AOC is still blocking critics on Twitter

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AOC is still blocking critics on Twitter

She’s still AOC from the block. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have apologized to and unblocked former Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind on Twitter, but the socialist from Queens doesn&#8217…

She’s still AOC from the block.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have apologized to and unblocked former Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind on Twitter, but the socialist from Queens doesn’t seem to have any intention of offering an online olive branch to others on her blacklist.

Five individuals or entities blocked by Ocasio-Cortez tell The Post they remain in the digital dog house, unable to see or interact with the Congresswoman’s tweets from their accounts — and they want out.

“I reached out to … her former chief of staff Saikat [Chakrabarti] asking to be unblocked and I never heard back,” Harry Cherry, a 20-year-old conservative Twitter user and former journalist told The Post. 

“The First Amendment of the United States requires it,” said Rep. Niraj Antani, a conservative state lawmaker in Ohio who is also blocked.

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Rep. Niraj AntaniAP

While it is impossible to know exactly how many people AOC has blocked, the Congresswoman said in August that it was “less than 20 accounts.”

In July, Hikind sued AOC, saying her decision to block him on Twitter was a violation of his First Amendment rights. Hikind was given the ax after criticizing Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks comparing U.S. migrant detention centers to concentration camps.

In a statement issued Monday as part of her settlement with Hikind, Ocasio-Cortez conceded the feisty ex-lawmaker and founder of the non-profit Americans Against Antisemitism “has a First Amendment right to express his views and should not be blocked for them,” while also noting that she “reserves the right to block users who engage in actual harassment.”

A closer look, however, suggests harassment is in the eye of the beholder.

“Ocasio-Cortez blocked me back in April after I posted a video that showed her using an accent to speak to an African-American audience at [Rev. Al Sharpton’s] National Action Network,” Ryan Saavedra, a controversial reporter at the conservative Daily Wire, told The Post.

Saavedra, 29, said the two engaged in a brief back and forth over the issue with the block coming after he called Ocasio-Cortez a liar.

Liz Wheeler, a host at OAN, a conservative news network, said she was blocked in July after criticizing Ocasio-Cortez for her vote against a bill that would have provided $4.5 billion in emergency relief aid to detained migrants at the U.S. border.

“I would challenge her to show me the harassment,” added Wheeler, 30, saying her often ferocious criticism was strictly policy-based. “I actually defend this woman on a regular basis when people make fun of her looks, or the way she gestures, or when she was a bartender.”

The Daily Caller Twitter account was KO’d after making a joke about “Communist cow farts” and the Green New Deal in the comments section of a May 28 tweet in which AOC warned about the dangers of climate change.

“I honestly don’t think that elected officials should be able to block people on Twitter if they’re going to use it to disseminate information,” Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoffrey Ingersoll told The Post.

A rep for AOC did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

A growing body of legal precedent suggests AOC blocks are out of bounds.

In February, Ohio State Sen. Joe Uecker was forced to fork over $20,000 to a constituent he blocked on Facebook. A similar ruling was handed down to GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin a month earlier.

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Donald TrumpAFP via Getty Images

President Trump violated the Constitution by blocking people from his Twitter feed, a federal appeals court ruled in July.

In the past Ocasio-Cortez has argued that her @AOC Twitter account is for personal use and that First Amendment concerns would only apply to her official and — far less used — @RepAOC account. But legal scholars don’t buy it.

In an August letter to AOC, the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University urged Ocasio-Cortez to unblock those wishing to follow her @AOC account, calling the practice “unconstitutional” — because, as her main vehicle of distributing information, @AOC was her de facto public account.

Social media is a “modern version of a public square, which has been recognized by numerous courts,” said Barry N. Covert, a First Amendment attorney. “Merely being offensive or insulting is something that you as a public figure have to live with.”

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Sorry Politicians, You Can't Block Critics on Twitter

Courts have ruled that access to public figures on social media is a constitutional right.

BY ALAN GREENBLATT | SEPTEMBER 2018

Anyone in public life expects criticism. But sometimes it gets personal. The temptation in those situations is strong to shut up the naysayers, but doing so might be against the law.

In May, a judge ruled that President Trump could not block people from following him on Twitter. It was the most prominent in a series of rulings finding that access to public figures on social media is a constitutional right. “The suppression of critical commentary regarding elected officials is the quintessential form of viewpoint discrimination against which the First Amendment guards,” Judge James Cacheris wrote in a case involving a supervisor in Fairfax County, Va.

Politicians often claim that their social media accounts are personal, not public property. But public officials also use these same accounts to conduct official business or make announcements. Some politicians argue that they’re simply clamping down on trolls who use offensive language. “Their level of discourse sunk to a level that even as an elected official I felt I shouldn’t have to tolerate,” David Lim, a former mayor of San Mateo, Calif., told the San Francisco Chronicle. “If you walk into my office and start yelling at me, I can walk out of the office.”

But public officials can’t block people preemptively from their offices. In effect, by blocking them on social media, that’s what they’re doing. “The internet, particularly social media, is where so much of our public discourse is happening these days,” says Thomas Kadri, a resident fellow at the Yale Information Society Project.

Some officials silence not only hostile malcontents but also reporters who’ve written less-than-flattering articles about them. Alondra Cano, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, blocked two Star Tribune reporters after they wrote about her less-than-perfect attendance record. Washington state Sen. Michael Baumgartner blocked a Seattle Times reporter for asking the senator about his policy on blocking people. “I don’t think they should block anybody unless they’re being threatening or particularly nasty,” says Matt Szafranski, editor of the political blog Western Mass Politics & Insight, who’s been blocked from official Springfield accounts. “I’m known for being a critic of the administration in the city, but I don’t think of myself as being particularly unfair.”

The ACLU has sent letters to lawmakers around the country warning them about the need to keep their accounts open to the public. They must accept that First Amendment rights are protected on social media -- not just free speech, but the right to petition to redress grievances. “Obviously, you can’t go and harass or threaten your local agency, but you do have free rein otherwise to make your point,” says Angela Greben, who monitors government accounts that block people.

Technology allows insulted public officials the ability to mute or unfollow harassers, protecting them from seeing hostile messages but letting those individuals see the statements they put out. But most officials recognize that taking some knocks comes with the job. “If you don’t want to be described as scum,” Greben writes on her blog, “then maybe you shouldn’t run for political office.”

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