"Does this mean all politicians ought to be obliged to have social media pages?"
And of course the more disturbing question: Should all citizens be obliged to have social media accounts in order to participate in democracy? This ruling is good, but it also confers that much more legitimacy on social media as being "the way you communicate with government." It has already been the case for a while that in theory you use the official channel, but in practice if you want results in some instances it's better to go to social media.
Is social media automatically the one best way to communicate in every instance? What about all the tracking, surveillance and exploitative sociopathic shit going on? Nobody minds that? To me that makes it "not the best," and in fact not even acceptable.
"The internet" and "your smartphone" are the enabling technologies here. Social media is not an inextricable part of that. Can we perhaps be better than the people who think "Facebook is the internet?"
Could Congress maybe pull their heads out of their butts, and their knives out of their opponents, and legislate this domain in a coherent way, create a regulatory framework or maybe even a shitty government-controlled social media site that embodies all our principles, so that we don't have to go through this scattershot approach? (The one that happens in the courts by default whenever there's no legislation or the law isn't clear. Somebody challenges this, we get a ruling on this; somebody challenges that; we get a ruling on that. Years later maaaybe there's an intelligible body of case law, but an incoherent mess is equally possible... and again, it takes years.)
Yes the govt. will probably spy on you just as much. But it's still the only corporation in which you can get a voting share for free.
Engaging with your government has always been via whatever way is most expedient. Telegraph, newspaper, train ride, car ride, bicycle ride, phone call, snail mail, email, social media, websites, television, radio...
What would bother me is if there was one official, blessed, holy way- the ONLY way.
And of course the more disturbing question: Should all citizens be obliged to have social media accounts in order to participate in democracy? This ruling is good, but it also confers that much more legitimacy on social media as being "the way you communicate with government." It has already been the case for a while that in theory you use the official channel, but in practice if you want results in some instances it's better to go to social media.
Is social media automatically the one best way to communicate in every instance? What about all the tracking, surveillance and exploitative sociopathic shit going on? Nobody minds that? To me that makes it "not the best," and in fact not even acceptable.
"The internet" and "your smartphone" are the enabling technologies here. Social media is not an inextricable part of that. Can we perhaps be better than the people who think "Facebook is the internet?"
Could Congress maybe pull their heads out of their butts, and their knives out of their opponents, and legislate this domain in a coherent way, create a regulatory framework or maybe even a shitty government-controlled social media site that embodies all our principles, so that we don't have to go through this scattershot approach? (The one that happens in the courts by default whenever there's no legislation or the law isn't clear. Somebody challenges this, we get a ruling on this; somebody challenges that; we get a ruling on that. Years later maaaybe there's an intelligible body of case law, but an incoherent mess is equally possible... and again, it takes years.)
Yes the govt. will probably spy on you just as much. But it's still the only corporation in which you can get a voting share for free.