Jim Watson is facing a legal battle, less than a week before election day.
As first reported by the Ottawa Citizen, the incumbent mayor is being sued by three constituents over his use of Twitter and, specifically, his use of the block button on Twitter.
Blocking someone means you can’t see their tweets and they can’t see yours. It differs from muting, where the muted person can still see your tweets, but you won’t be notified of theirs. When someone is blocked, they know it, but there’s no way for someone to know they've been muted unless they’re told.
The plaintiffs–Emilie Taman, James Hutt, and Dylan Penner–argue that Watson, in his role as mayor of Ottawa, should not be allowed to block people on Twitter because he uses the @JimWatsonOttawa account to tweet about City of Ottawa business.
Speaking on CTV Morning Live on Wednesday, Watson disagreed.
“It’s my personal twitter account,” he said. “The City of Ottawa has an official account and it provides all the information, committee meetings and so on. Mine is personal, I do it all myself. So, that’ the difference. If this was the official Mayor Jim Watson account they’d have a point, but it’s my personal account. I had it before I got into municipal politics.”
The issue of public leaders blocking people on Twitter has gone before a court before, though admittedly in another country.
In May, a U.S. judge ruled that Donald Trump, as President of the United States, cannot block people from seeing his @realDonaldTrump account, because he uses it in his capacity as POTUS, despite there being an official @POTUS account (which regularly retweets @realDonaldTrump).
Watson said he would have to follow up with his legal team to see where to go next.
“I just heard about this last night,” he said, “so I haven’t had a chance to speak to our lawyers.”