Social media guidelines

This page sets out the council's social media acceptable use policy across all its social media platforms (Twitter, facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, nextdoor).
Everyone has a different opinion on many issues, but any form of cyber-bullying is not acceptable on any social media platform.
Our social media platforms are here to provide information and advice to our residents and community, and we welcome comments and engagement with our posts. We will actively monitor our social media, but if you notice any offensive comments, please let us know.
We will take immediate action if any content (including comments, videos, images, GIFs, attachments, links, emojis) is:

• Defamatory, slanderous, misleading or false
• Abusive or threatening - this includes swearing, adapted spellings with the same meaning, etc
• Intimidatory towards our staff, councillors or other platform users
• Inciting hate crime or hate crime words
• Obscene, profane or sexually oriented
• Discriminatory in any way
• Promoting illegal activity
• Promoting individual products or services
• Completely off topic
• The same message posted multiple times, otherwise known as 'spamming'
• Controversial, irrelevant and off topic, otherwise known as 'trolling'.
  

If your content relates to any of the list above, it may be hidden or deleted. We will publicly respond to your content and direct message you to ask you to remove it immediately. If you do not take action, we may block your access to our social media accounts. We will tell you that we're doing this.
Depending on the content, we will also screenshot the posts and consider legal action or sending them on to the police for investigation. If we think that the content you post is explicit, we will take immediate action to delete the post and block your access to our accounts.

Hate crime

Hate crime is defined as any incident that's seen by the victim (or any other person) as being motivated by prejudice or hate towards their actual or perceived social identity. Social identities include:

• Disability
• Gender identity
• Race, ethnicity or nationality
• Religion, faith or belief
• Sexual orientation.

Hate and harassment can take the form of criminal or non-criminal behaviour and can include offensive comments or images on social media or text messages.
Find out more about hate crime, including how to report hate and harassment on the Sussex Police website.

Allegations against council staff and councillors

We have a zero-tolerance approach toward fraud and corruption in our organisation. If you make an allegation on our social media against the council, a member of staff or councillor, we'll ask you to report it (along with your evidence) to Sussex Police, or you can report it to us through our complaints process.

Safeguarding allegations or disclosures

If you make any safeguarding allegations or disclosures on our social media, these will be passed onto the relevant organisations as part of our duty of care. It is better to raise these concerns directly through the correct channels.

Complaints

We are committed to providing high quality services, putting our customers at the heart of everything we do. We do our best to make sure your contact with us is professional, courteous and goes beyond your expectations.
However, we do accept that sometimes things can go wrong and at these times we need to listen to your views and put things back on the right track. The council's complaints procedure gives more information on what is considered a complaint and how you can raise a complaint.

Pre-election period

Whatever type of election, if you post anything on council social media platforms which could be interpreted as supporting a specific party or candidate during the defined pre-election period we may have to delete it.

Our correspondence with you

If you have a comment to make about a letter or email we have sent you, we would ask that you don't include the name of the officer who has sent it to you in a public message. If you want to raise it with us, please send it to us privately so we can resolve any issues you have. You can also email customerservices@hastings.gov.uk.