{"id":19599,"date":"2024-09-12T15:57:23","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T19:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=19599"},"modified":"2024-09-12T15:57:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T19:57:24","slug":"city-accountable-for-social-media-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/12\/city-accountable-for-social-media-posts\/","title":{"rendered":"City accountable for social media posts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The City of Decatur is spending just over $5,000 to protect itself from possible court suits involving its use of social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Community Coordinator Jamie Gephart got everyone’s attention when she asked city council at its latest meeting to add what she described as an \u201carchive app\u201d to protect the city from possible lawsuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said recent court verdicts have held that municipalities are responsible for producing their social media posts upon request. In other words, if someone asks the city for a copy of something it posted two years ago, the city has to produce it \u2013 if not, it can be sued!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It would be practically impossible for Gephart or anyone else in city government to find such a request among hundreds \u2013 maybe thousands \u2013 of various items it has posted in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To protect itself, Gephart said, the city needs to hire a firm to keep a record of its posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For $849, a firm called Archive Social, will handle the task for the rest of this year. A total of $4,188 will be required to continue the process through 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If hired, the firm would cover 12 social media accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’re liable if you can’t produce it (a post that is requested),\u201d Mayor Dan Rickord said. \u201cLots of cities are doing this (hiring protection).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnything on our social media pages, we are accountable for,\u201d Gephart added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis subscription service would help us to handle this,\u201d City Attorney Anne Razo remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some further discussion, Councilwoman Jenny Bowers-Shultz moved to hire Archive Social. \u201cI don’t love it, but it is something we have to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second followed by a 5-0 vote moved the procedure forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCapture every record from your social communications with government social media archiving software,\u201d the company says on its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com The City of Decatur is spending just over $5,000 to protect itself from possible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-19599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}