will for any reason. However, if the defendant were a private citizen, the defendant would have been banned from Twitter quite a while ago. So, his activities on Twitter only occur in his official capacity as top federal executive branch official. Thus, they are subject to constraints that do not apply to private citizens.

The judge’s argument is that by blocking people who criticize him FOR criticizing him, he is violating their First Amendment rights, because millions of people don’t get to read what they have to say.

Group decision making and policy setting is a messy, slow moving and complex enterprise. But it definitely does happen. It will be interesting to monitor future developments. Certainly, jurisdiction is also a component of this evolving set of principals for who gets to do what on Twitter.

ETA: PG’s take on this case (he expects reversal on appeal — sounds plausible to me, but I’m no lawyer).

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/trump-blocking-critics-on-twitter-violates-constitution-u-s-judge/

Happy GDPR! Soon if not now

I’m a little hazy on the easternmost time zones for the EU, but it seems like if it isn’t already May 25 somewhere in the EU, it will be fairly soon.

This is a pretty simple blog. It runs on Dreamwidth. I don’t do anything with this blog beyond the most vanilla aspects of Dreamwidth. I don’t collect email addresses, for example. I do post my thoughts, including about people I know, and people I read about or watch on TV and so forth. My regular readers know that I routinely refer to people I know by a first initial, and some of these persons who I refer to by a first initial are EU citizens. I hope that if you are a friend or family member who is an EU citizen and if you are in any way unhappy with my blog posts referring to you by a first initial, you will contact me, before you contact your local regulator.

I _think_, but am not _certain_, that any references to EU citizens or residents which are not only by initial, but rather by name or other identifiable characteristics, it is in the context of publicly available information in the news. I do recognize that this may still be a subject of EU law. Fingers crossed I’m such small potatoes that no one will ever care.

And that’s about all I have to say about this particular blog’s compliance — or otherwise — with GDPR. Hopefully.