Social media use and guidelines

Facebook: why comments are sometimes turned off

As a local authority, we know there is high public interest in our council and the work it does, and we welcome comments. 

Comments are monitored and moderated by our Communications team to ensure they comply with our community guidelines, but sometimes the volume of comments means we can’t keep up. When this happens, we turn off comments. Another reason we turn off comments is when there is a risk that comments could break the law.

Potentially defamatory comments or comments that could cause harm to individuals, could lead to legal action being taken against Waikato Regional Council and potentially the person who posted the comment.

When we turn off comments, they are automatically closed to everyone. 

If there is a comment you think is out of step with our community guidelines, please DM us. Here’s a reminder of our community guidelines.

Community guidelines

We are committed to creating a community that encourages discussion and self-expression and mirrors the values and mission of Waikato Regional Council including being respectful, responsible and effective. We ask all our Facebook fans to do their part to help us achieve this goal. 

In doing that, we ask that you keep your comments respectful and lawful and do not post content that: 
•    is threatening, abusive, obscene, indecent or objectionable 
•    is deceptive, false or misleading 
•    defames any person or organisation 
•    violates intellectual property rights of other people 
•    is illegal 
•    references a third-party website or is self-promoting spam 
•    is inappropriate, offensive or hateful 
•    off topic and/or irrelevant to our post. 

We reserve the right to remove any content or block users that violate our community guidelines, or that we determine are otherwise offensive to our community. All content must also comply with Facebook's own policies.

Explanation of our enforcement policy

Waikato Regional Council investigates any complaint that suggests an activity may be operating without resource consent or breaching its resource consent conditions. Investigations take place regardless of whether the activity is undertaken by an individual, company or territorial authority. We have a clear policy which lays out how our Resource Management Act obligations are carried out, which you can read here.