[bumholio]

> Trump could “mute” users, meaning he would not see their tweets while they could still respond to his, she said, without violating their free speech rights.

Herein lies the problem: Trump does not want to block his critics from expressing their thoughts - he can't do that anyway. Nor can he truly block them from seeing his tweets. He wants their replies not to be part of the conversation started by his tweets. They can still comment, on their own pages, in their own articles, but their comments will not have similar visibility to the people that follow Donald Trump and related conversations.

And I think the court overreached to call it a violation of the rights to free speech. Because what the commenters really want is visibility, they want to piggy back on the large audience Trump's tweets have and exploit the way Twitter's algorithm highlights such replies, especially if they are 'considered important' though their own retweets, likes etc.

For example, I want to produce an one hour rant about how Donald Trump is a cretin that damages the US and the world, and have it uploaded on the White House website - an official communication tool of the US government - so that it has proper visibility. But the White House can rightfully deny that request without violating my freedom of speech. Twitter is a multi-user version of a similar software, which unlike whitehouse.gov is configured by default to allow such posts on other's users pages.

[hello_marmalade]

Sure, but that's exactly the problem. The President having direct control over the visibility of somoene's speech. It's one thing if someone simply isn't popular, and therefore their speech isn't widely seen. It's another for the President to specifically suppress your speech.

It really does constitute a first amendment violation, because it is an active decision to suppress the specific speech of specific individuals.

[iand]

How does one account muting another suppress their speech? Everyone else still sees the tweet.

[beager]

I wonder if the decision comes down to that some people have the ability to be a part of the conversation on Twitter, but not the people that Trump has blocked, and therefore that's considered unequal treatment.

To follow your analogy, nobody can post their podcast on the White House's website. If Donald Trump somehow had replies completely turned off for his Twitter, I don't think a case could be made that first amendment rights were being infringed.

[bumholio]

Well, that discrimination exists on the current White House site. I just went there and on the front page I found this article, that quotes some people friendly to Trump's policies, many of them (ironically) sourced from tweets:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/wtas-support...

So why should these people be cited, but not others critical to the administration? Who gets to make that decision, and why can't they make a similar decision on Twitter itself?