Hoboken Council To Introduce $500 Fine For Social Media Blocking

HOBOKEN, NJ — Three members of the Hoboken City Council on Tuesday said they'll introduce an ordinance at Wednesday night's council meeting to stop Hoboken elected officials from blocking people from their social media accounts.

The meeting can be viewed on Zoom starting at 7 p.m. using this link: https://zoom.us/j/91884761006?pwd=WEdwTG4yZ0ZPRytCQ1NvcWgxVi9hdz09

or on Facebook Live using this link.

The three council members sent out a press release Tuesday morning saying the ordinance will impose up to a $500 fine for each individual whom the elected official blocks on social media feeds including Facebook and Twitter.

But who is this really about?

The release said the members supporting the ordinance, Phil Cohen, Michael Russo, and Emily Jabbour, "[Drafted] the ordinance after receiving complaints from residents who for years have been blocked on Twitter and Facebook by Councilmember Mike DeFusco."

A Hoboken mayoral election looms exactly six months from this week, and Mayor Ravi Bhalla is up for re-election. DeFusco opposed him in the last race four years ago. Cohen and Jabbour are allied with Bhalla.

When asked why the council decided to bring the matter up now, since the release noted that it's happened for years, Cohen said that the matter reached a "tipping point" when people questioned why DeFusco rented out his Airbnb condo 23 times and traveled to COVID hotspots. READ MORE: Hoboken Councilman Rented Out Airbnb Unit 23 Times

Cohen said the ordinance would not apply to an account used "purely" for personal posts. "For a purely personal account, there would be no issue with blocking someone," he said.

But the line may sometimes get blurred, as the city does not issue council members social media accounts or provide city-run staff for the pages, and the members create their own.

In a recent case involving the Maine governor's Facebook page, "The governor's official state website linked to the Facebook page until July 2017, when the ACLU sent LePage a letter demanding he stop deleting comments," according to a news account. "The governor's office had referred news outlets to the Facebook page, which in 2017 featured video addresses from LePage during the three-day government shutdown."

The proposed Hoboken ordinance says, "A public official’s social media presence need not be an official account controlled by the city, but instead may be a social media presence owned and operated entirely by the public official.”

Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher, who is allied with DeFusco, called the measure "an incredible overreach of local government."

The measure also notes, "The public official’s social media presence must utilize the online social media platform for purposes of engaging in official duties and engagement with the public in order to fall within this chapter."

Trolls and 'targeted harassment'

The ordinance makes an exception for an unfortunate situation that arises on social media often, particularly in Hoboken elections: "except in the instance of targeted harassment as specified by the respective social media platform."

TAPinto noted that "Hoboken’s social media landscape is famously choked with politically connected bots and burner accounts," referring to this past story in hMag.

DeFusco said Tuesday that political opponents have, in the past, used his page "to post false, personal attacks against me." He said he has since unblocked accounts he had blocked before, but "I reserve the right to delete posts that violate the comment policy posted publicly on my Facebook page. Social media can be an incredibly toxic place and I hope that my opponents can be more mindful of the importance of keeping discussions about local politics and government civil and informative."

DeFusco said, "My social media is not taxpayer funded and has nothing to do with city business, and I use it to connect with my constituents and inform them about important things happening in Hoboken."

DeFusco noted recently that he has formed a committee to explore running for mayor.

The three council members' press release noted, "Numerous court decisions have affirmed that elected officials are infringing on the First Amendment rights of their constituents by prohibiting free speech on social media feeds, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Eighth Circuit, along with several other courts. In a recent friend of the court brief to the Fourth Circuit, the ACLU stated: 'When a government actor bans critics from speaking in a forum, it silences and chills dissent, warps the public conversation, and skews public perception. When only critics are blocked from viewing information or petitioning the government for services, the restriction operates as a punishment for holding political viewpoints that the government actor disfavors.' ”

A CBS story about the ordinance quoted a former resident who was blocked.

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