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's content on social media platforms, it is our expectation that you comply with the guidelines set out below.

Guidelines

The following content is not permitted to be posted on QO’s social media:

• 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
• 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
• comments that prejudice individuals’ right to privacy; and,
• comments which are illegal or likely to impact our operations.

If you use QO’s social media, you agree to the above guidelines.

The QO reserves the right to delete any comments that breach these guidelines, or otherwise (in its absolute discretion) that it deems are inappropriate or offensive. Repeated posts or comments that are inappropriate or offensive may result in people being suspended or blocked from QO's social media channels.

Moderation policy

Comments and messages on QO social media presences are ‘post-moderated’. This means that comments will be published automatically and reviewed by QO after publication.

This review occurs during standard business hours. While the QO makes reasonable efforts to monitor and moderate content posted by third parties on its social media platforms, occasionally some time may pass before inappropriate or offensive posts or comments that do not meet the guidelines are 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. We are not required to inform users when their comments and posts are moderated, or when users are suspended or blocked.

Privacy and public records 

If your personal information is collected via social media, we will only use this to receive your feedback, and to connect with you.  We may use a platform’s private message function to communicate with you about your posts and comments.

By submitting content to any of QO’s social media platforms, you understand and acknowledge that this information is available to the public (except where it is submitted by private message). You also acknowledge that social media companies (such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google) will handle your personal information for their own purposes in accordance with their own privacy policies. This may include storage and transfer of your personal information overseas.

The QO is subject to confidentiality and privacy requirements under the Ombudsman Act 2001 (s 92), the Inspector of Detention Services Act 2022 (ss 30 – 32) and the Information Privacy Act 2009 (including the Information Privacy Principles in schedule 3).  This means we cannot comment about certain matters on social media, including whether the Ombudsman is conducting an investigation into a particular issue, or whether the Inspector of Detention Services has received information about a particular person’s experiences.  We also cannot comment on complaint details or submissions that you provide in a social media comment.  

Content on social media will be treated as a public record in accordance with the Public Records Act 2023.  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.