Introduction:
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) uses social media to provide information and resources to Virginia residents and others who may visit our page.
The VDH provides information on a variety of health topics and observances that may impact the health of all Virginians and/or certain populations.
Comment Policy:
The opinions expressed by followers and visitors on the VDH social platforms do not reflect the opinions of the VDH. While comments and opinions are encouraged on posts and links, we expect that this will be done in a respectful manner.
We expect engagement on our platforms to be respectful of others and will not tolerate violations of our community guidelines, as outlined below.
Public comments are monitored by the Virginia Department of Health, which reserves the right to hide, report, and/or delete public comments that are:
- Vulgar, offensive, abusive, threatening, or harassing images and/or language; this includes creative spellings of swear words using emojis, asterisks, or spaces between words;
- Sexually inappropriate images, language, and/or links to similar content;
- Comments that contain defamation to a person or people;
- Comments that promote, foster or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, age, religion, gender, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, national origin, physical or mental disability or sexual orientation;
- Comments that are considered misinformation (scientifically incorrect and/or misleading);
- Comments that refer to webpages or accounts that are potential sources of misinformation;
- Comments whose main purpose are to sell or promote a product or service;
- Comments that reveal an individual’s personal identifying information;
- Personal attacks on any VDH employee or department;
- Comments that infringe on copyrights;
- Comments that promote or oppose any person campaigning for election to a political office or that promote or oppose any ballot measure;
- Comments where other individuals are tagged for inappropriate purposes;
- Distracting to the conversation and/or derail the main topic;
- Spam comments, such as the same comment posted repeatedly on a profile; and
- Other comments that the VDH staff deem inappropriate.
All links posted as comments on the VDH page or posts will be reviewed and may be subject to deletion.
The VDH reserves the right to block/ban those who post comments that violate our community guidelines.
Some social media platforms limit the ability to hide comments. If so, the VDH will still make sure the comment in question is reported or deleted.
The VDH understands that social media is a 24/7 medium; however, our moderation capabilities are not. We may not see every inappropriate comment right away, and we trust in the maturity of our community to ignore personal attacks and negative speech or respond politely.
Disabling Comments:
Any of the following circumstances may result in disabling the ability for users to comment on the VDH social platforms:
- When VDH moderation capabilities become too limited to monitor comments.
- When there is a constant and/or overwhelming amount of comments that violate the Community Guidelines for VDH Social Media.
After a certain period, VDH may consider re-enabling the ability for users to comment on VDH social platforms.