[devtul]

Government positions are on the frontline of the policy making debate and the execution of it, paired with how humans communicate imperfectly, it's doomed to be controversial. If anything we should give more leeway to politicians to express themselves in areas of contention.

We in fact already do that, just not uniformly. The media run defense for one side while distorting and assuming* the worse of the other. We have plenty of examples of the media covering the exact same thing but coming to different conclusions based on the political leaning.

It's so tiresome to point this out and get immediately gaslighting replies.

[olyjohn]

How about we don't allow politicians on social media at all? Let them use their own official websites to communicate with the public. No commenting or replying allowed. They should not be allowed to edit old posts, televised and recorded political speeches should be archived and kept on the website... and all of their media should be kept up on that site forever.

There's literally zero need for politicians to go on Twitter or Facebook at all. They should only be allowed to have written communications via official channels with official statements. Everybody knows where to go to read the official statements. Then they can't accuse anyone of censoring them. There's nothing stopping people from posting links onto Twitter or whatever other SM you want to use.

[ineedasername]

Whether or not that would be better for society, it would very much violate constitutional freedom of speech. There is no "how about we don't allow" in this case. Or rather, the way people would have to do that is through a constitutional amendment.

It would also set a bad or ambiguous precedent. Are TV, radio, newspapers off limits too? If so, what about the annual State of the Union address to the nation? What about the (yes, small) group of people who don't/won't/can't use the internet?

It also wouldn't really help all that much: As you said, nothing stops normal citizens from posting links: similarly, nothing would stop them from posting to SM everything their favored politician writes on their official site. It might stop the specific politician from posting stuff, but that just means it would take a few extra minutes to be posted by someone else.

[mc32]

Totally agreed. Look at Teddy Locsin, top diplomat from the Philippines. He's sick and tired of naval incursions by his ambitious neighbor so he went on quite a vulgar rant against them.