Social Media Etiquette

[danbrotherston]

So I'm looking for a group opinion here.

The content of the tweet is not terribly relevant, I am frustrated with the city's plans on Union St. I tweeted my remarks and response, since I find I do not get any useful response by engaging with staff (and this is reinforced in my mind by staff's mediocre actual response). Therefore, I wish to publish a message publicly, and directly at council and other interested folks locally.

As a result I tweeted my objections publicly to council and a few others, cycle_wr and relevantly, a city staff member, who AFAIK is not involved in the project, but who is involved in active transportation in the city. I have met this person in person on numerous occasions, but who I might refer to as an acquaintance--I don't know them well. This tweet went out a few weeks ago, and today I retweeted myself because Brian Doucet raise Union St. again. @citywaterloo:

Do you find this response reasonable? I have a few points for and against, but as is clear I think, I don't think it's reasonable.

Against:

• It's absurd to suggest that anything on twitter is private. That's simply not how twitter works in general.
  
• I tweeted a person in the community, there isn't anything wrong with that, they are interested in and involved with active transportation.
  
• I know this person outside of the context of this project, I am not contacting them as staff.
  

For:

• My positioning of the @ could be better, while I also tweeted @cycle_wr I mostly gave a list of councillors I'd like an answer from.
  
• It's fair that staff do want to have personal accounts on FB and Twitter that they are not responsible for engaging with the public on.
  
• Staff are limited in their ability to speak publicly about a project, and of course, requests must go through the proper channels.
  

(On this last point: If this is truly a "private" twitter account then the person should have the freedom to engage with their community (I know of course that they do not have this ability), and further, the city should come to meet the public, the public shouldn't have to come meet the city in terms of public engagement. Of course, the reply suggested that I should @citywaterloo (their corporate handle) to engage, but I did exactly that in the first tweet and got absolutely no reply.).

Clearly there is grey area, I am not sure based on how much I know this person, etc. etc. but I found it a very strange request, and the fact that it came weeks later (only after I retweeted myself) really looks bad on them. I have no idea if I have actually offended the city staff person in question (I won't name them), but this felt to me like either an overzealous response by the corporate account, or a very strange way of someone letting me know they don't want to engage (which can be accomplished with the block option).

It's worth noting also that I have had ZERO engagement from either the city's corporate social media or ANY city councillors on this item, in fact the ONLY contact I've had from the city is to complain that I @tt someone in our community who happens to also be a city staff member. I find it pretty tone deaf.