Weekly New/Digital Media (61)
US government drops effort to unmask anti-Trump Twitter account
Summary: "Attempt to reveal identity behind an account criticizing Trump’s immigration policy sparked an outcry from free speech advocates and a lawsuit from Twitter"
The US government has backed down for the investigation into an anonymous Twitter account that criticized Trump's administration which is seen as a win by many for freedom of speech.
The account was one of many of the "alternative" twitter accounts that have come around since Trumps Inauguration " express the views of dissenting civil servants within various federal agencies, but they are generally anonymous and unverifiable."
Key Statistics/ facts:
- “This confirms that it was really ridiculous that this request got filed in the first place,” said Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization. “It’s good to see that it went away so quickly.”
- “Speaking anonymously about issues of the day is a longstanding American tradition, dating back to when the framers of the constitution wrote under pseudonyms,” the ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari said in a statement. “The anonymity that the first amendment guarantees is often most essential when people criticize the government, and this free speech right is as important today as ever.”
- The account @ALT_USCIS, whose handle refers to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, regularly criticizes Trump’s immigration policy, including the push for a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries and the proposed US-Mexico border wall.
- Wyden wrote that he was concerned by the possibility that CBP requested the information in order to determine whether the anonymous user was a DHS employee and, if so, “take retaliatory action or otherwise squelch the exercise of first amendment right”.
- “The anonymous account holder is safe, for now,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. “Perhaps the Department of Justice has learned a lesson. Perhaps the Trump administrationmay try to find the poster another way, for example by monitoring the government’s INS network.”
- Jamie Lee Williams, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: “The fact that they withdrew the summons doesn’t necessarily show that the new administration recognizes the importance of [anonymous] speech"
- “I think they just recognized that they were going to lose.”
My opinion:
The rise of social media and its anonymity seems to increasing the rise of a sort of activist culture. This, i think, is both positive and negative because of the sheer impact and power it could have. The accounts can easily be used for positive social and political changes just as much as they can be used for negative views and opinions which are very predominant on social media. e.g. anonymous accounts supporting depression vs the ones promoting it. Therefore, the power they can have be positive or negative but it definitely seems to be giving increasing power to audiences as they almost become the producers themselves creating the media organisations together rather than just the media organisation standing alone. However it does still prove the power does lie in the hands of the media organisations who could easily agree or disagree when it comes to these changes and that is the way the changes would come around. But it also seems that the current political make up and power lying in government hands seems to be shifting as the media organisations seems even more powerful than the government itself. That would suggest the social and political change that comes around is easily influenced by these media organisations and users from other countries can ultimately affect the political climate of countries that aren't their own. A negative for democracy? or a collective voice?
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