Community guidelines
Rotorua Lakes Council's social media pages are a safe space for conversation with our community. Any comments or questions that aren’t related to the original post may be removed, if these are attempts to derail the conversation.
Some topics might be controversial or cause strong opinions, but we kindly request that everyone interacts respectfully with each other and with council’s social media team (we have feelings too!). The following conduct and behaviours will not be tolerated:
Rotorua Lakes Council's social media pages must not be used for electioneering purposes. Any post - positive or negative - made by any individual specifically relating to their own - or someone else's - nomination, intention to run for Council or election campaign, will be removed immediately.
Rotorua Lakes Council reserves the right to remove contributions and followers on its social media pages that break the rules or guidelines of the relevant communities e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, and our rules stated below.
Private messages, public comments and images on the Council's social media pages must always be polite, respectful, appropriate and relevant. Repeated and/or particularly extreme offences will result in a ban from our pages.
Please note, Rotorua Lakes Council does not monitor and respond to comments and tags on external groups and pages.
If you have a problem to report the correct way to do this is via our customer service team – you can report online, via email, in person or by phone and it will be logged as a request for service. Contact our customer centre via phone: 07 348 4199, email: info@rotorualc.nz or through the form on our website: https://www.rotorualakescouncil.nz/contact-us
Users of Rotorua Lakes Council social media pages must agree not to:
- swear or use offensive language
- post messages or images that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive
- post photos or videos of people without their prior consent
- post protected content copied from elsewhere e.g. infringe on copyrights or trademarks
- post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once (spamming)
- publicise personal information or contact details
- use Rotorua Lakes Council's Social Media pages for electioneering purposes
- advertise products or services or provide endorsements
- impersonate someone else
- purposefully attempt to aggravate, blame or direct abuse to inflame a situation further (trolling)
- post repeated comments that are irrelevant and distract from discussions related to the content posted
- use RLC’s FB / Insta pages to spread disinformation that may mislead the public
