The social media policy for the City of Winter Springs:
The City of Winter Spring Social Media policy outlines that “The City shall use the social media forum for one-way communications only unless otherwise expressly authorized by the City Commission.” Therefore all comments are turned off or hidden. Our social media policy can be found on the city website here: https://www.winterspringsfl.org/administration/page/marketing-events
However as you can see with the first post, it has 17 comments about Winter Springs being the top 10 small towns to live in! Great news!!
But… when you open it up, there is one comment and a notice that City of Winter Springs has censored or limited other comments.
When asked for the reason or explanation regarding this we were simply told to visit the official policy, which we have shared below.
City of Winter Springs Social Media Policy
After further research we see this policy was Implemented or drafted in 2015. A 2019 ruling by the Supreme Court acknowledged that censoring on a government public forum on social media, such as Facebook was unconstitutional and subject to ligation for doing so.
I’ve attached links for your review and we have asked the city to reconsider and update this outdated policy, as it does not supersede a Fourth Circuit Court ruling.
We seek action from Winter Springs to ensure freedom speech is not being censored on our public Facebook forum! Citizens should have the right to be able to comment positively or negatively without threat of being censored.
Recent court cases have established that elected representatives violate the First Amendment when they block individuals or delete their comments for expressing critical opinions on sites like Twitter and Facebook.
If a public official uses their account to communicate with the public in their role as an elected official, then their page or account is subject to the First Amendment, which protects free speech. That means they cannot engage in most forms of censorship such as blocking someone or deleting someone’s comments simply because of the subject or their opinion.
Sources:
https://www.govtech.com/gov-experience/the-unseen-consequences-of-hiding-social-comments.html
https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-aclu-hogan-facebook-20180402-story.html
