ROCKINGHAM — If you’ve visited the Facebook page for the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office this week, you may have noticed that you can no longer comment on posts.
The space where comments used to be made now has a message that reads: “Richmond County Sheriff’s Office – N.C. limited who can comment on this post.”
Chief Deputy Jay Childers, who created the page, said social media scammers are to blame.
Childers told the RO in an email Wednesday that the RCSO page was receiving a “large number” of spam and fraudulent comments “on nearly every post.”
“(W)e were receiving comments from profiles that had just recently been created with no information and are obviously from foreign countries,” Childers said. “They were replying to comments our citizens had made and often were trying to get them to share something on Facebook for them or would contact them directly (through) messenger, unsolicited, which is a huge red flag of scams.”
Other local pages have dealt with similar issues.
The Facebook page for Rockingham Dragway often has comments with links to alleged livestreams of events at the track.
Childers added that the spammy, scammy comments were “never in relation to the actual post,” but rather “normally related to something for sale or something free and directed to the person who had made a ‘legitimate’ comment that they were replying to.”
Also, with the page being run through his personal account, Childers said, “I am not willing to allow scammers the opportunity to access my personal information and I do not want to subject an innocent citizen here in our county to it either.”
“A person can still like, unlike, love, share and then comment on any post, they just can’t comment directly on our page,” Childers continued.
The chief deputy said the action that was taken was the only way to prevent the fraudulent comments without shutting the page down.
Childers said the RCSO is “not willing to be the judge on (whose) comments we would allow and (whose) we should hide or delete, so the only option other than discontinuing the FB page was not to allow any direct comments by anyone.”
That decision also keeps the sheriff’s office from running afoul of the First Amendment.
Most courts have ruled that government entities and elected officials cannot delete comments or block users based on viewpoint.
However, many free speech experts agree that not allowing any comments is not a constitutional violation.
“Generally, a public body or agency can create (or choose not to create) space for public comment,” said Brooks Fuller, director of the N.C. Open Government Coalition and Sunshine Center.
“Once they create such a forum, they cannot discriminate on the basis of viewpoint…but they are under no constitutional obligation to provide the forum in the form of comments sections,” Fuller added. “You could maybe make the case that eliminating comments on official pages in response to dissenting viewpoints amounts to a constitutional violation, but since those speakers have alternative means of communicating a message, I think that argument would not be very convincing based on the case law about public forums.”
Attorney C. Amanda Martin, who represents the North Carolina Press Association, has a similar view.
“There is no requirement that governments allow comments on social media accounts, so if absolutely everyone is cut off, then that likely is not a violation of the law,” Martin said. “If some are allowed and others are disallowed, that can pose a problem under the First Amendment.”
Martin’s colleague and law partner Mike Tadych took a different approach in 2021 when the Wilmington Police Department disabled comments on its page.
“A Facebook page, especially in this context, should be an unlimited public forum,” Tadych said to Wilmington-based television station WECT. “It’s already been determined to be a public forum and I can’t see any real basis to limit it. There’s no real estate restriction, there’s no ‘You’ve reached your comment limit,’ … so it seems to me that limiting speakers is contrary to the First Amendment.”
Wilmington PD still does not allow comments on its page.
Also in 2021, the government page for Alachua County, Florida, barred all comments on its Facebook page, according to the Gainesville Sun, with a spokesperson saying the county was “not going to participate any longer in a contentious, hateful, misinformation, false information, dangerous-behavior encouraging medium.”
Though the situation and reasoning differs from that in Richmond County, the sentiments of First Amendment experts remains the same.
There have been many lawsuits over the past decade regarding governments and public officials — including former President Donald Trump — deleting comments and blocking constituents.
Several courts across the nation have been divided, with some siding with the governments’ arguments.
Martin says to “stay tuned.”
“The issue of public commentary on governmental social media is at the Supreme Court this term,” Martin said. “So we all will get some additional clarity on rules of the road before long.”
NOTE: Story updated to add one quote. 9:14 p.m. 12-20-23
