A United States federal judge has deemed it unconstitutional for Trump to block users on Twitter, two U.S. senators’ identities were stolen in order to make fraudulent comments on net neutrality, and employees are turning to Apple Watches to keep up to date when they cannot look at their phones during work.
From Twitter – A US federal judge yesterday ruled that since Twitter is an ‘interactive space’ where users can interact with the President’s tweets, it qualifies as a public forum. Therefore, blocking users UNCONSTITUTIONALLY restricts their speech and is in violation of the First Amendment. Here’s the statement from the federal judge: “This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, ‘block’ a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is President of the United States. The answer to both questions is no.” That means that this decision has further implications than just the President, as the ruling applies to all government officials.
From Reddit – Two US Senators, Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, have sent a bipartisan letter to the chairman of the FCC calling for a thorough investigation into the millions of fake messages that were sent to the FCC last year about net neutrality. This includes the two senators, whose identities were stolen in order to make fraudulent comments to the FCC. If you haven’t heard, during the repeal period of net neutrality, millions of fraudulent comments were submitted to the FCC using real people’s names and addresses without those people’s knowledge or consent. Many of those people had sent a letter to the FCC asking for their comments and names to be refused, but the federal agency refused. Recently, the Senate voted to block the repeal when three Republican Senators switched and voted in support of the block.
And from LinkedIn – Next time your at the airport or a restaurant or out shopping, see how many Apple Watches, or just smart watches in general, that you can spot. According to a new study from Quartz, smartwatches have become more and more popular among employees in the service industries as a way to keep in contact with the outside world when a smartphone is unavailable. This doesn’t break any company policies, but still allows employees to check in on texts or just general notifications. And considering that nearly a quarter of the US labor force works in wholesale or retail operations, this could be a market that Apple, and other smartwatch manufacturers, could take advantage of in the future.