Social media house rules

This page sets out our house rules across all our accounts/channels on social media.

Our social media channels feature a variety of information, news and alerts from our services and partners. They keep you informed and up to date with what’s happening across the city.

We're here to help, and we expect users to offer us the same level of courtesy and respect that we offer them. We want our social media channels to be safe spaces where we welcome comments and engagement on our posts.

House rules

We want them to be a place for healthy, open and insightful discussion, which is why we have a short set of house rules:

• all users must comply with the social media platform's Terms of Use as well as our own terms of use
• you are wholly responsible for any content you post including posts and content made by others that you choose to share

Why we may remove messages or content

We will remove, in whole or in part, posts are inappropriate, or discriminatory against any individual or group. We will also remove messages/content (where function allows) and report and/or block users on our social media channels who post messages to us that we believe meet the following criteria.

• abusive or threatening, including intimidating towards our staff, councillors, or other platform users
• deceptive or misleading including misinformation and disinformation
• obscene, profane or sexually explicit
• defamatory or slanderous
• discriminatory
• in violation of any intellectual property rights, including copyright
• in violation of any law or regulation or promoting illegal activity
• the same message (or small variations of it) posted multiple times by individuals or groups, otherwise known as spamming or spam
• controversial, irrelevant, off topic, or baiting, otherwise known as trolling
• promotional material, including links to external websites and promotions

Anyone engaging with us using content or language that falls into the above categories may be reported to the associated social media platform.

We will not tolerate or respond to abusive messages.

If your content relates to any of the list above, it may be hidden or deleted without warning. We may publicly respond to your content and direct message you to ask you to remove it immediately. If you do not act, you may lose access to our social media accounts.

If you see a post on our channels from a member of the public that you think breaches our house rules, the terms and conditions of the social media channel or that makes you feel unsafe, please report it to the social media channel directly. You can also raise this with us by emailing socialmediateam@sheffield.gov.uk
Depending upon the content, we may also screenshot the posts and consider legal action or send them to the police for investigation.

Politics

We must always remain politically neutral on social media, which is why council officers are unable to reply to, endorse or engage with any content that is of a party-political nature. If you wish to discuss political issues, please contact your local councillor.

Pre-election period

Whatever the type of election, if you post anything on council social media platforms which could be interpreted as politically controversial, we may delete it.

The pre-election period is 25 working days before polling day for elections (28 calendar days before polling day for referenda).

Hate crime and incidents

Any incident that is motivated by prejudice or hostility (or is perceived to be so, by the victim or anyone else) towards a person’s identity is a hate incident including:

• actual or perceived race
• religion, faith, or beliefs
• sexual orientation
• gender identity
• disability

A hate motivated incident where the law is broken is a hate crime.

Hate and harassment can take the form of criminal or non-criminal behaviour. It can include offensive comments or images on social media or text messages.

You can find out more about hate crime, including how to report hate and harassment on our Hate Crime page.

Complaints and allegations

If you wish to make a complaint about a council service, councillor, or member of staff you can find more details on our complaints page.

Safeguarding allegations or disclosures

If you make any safeguarding allegations or disclosures on our social media channels, these will be passed onto the relevant organisations as part of our duty of care.