Your social media policy

[luckless pedestrian]

I am finishing up the social media policy for my fair town - I have been hit with the Freedom of Access issue of removing a comment from a town page that is libelous, slanderous, racist, etc etc - I was thinking of still allowing its removal but staff must print a copy of the screen before deleting and keeping it in a file

thoughts?
thoughts in general or will you share your social media policy?

[ursus]

We are way behind the times. You can't comment on our webpage, we don't have a facebook account for the city or for the department, nobody's on twitter, etc. and every two months or so I have to remind the IT guys that LinkedIn isn't dubious and that I need it. Cyburbia somehow has always flown under their radar.

Our official policy is "no social media" period. I wish we would recognize the growing legitimacy of social media and embrace it and just police it a little internally, but I'm the only one around here with the stomach for it. Everybody else (except IT maybe) just sees it as a burden. I don't get that.

Sorry no help here.

[TerraSapient]

I believe this issue is going to continue to steer public pages away from enabling comments. Once you open the door to comments from the public on your town/organization website (particularly anonymous comments - which you arguably have no way of controlling), you should anticipate a certain amount of distasteful posts from the yahoos among our population. Removing comments can and is often viewed as censorship and, I think, opens doors for the yahoos who would post something like that to form conspiracy/tin-foil-hat theories.

This probably goes against current popular practice, but I think comments should only be enabled on websites where it makes sense for other members of the public to see public comments. If a site is purely informational, like posting events, rates, etc., then there is no need for the public to post comments or questions that other site visitors can see. They can always send emails or call a hotline or something.

Hope that helps lp and it isn't too little too late.

[Raf]

We do not have a comment section on our website, simply the facebook page which allows those that follow us to comment. We have a "terms of use" disclaimer when you join the City's website as a user or join our social media page. It is the "legalese" of when we can remove posts. If you want PM for our social media policy and terms of use. And it covers FOIA, as well as California Record's Request. I think it's pretty solid, I should know, I wrote it