Social-Media Platforms. This document constitutes the Worcester County Government (WCG) Social-Media Policy (the “Policy”). As described below, this Policy applies to the following social-media platforms:
Facebook:
- https://www.facebook.com/Worcester-County-Government-Maryland
- https://www.facebook.com/Worcester-County-Economic-Development
- https://www.facebook.com/WorCoRecParks/
- https://www.facebook.com/BeachAndBeyond/
- https://www.facebook.com/worcestervolunteerconnection
Twitter:
- https://twitter.com/WorcesterCounty
- https://twitter.com/BizAtBeach
- https://twitter.com/WorCoRecParks
- https://twitter.com/beachandbeyond
Pinterest:
Youtube
Purposes. The WCG Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Youtube platforms promote and disseminate information about WCG’s initiatives, events, and announcements. These platforms are limited public forums for discussion with and among users about the posted initiatives, events, and announcements.
WCG values the opinions shared by Worcester County constituents through all of the County’s social media platforms and reviews messages, retweets, and other user communications (“Comments”) on all of the County’s social-media platforms.
Constructive discussions and Comments are encouraged. WCG does not discriminate based on viewpoint, but may remove Comments and restrict access to users for violating this Policy.
Comments. To facilitate the purposes of the social-media platforms, WCG reserves the right to remove Comments that contain, constitute, or link to any of the following:
- Malicious or harmful software;
- Advertisements, promotions, or solicitations of a commercial product or service;
- Confidential, personally identifying, or private information as defined by State law;
- Profanity, nudity, indecency, or obscenity;
- Threats of violence or to public safety1;
- Copyrighted materials in violation of County, State or federal law;
- Disruptively repetitive content;
- Remarks that are clearly unrelated to governmental concerns or remarks that are clearly unrelated to the subject matter of any post; and
- Discriminatory on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, age, marital status, or religion.
Rules. The following rules apply to the social-media platforms:
- Any content removed pursuant to this Policy will be retained for one year.
- Users may be temporarily or permanently restricted from accessing the WCG social-media platforms if they repeatedly and consistently violate this Policy.
- To contest the restriction of access to a social-media platform, the user must submit a written statement providing grounds for reinstatement to WCG at worcesterpia@co.worcester.md.us. Requests shall be responded to on a reasonably timely basis, and access shall be restored if it is determined that the grounds for reinstatement are sufficient. A statement that the user will abide by this Policy in the future shall be sufficient, except when a user has continued to violate the Policy after having made such a statement.
- Users may contact WCG at worcesterpia@co.worcester.md.us at any time to identify Comments or other conduct in violation of the Policy. Until a Comment in violation of the Policy is removed, users should ignore it, or if responding, do so in compliance with the Policy.
- WCG shall notify the public of any changes to this Policy and identify the changes.
User-generated content. WCG monitors the social-media platforms, but is not responsible for content generated by users on these platforms. A Comment is the opinion of the commentator only. Publication of a Comment does not necessarily imply endorsement of or agreement by WCG. Comments and content should be understood to be entirely public, and users should not write Comments with any information that they consider, or would like to keep, confidential.
1 Users that make express or implied threats of violence or to public safety may be reported to the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office for investigation.