Moderation Policy: Online community management guidelines

The European Ombudsman’s office uses social media in order to communicate and increase awareness about its work, as well as to better listen, engage and get feedback from the public. We have an official presence on the following online platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Instagram and Medium. These accounts are managed by mandated members of the Ombudsman’s Communication team.

We welcome the opportunity to hear from different audiences via mentions, replies, direct messages and comments and we strive to provide information in a timely and efficient manner. The monitoring and management of all social media accounts takes place on a daily basis to the greatest possible extent, but not on a 24-hour basis. We publish responses covering the biggest possible range of questions if we are unable to reply to all individual requests.

We reserve the right not to respond to and/or delete mentions, re-tweets, comments or messages that:

• condone violence or illegal behaviour and are threatening
• include abusive, offensive, libellous, illegal, defamatory, discriminatory, racist, content
• mention products or have a promotional or/and commercial tone
• are spam, excessively repetitive or disruptive to the community or are not relevant to the topics discussed
• violate Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, YouTube, Instagram and Medium Terms and Conditions of Use
• infringe the right to protection of personal data
• contain sensitive, proprietary or confidential information

The accounts we follow are not an indication of our endorsement of these accounts or of the content they share. We use a number of existing or new hashtags (#) in order to join group conversations and be able to participate in relevant debates but we cannot assume responsibility for any content under these hashtags that has not been developed by us. We encourage our followers to interact with each other and contribute to ongoing debates and to do so in a respectful and constructive manner but we cannot assume responsibility for their comments or behaviour.

Our main language for publishing content is English. However, we respond to questions in any of the 24 official EU languages.

In case you have any questions or comments regarding these guidelines, please feel free to contact us: eo-socialmedia@ombudsman.europa.eu