This policy provides guidance for how the City communicates to employees, residents, visitors, businesses, and various audiences through social media platforms. The City of Boerne adopted a Social Media Policy to ensure the proper, effective, and best-informed use of social media platforms by City of Boerne employees and volunteers for work purposes. This policy also provides guiding principles for use of City social media accounts. All content, comments and replies are subject to the Texas Public Information Act and are considered public information under state law and may be disclosed in response to a request for information from any member of the public. Comments posted by others to the City’s social media accounts does not necessarily reflect the views or position of the City. “Follows” from a City social media account does not reflect endorsements. The City of Boerne social media accounts are designated/limited forums. In addition to each social media channel’s Content Code of Conduct, the City Communications Office reserves the right to use its discretion to enforce the rules contained in this policy. We highly encourage the public to be mindful of the content and comments they post. Any of the following content and comments are subject to being hidden or removed:
o Comments or videos that are not related to the post topic;
o Content that violate the Social Media Platform’s terms of service;
o Information about official city business that is legally deemed confidential and should not be made public;
o Profane, sexual, pornographic or obscene comments or submissions;
o Discriminatory comments regarding race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, political beliefs, or any other form of discrimination directed toward a person, people, or group based on a protected class as per Title VI, Civil Rights Law;
o Attacks on specific groups or any comments meant to harass, threaten, or abuse an individual;
o Information that may compromise the safety or security of the public or public systems;
o Solicitations of commerce and advertisements. This includes promotion or endorsement of any financial, commercial, or non-governmental agency;
o Political advocacy or commentary;
o Comments that suggest or encourage violence, illegal activity, or threaten any person;
o Content that violates a legal ownership interest of any other party;
o Content that includes personally identifiable information within their comments, including addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses;
o Spam, link baiting or files containing viruses that could damage the operation of other people’s computers or mobile devices; or
o Information that may tend to compromise the safety or security of the public or public systems.
