Facebook Makes New Haven Change Page

Over the last week, the City of New Haven Facebook page has changed because Facebook notified the city that it would shut down the page if it did not change its name

The New Haven Register reports that the change was made earlier this week and that New Haven officials are not thrilled with it.

Last week the city page was called City of New Haven, but that violates Facebook policy, which states that generic location names are not allowed to have administrators.

The policy states: “We require Pages to be managed by official representatives of the topic they're about, and no one person can singly represent a geographic location,” the policy says. “If you are part of a government or organization that represents or controls a geographic location, you may have a Page for it. However, that Page's name must clearly reference your organization. For example, "New York City – Mayor's Office," "Lok Sabha – Parliament of India" and "Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain" are acceptable Page names.”

Now the page is New Haven City Hall.

City spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton told the Register that she reached out to Facebook to reconsider because the page is not for one city department, but for all city government, as well as social service programs.

The Register reports that that Facebook is in the process of reaching out to cities to alert them that they will be shutting down pages with generic location names.

NBC Connecticut reached out to Andrew Noyes, manager of Public Policy Communications for Facebook. 

"We want to make it easy for people to connect with different parts of their local city governments. Since there are many organizations that make up a city, we have asked Page administrators to designate their specific department (e.g. travel/tourism bureau, mayor's office)," Noyes said by e-mail.



 

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