Commissioners to consider policy eliminating public comment on county social media posts

This article is brought to you by Freedom Financial.

Howard County government has 17 separate social media accounts, and just like any other account on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, there is a risk that objectionable material might be placed in the comments section. However, the ability to comment on public posts soon may be eliminated.

The county’s Information Services director, Jeremy Stevens, addressed the Howard County Board of Commissioners on Dec. 15, responding to a recommendation from Howard County Attorney Alan Wilson that a social media policy be adopted. Stevens suggested that a county-wide policy be explored instead.

He then recommended that public comments no longer be allowed on the county’s social media posts.

“The second recommendation is to disable comments on the government posts but keep enabling the sharing of the content so that the public can still interact and share and discuss and participate,” said Stevens. “I believe that the original content the government posts should be clean. If you don’t do that, you’re going to have to pay someone to monitor for spam, porn, malware, cryptocurrency, and other links.

“Somebody’s going to spend their time doing that on every single social media page. I just think that’s kind of a waste. I just think they should have comments disabled by default, but keep the ability to share, retweet, repost.”

It was not made clear whether a county employee currently is tasked with monitoring the county’s social media accounts or how often objectional material appears in the comments sections. However, Wilson echoed Stevens’ desire to end comment access on county social media accounts.

“The idea is not to keep people from making comments,” said Wilson. “They’re free to make comments they want on their own web page or Facebook site or whatever it is, just not on the county’s.

“Some of the comments that have been made are extremely offensive, and they have no business being on anyone’s website as far as I’m concerned. But at least we can control what goes on the county website.”

The board of commissioners asked that Wilson bring the issue with a possible solution back to them at a future meeting.

The issue of limiting public access to comment on government social media accounts has been addressed once by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2024, the high court held that critics cannot be blocked from making comments on a First Amendment public forum. How a blanket ban on all comments would hold up under this interpretation is yet to be seen, and there is no evidence that comments have been suspended by the Howard County Sheriff’s Office at any point over the past year.

It is quite common, however, to find social media accounts maintained by the City of Kokomo, particularly in the realm of law enforcement, to have commenting disabled. In fact, comments were not allowed on 92 percent of posts appearing on the Kokomo Police Department Facebook page this year, even in instances where the same information appeared on other city-maintained Facebook pages.