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Staff warns commissioners social media can create open-meeting and First Amendment risks
Summary
Presenters told Newton commissioners that official social-media activity can be treated as a public forum, meaning deleting or blocking commenters can raise First Amendment issues; they advised separate official pages, narrow deletion policies and staff consultation.
City staff advised Newton commissioners that using social media in an official capacity carries legal risk because courts may treat such accounts as public forums, triggering First Amendment constraints on deleting or blocking commenters.
"Social media is considered a public forum based on case law," Speaker 4 said, adding that "you trigger first amendment issues" when elected officials open a forum for public interaction. Speaker 4 referenced a court decision cited in the presentation (named in the transcript as Linke v Bridal) as establishing a two-part test to determine whether an official is speaking for the government on a given account.
Staff cautioned that if an account is acting as an official forum, individuals cannot be singled out for removal and that deletions should be limited to narrow exceptions (spam/malware, true threats, encouragement of illegal acts and defamation as explained in the presentation). "We recommend that you do not block any users from your page" when acting in an official capacity, Speaker 4 said, and recommended creating a separate city-commissioner official page if commissioners want to engage with constituents online.
Presenters also noted practical safeguards: avoid "reply all" and multi-member interactive threads about city business, share city posts rather than creating new city-business threads on private pages, and consult staff about archiving and retention because official posts and comments can be public records. The presenters cited FlashVote research saying social-media sentiment aligns with representative scientific surveying only a small fraction of the time; Speaker 4 summarized FlashVote findings: "it's 5% of the time" and that "70% of the time, the online sentiment is the opposite of the community as a whole." Staff recommended forwarding citizen complaints to the city website or Newton Connect app rather than attempting to resolve them directly.
The training generated several practical questions from commissioners about whether a blanket no-comment policy is allowed (yes), whether sharing city posts is problematic (generally permitted), and how campaigning interacts with official-account rules (staff said a candidate before election is a private citizen, but incumbents using official accounts must follow the law). No policy changes were proposed or adopted during the session; staff offered follow-up assistance.
