Facebook marks a listing of UG government meeting times in Wyandotte Daily as ‘sexual solicitation’

A funny thing happened on the way to the virtual office

Opinion column

by Mary Rupert, Editor

Facebook last night marked the listing of UG government meeting times on the Wyandotte Daily page Monday as “sexual solicitation” and commented to the Wyandotte Daily that the meeting notice was a violation of their standards.

There was nothing sexual in the content, however, according to Wyandotte Daily Editor Mary Rupert. Facebook on Monday night did not let residents here see the link to the times and topics of the upcoming meetings, but they are on the Wyandotte Daily page at www.wyandottedaily.com.

The meetings were already started or over with at the time Facebook pulled the link to the story, except the Planning Commission meeting was still going on at 9 p.m. when Rupert checked the link to see what they were doing. The audio for this planning commission Zoom meeting didn’t work on the Rupert computer, so we won’t know for a while, until it comes out on YouTube, exactly what they said at that meeting. The bad technology prevented us from covering the meeting right away.

Rupert saw a Facebook note on Tuesday with this misclassification of violating their rules and filled out a form saying she disagreed with their decision that it was a violation. Although they said there was an opportunity for us to tell them why it wasn’t, they also said there was no one available to discuss this decision. There was no phone number given to call and no email to send to.

Within an hour or so of the disagreement with their determination, Facebook came back with an answer that it had changed its mind and now was restoring the post on Facebook.

Here is the text of Monday’s story whose link was deleted temporarily by Facebook. “Tonight” in this story refers to Monday’s meetings:

UG committees to meet tonight
Two Unified Government committees plan to meet tonight. In addition, the Board of Zoning Appeals and City Planning Commission will meet tonight.
The meetings are available to watch on YouTube, Zoom, UGTV cable channels and in person at City Hall.
The Public Works and Safety meeting at 5 p.m. Monday will be followed by the Administration and Human Services Committee meeting.

UG Public Works Committee

Agenda includes active assailant training drills; winter weather operations updates; and five-year capital maintenance and improvement program.

UG Administration and Human Services Committee

Resolution of support for increasing the base salary of sworn sheriff’s office employees; grant for reconnecting communities planning.

Planning Commission
Planning Commission information is at http://public.wycokck.org/sites/planning-agendas-minutes-staffreports/Agendas/November%202022%20CPC%20Agenda.pdf.

Rupert watched the UG standing committee meetings and said, believe me, they were nothing like “sexual solicitation.” She is not asking the UG to change anything or their style of those meetings.

Rupert asked readers not to rely solely on Facebook to see anything new that it posted in Wyandotte Daily, but also to check the Wyandotte Daily website at www.wyandottedaily.com for new information.

Facebook has been a great help to link our readers to new content, but we want to warn our readers that Facebook may remove that link on its own site, affecting your ability to follow the news. That’s why you should keep going to www.wyandottedaily.com to check the website. Facebook does not have any control over our WyandotteDaily.com website — we have our own editor. We have been monitoring our content for more years than they have, since we have been in existence longer, and we never printed sexual solicitations.

When we had technological issues in the past with our website, we were able to post on Facebook some of the content we couldn’t post yet on our own website, and that will probably continue. It was wonderful that we could do that as a stopgap. However, just letting you know that there could be stories posted on our website that are not linked on Facebook, for these above reasons. Facebook has no editorial control over the content on our Wyandotte Daily website.

If you disagree with something you see on the Wyandotte Daily website, you may send an email to Rupert at [email protected].

Another topic, thanks to Tony Warden

Thanks, Tony Warden, for your kind words in noticing when I am out for illness. Yes, I missed a few days of editing recently when I had to visit the hospital to work on cancer issues. Bonner people are very observant.

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].