Social media terms of use

The following terms of use apply to the social media platforms in use by the Office of the Queensland Ombudsman (QO) at any given time including, but not limited to, LinkedIn, You Tube and Google. If you post or contribute to QO social media platforms, it is our expectation that you comply with the rules of engagement between the QO and the public.

The QO makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents on social media platforms, and expressly disclaims liability for errors and omissions in the contents of its social media platforms. No warranty of any kind, implied, expressed, or statutory, including, but not limited to, the warranties of non-infringement of third-party rights, is given with respect to the contents of social media or its links to other online resources.

Hours of use

The QO’s social media platforms are monitored during standard business hours. While the QO makes reasonable efforts to monitor and moderate content posted on its social media platforms, we cannot always respond in a timely manner.

Moderation

The QO reserves the sole right to review or delete any comments it deems are inappropriate. Comments including, but not limited to, the following may be deleted by the moderators:

• inappropriate language (e.g. profanity, racial, ethnic or gender-based language as well as offensive abbreviations, or letter substitutions)
• abusive comments,  personal attacks, (including personality or ideological clashes between posters) or defamatory statements about another social media user, another person, the QO or its officers
• anything that could be considered prejudicial, vexatious or offensive
• spam, irrelevant comments, or links to appeals, petitions, offers, events, groups, pages, websites, organisations which are not related to the QO and;
• comments that violate the privacy of people including QO officers, complainants, subject officers or witnesses, government department and statutory authority employees, local government employees
• comments which are illegal or likely to impact our operations.

The Ombudsman Act 2001 (s 92) sets specific confidentiality requirements about the conduct of investigations.  We cannot comment about whether or not an investigation is under way or provide any other comment. We cannot comment on complaint details that you give in a social media comment. 

Any comments in response to our posts that contradict these guidelines may be removed. Repeated inappropriate posts or comments may result in people being blocked from our social media channels.

Links to other websites from QO social media platforms are provided as a guide only and such linkage does not constitute endorsement of those sites by the QO. The QO is not responsible for the content of external websites nor is it responsible for the content that third parties publish, post, upload, distribute, disseminate or otherwise transmit via social media.

Other than the content provided by the QO, any content, views, opinions and responses to questions or views uploaded, expressed or submitted by the creators, sponsors, advertisers or users of the social media platforms utilised by the QO, are solely the views, opinions and responsibility of the person submitting them and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the QO.

Moderation policy

Comments and messages on QO social media presences are ‘post-moderated’. This means that comments will be published automatically and reviewed by this Office after publication. While the QO reviews public comments on a regular basis, there may be times when inappropriate or offensive posts or comments that do not meet the terms of use appear before they can be removed. Where inappropriate material is identified it will be removed from public view, however it will be retained as a record in the QO system. We will not edit comments. The QO does not undertake to inform users when their comments and posts are moderated, however we will warn and take appropriate action to suspend and expel users who regularly and consistently submit inappropriate content. Repeat offenders may be blocked from operating within QO social media presences indefinitely.

Privacy and public records

By submitting content to any of the QO’s social media platforms, you understand and acknowledge that this information is available to the public and will be treated as a public record in accordance with the Public Records Act 2002.

We will treat any private messages sent to our social media accounts as correspondence and store them as an official public record.

Please refer to our Privacy Plan for further information.