Social media rules and guidelines
Monitoring accounts, responding and
replying
The primary purpose of the social media that the Council engages
with is to facilitate communication between residents and others
who live and work in Ryedale District. We will try to respond
to as many replies or comments we can. However this isn’t always
possible.
Our social media accounts are not continuously monitored so it
is also easy to miss posts in busy social media traffic.
If you have a serious or more urgent enquiry, please use the
Contact Us link at the top of every page on
this website. You can also get in touch using our online complaints and
feedback processes.
Liking and following
Please don’t be offended if we don’t ‘Like’, ‘Follow’ you on
social media. This doesn’t mean we don’t like you or are not
interested in what you have to say, it’s just that the numbers can
get too high for us to manage.
We sometimes follow or like people who or organisations which
provide information that is relevant to our work as a local
authority (for example central government accounts, local media,
and our partners) or those whose information we can pass on for the
benefit of many local people.
Occasionally, we’ll also try and lend our support to local and
national campaigns. There will also be times we’ll need to like or
follow an account in order to take part in conversations.
Just because we like or follow someone, retweet or share their
information, it doesn’t mean that we endorse them.
Sharing and retweeting
We try and share or retweet information that we think will be of
interest or use to everyone in Ryedale; however, please don’t be
offended if we don’t retweet something you want us to.
As a trusted organisation, any sharing of information could be
seen as endorsement of a particular view, individual or
organisation, and it’s important that we remain impartial and
protect the council’s reputation.
Blocking and unfollowing
If we block your account, this will probably be because you’ve
followed or liked the council purely to promote a product or
service, or you’ve contravened the rules of a particular social
media space (see Moderation).
If for some reason we unfollow you, it might just be that we’re
going through a sort out or simply cutting down on numbers: if you
see that we’ve unfollowed you, please don’t take this a sign of
personal rejection.
Moderation
Most online communities have their own rules and guidelines,
which we will always follow.
Where possible, we will rely on the measures of protection and
intervention which the social networking site already has in place
(eg against illegal, harmful or offensive content), for example by
flagging comments or alerting them to any breaches of the site’s
terms and conditions.
We also have some of our own rules.
We reserve the right to remove any contributions that break the
rules of the relevant community, or any of the following
guidelines:
- be civil, tasteful and relevant;
- don’t post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing,
defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane,
sexually oriented or racially offensive;
- don’t swear;
- don’t post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not
own the copyright;
- don’t post the same message, or very similar messages, more
than once (also called "spamming");
- don’t publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information,
such as contact details;
- don’t advertise products or services;
- don’t impersonate someone else.
Libel
Please take care not to make libellous statements. In law this
means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or
organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such
a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will therefore
take down any statement that could be deemed to be libellous.
Pre-election period or 'Purdah'
In the six-week run up to an election - whether local, general,
referendum or European - all councils have to very careful not
to do or say anything that could seen in any way to support any
political party or candidate. We will continue to publish important
service announcements using social media but may have to remove
responses if they are overtly party political.