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by SomeStupidPoint 3122 days ago
> We frequently receive reports from community activists and other social media users who were blocked from commenting on an agency’s Facebook page, or prevented from contributing to a community discussion prompted by an officials’ tweet, or have faced similar barriers to participation in public debate. We receive reports about how governmental officials manipulate social media comments to exclude opposing views to create the impression that hotly contested policies are not contested at all. And we realize, in seeing how agencies use social media to quickly disseminate emergency information during the recent spate of natural disasters, that the ability to receive such messages can be a matter of life and death.

This is really the crux of why it's a First Amendment issue -- because that amendment is meant to protect discussion from that sort of manipulation by government.