Thus far I’ve gone thru life without getting to the point of fisticuffs, but I’ve been advised to use the heel of one’s palm, and not screw up one’s knuckles.
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They never 'urt no-one wot didn’t deserve it.
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As much as I dislike Twitter, I feel that if she deletes her Twitter account then the Nazis win.
I wish I was being hyperbolic.
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Maybe you recall that Trump was sued after he blocked some Twitter critics?
A lower court ruled he violated the 1st Amendment in blocking users, but the USSC vacated the decision in 2021 because it was moot — he was no longer an elected official.
It looks like this guy is resurrecting the constitutional question with AOC.
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The zealot happens to be right. If you are a government official, you ought not to mute the public, they have a right to listen to you. The zealot, as annoying as he is, should be able to read AOC’s tweets. The correct thing to do with idiots online is to mute them, that’s why Twitter has a mute button.
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Because ignoring those who harass and threaten people works wonders. Women never become the victims of violent crime and worse…
/s
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Ah, so it doesn’t matter if they were threatening her life, she’s no longer a human being, but a “government official” so she has to listen to that shit… /s
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No, she absolutely does not have to listen to that shit. She is free to mute him.
She is not free to say “he can’t listen to her” and block him.
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So, it’s okay for an armed, violent insurrectionist to be at a rally, after making threats to AOC (or whoever) because the public gets to do whatever they want with regards to public officials?
How is this different from that?
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No, I remember that, but I’m also remembering this coming up (before today, probsbly before this year; before that its just fuzzy) with AOC.
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It seems to me that person can still write letters to her office; 24/7 digital access to someone (even if they are a public figure) is not a guaranteed ‘right.’
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Or call and email her office… but it seems pretty clear that this guy is just trying to get famous off sexual harassing a women that lots of people know…
And if that’s the case, then we’re all fucked, because the concept of privacy of any kind is dead if you have ANY kind of public facing career. Her being a public official doesn’t mean the public has a right to treat her like a Marina Abramovic performance piece from the 70s… There can and should be limits and I think it’s more than reasonable to be allowed to block someone who is actively harassing her and is likely doing so “for the clicks” as it were… This doesn’t seem like a constituent who happened to just disagree with her policies and is challenging her on them… I mean, where is the “political discourse” in this:
You look very beautiful in that dress. You look very sexy. Look at that booty on AOC," he catcalled to Ocasio-Cortez. “Look how sexy she looks in that dress. Oooh, I love it AOC. Hot, hot, hot like a tamale.”
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That’s why I have absolutely zero problems with her muting him, there’s plenty of other mechanisms for him to contact her.
Unless she’s making all of her statements on Twitter available elsewhere, she’s limiting what is otherwise public information by blocking. That feels problematic to me.
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There’s to aspects at play here. The first one the courts will probably answer, and I hope not shittily: Can a public figure making public statements restrict members of the public from receiving them? (I hope the answer is something like “twitter isn’t a public space” because otherwise this is going to become very messy very fast.)
The second, moral question is the one you ask and, frankly, the more important one - does being a public figure mean you aren’t allowed to restrict people from your life? This touches on everything from Paparazzi to stalkers-posing-as-the-public and has for far too long had judgements that fall on the side of the bad actor rather than the victim, under the guise of the slippery slope (if she can stop the public from bothering her, why can’t police, or bad politicians doing bad things? etc.) - but not all speech is protected, not all actions are “public”, and for fuck’s sake, stalkers and assholes do not have to be indulged to protect the rights of everyone else.
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Unlike the Trump case, this guy is not her constituent and she owes him no special consideration in her communications on a private platform.
That said, there is no reason any public official should be using private social media platforms for official communications. Screw that!
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It seems to me that any public policies or binding substantive info should indeed be readily available elsewhere in print form or digitally via official gov websites.
I reiterate; twitter access to someone is NOT a constitutional right, IMO.
Just because so many people are hopelessly addicted to it, that doesn’t make it an essential form of communication.
That this man is publicly sexually harassing AOC is yet another layer to an incredibly fucked up status quo.
No one has “the right” to harass someone else.
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Truth.
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There are plenty of ways a citizen can find out what elected officials are saying on Twitter, account block or no. I see things people posted on Twitter all the time and I don’t even have an account.
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Indeed; that’s all many other outlets seem to do now - repeat and repost what someone else wrote on twitter, IG or Tiktok.
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I like “rictus.”
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