Social Media Posting Policy

The purpose of the Town of Ashland’s official social media accounts is to present matters of interest to Ashland’s residents, businesses, visitors, and other members of the general public. We encourage you to post comments and share the Town’s posts to your own accounts. However, the individual who posts a comment is solely responsible for its content. Comments posted on the Town’s social media accounts may not reflect the opinions and positions of the Town of Ashland government, its officers, or its employees.

The Town of Ashland considers all its social media accounts to be moderated online discussion sites. While the Town does not discriminate against views or opinions posted to its social networking accounts, the Town reserves the right to request comments to be edited or removed if inappropriate. 

Here is our Posting Policy for participation to encourage civil discourse. The following are prohibited:

• threats of physical or bodily harm, or incitement of actions that would harm others;
• content which constitutes, incites, promotes, or encourages illegal activity;
• submission of personally identifiable medical information;
• defamatory statements;
• obscene, profane, or vulgar language;
• content that includes or constitutes sexually explicit content, obscenity, or child pornography;
• solicitations of commerce and commercial product promotions;
• spam, links to other sites, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or fraudulent or deceptive messages;
• content that violates copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights; and
• comments that are clearly off-topic of the Town social media post being commented upon, or beyond the scope of the subject matter of the social media page.

The Community Engagement Department will have the final say in interpreting these rules. The Town reserves the right to reject, delete, disable or remove any content that does not comply with this Posting Policy. Content in violation of this Posting Policy will be removed by the Town. In such an event, the person who submitted the post will be notified that the post has been removed for violating the Town’s Posting Policy. Repeated violations will result in a 30-day suspension from that Town social media page. Any additional violation(s) within the 12-month period following any suspension may result in a longer-term suspension. Individuals wishing to challenge such a removal or suspension can contact the Community Engagement Department at info@ashlandva.gov.