MD State Delegate Not “Following” New Twitter Rules
New rules passed by the Maryland Board of Elections last month, requiring campaigns to put disclosures on Facebook and Twitter profiles including display ads, came to a screeching halt by State Delagate Mike Smigiel.
“I’m not sure what the purpose was of the new regulations or what their effect is going to be,” said Smigiel as mentioned by Clickz.com. “I want to make sure we don’t have any unintended consequences. I want to make sure that it’s not an infringement on our freedoms or a precedent for something else.”
Campaigns would already be finding ways to comply unless Smigiel had not called a public hearing on the new regulations.
It seems like the Election Board didn’t have a problem with it, with all members voting unanimously to put the laws in place. Not only will campaigns be required to place disclosures on Facebook and Twitter profiles (including any social media accounts), all activity must be archived as well.
These new proposals were brought on by an emergency meeting from the Board of Elections. Even though Smigiel has expressed concern with the regulations, Board of Elections staff claims representatives from Google, Facebook, AOL, and Yahoo were present at the recent meeting.
He has also made it clear citizens are not in any danger if the laws do not go into effect immediately and that the rules will not stop false accounts from popping up.
Smiegiel is correct.
Even with all of the regulations on “traditional” forms of advertising, it hasn’t stopped malicious content from taking over a campaign…even impersonators claiming to represent the candidate.
However, as Facebook and Twitter start playing a larger rule as part of the campaign landscape…most state election boards will adopt some type of rules to regulate them.
Smiegiel also pointed out: “It appears that too often efforts are made to curtail the use of media that is less expensive and easier to apply,” he said.
Basically, smaller campaigns could be hurt worse by these regulations since social advertising is relatively free (despite labor and maintenance costs of course).
The Delegate, who has over 2,400 friends on Facebook, is ready for a public discussion on the issue when another hearing is set for July 20th.
Public Disclosure: until the meeting, we’ll be following his Tweets and status updates.
Also, I reached out to Delegate Smigiel’s office hoping for a quick sit down to discuss this issue even further. Of course, we’ll update you on how it goes.
As always, I hope you found something informative from this post…..and I’d love to hear your feedback. Shoot me a comment – and we’ll get a public discussion of our own going.
You can view the proposed regulations below
