I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.

  • SSTF@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    There are situations where responsiveness is compelled. If a judge rules that a question must be answered in voir dire, that’s a situation.

    The solution, as it were, to compelled speech is that for example if you somehow are compelled into admitting to a crime, that speech couldn’t be criminally used against you. There has been at least one high profile case where compelled speech was used for a criminal conviction which we ended up being reversed.

    Of course, a situation in jury selection where a question would lead to a 5th amendment issue and still be compelled seems very unlikely. More likely questions would simply be uncomfortable to answer. A judge has discretion to determine if a question is more invasive than useful. But something like social media posting related to the case seems like something most judges would allow.

    Some comments in this thread are answering as if lawyers would be asking for the passwords or something. That’s not what’s happening.