Social Media Policy

CONTENT MODERATION 

1. Limited Public Forum. The City’s social media accounts are created and maintained as limited public forums under the caselaw pertaining to the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution. The City invites members of the public to view and, where possible, provide comments or other engagement on the City’s social media accounts. However, the law permits the City to hide and/or delete comments that are not protected speech under the First Amendment and relevant caselaw. As a general rule, the City will not hide and/or delete comments solely because such comments are critical of the City of New Albany or its officials.

2. Prohibited Content. Relevant First Amendment caselaw permits the City to hide or delete certain comments on City social media accounts. The following will be hidden or deleted:

• Comments directly advocating violence or illegal activity.
• Comments that constitute an illegal threat, as defined under applicable law.
• Comments containing obscenity, which is defined as sexually explicit and/or pornographic content that is patently offensive, appeals to prurient interest, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;
• Comments that directly advocate or promote illegal discrimination against a legally protected class;
• Comments containing links to malware and/or malicious content that affects the normal functioning of a computer system, server, or browser;
• Duplicate comments posted repeatedly within the same day;
• Comments containing actual defamation against a person, either as determined by a court or comments that are patently defamatory by easily discovered facts;
• Comments that contain images or other content that violate the intellectual property or copyright rights of someone else, if the owner of that property notifies us that the property was posted in a comment on our social media account(s);
• Comments that contain a hyperlink to any website other than those controlled by the City of New Albany. This will be done without regard to the viewpoint of the comment containing such a link or the content of the site to which the link redirects.

The content posted by others to the City of New Albany’s social media channels does not necessarily reflect the opinions and positions of the City of New Albany, its elected officials or its employees. Questions concerning the online moderation of these channels should be directed to info@newalbanyohio.org or 614-855-3913.

 Last update: 06-03-24