The ethics of administering neighbourhood social media pages

Social media platforms, particularly Facebook, facilitate neighbourhood networking through pages and groups created for discussion about local issues. Around Australia, for example, many suburbs, towns and remote communities have Facebook pages and groups dedicated to neighbourhood networking. 

Without exception, all of these have been created by people who've taken the initiative to start these groups where (perhaps) none existed before, and continue to be administered by these people and others who've volunteered to taken on the mantle of triaging requests to join the group and moderating discussions among members. 

Effectively, these volunteers, who are performing a community service without receiving any remuneration for their work, become the de facto regulators of neighbourhood public sphere interaction. 

Because social media can now be the only space where communities exchange information about local needs, issues, events and happenings (from the mundane to the extraordinary), the volunteers who take on the role of running community discussion groups and pages effectively become the self-appointed regulators of communication between people who live in a particular locality. 

In fact, they become the self-appointed gatekeepers of both access to information (as it becomes their prerogative to accept or decline requests to join the group) and the moderators of public conversation. 

Therefore, the individual and collective preferences, beliefs and (inevitably) prejudices of these self-selected gatekeepers come to determine what transpires for public discussion about neighbourhood needs and experiences - their considered choices, collective decisions and whims effectively shape public discussion. 

In this public sphere, first-mover advantage is crucial, as there is no requirement to establish any locus standi to create these groups in the name of the neighbourhood or locality. Once created, people flock to the group when they search for relevant information about their locality and find that there is a community group available. 

Once created, if there is disaffection or disadvantage, disaffected or disadvantaged members of the community will find it hard to go elsewhere - once a group gathers momentum, people will continue to flock to it and it will be nearly impossible (if not unwise) to create splinter groups. 

So, we currently have a laissez-faire system for the creation and regulation of neighbourhood public spheres on the social media platforms that are most commonly used by people, primarily Facebook. In this system, the rules are determined by these first-movers. Should their decisions and actions be prejudicial to certain people, there is very little accountability that can be expected. 

At the same time, we have councils, cadres of paid officials and elected councillors whose job it is to provide services to their local area. Theirs is a legislated and highly regulated role. They are also responsible for sharing information about local issues, which they do on their own social media pages and websites. Very rarely are these council-run social media pages the prime locus of community discussion. 

Given the sheer scale of community engagement on neighbourhood networking groups on social media and the unquestionable and inescapable dominance of these non-council public spheres, I wonder if responsibility for the administration and regulation of these groups should pass on to local councils? 

This would make social media neighbourhood networking a part of local council bureaucracy, which might not be an appealing prospect to many people. But it would also take the role of regulating public conversation about locality-related issues away from volunteers and self-appointed gatekeepers and vest it in the hands of paid officials in councils with responsibility for providing community services. 

These councils could then be held responsible for their decisions and actions through the normal channels of government, which may or may not work effectively, depending on the place. 

I wonder if this would be a better system. Or worse. 

Because, at the moment, once a social media neighbourhood group or page becomes popular enough, it becomes the definitive neighbourhood public sphere. And the job of keeping the space going is left in the hands of a selected few, with future changes in rules, etiquette and sharing of moderation responsibility entirely dependent on these people and at their discretion. 

Importantly, it is worth recognising that facilitating neighbourhood communication and networking should be considered a public service. Councils charge local residents for the provision of community services. Should this service also be added to the list of other community services for which councils are responsible? 

At the moment, we rely on volunteers to keep community groups and pages running. These volunteers do it out of a desire to perform a public service. In many regional towns and remote communities, there is only one person who runs the local community group on Facebook - just one admin. 

As we are still in the first two decades of social media use, we are yet to see how these administration rights over community groups will be transferred from time to time, generation to generation.