{"id":85674,"date":"2026-10-22T17:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T21:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=85674"},"modified":"2026-10-22T17:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T21:02:24","slug":"why-polk-county-just-banned-all-facebook-comments-and-why-critics-are-furious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/10\/22\/why-polk-county-just-banned-all-facebook-comments-and-why-critics-are-furious\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Polk County Just Banned All Facebook Comments\u2014And Why Critics Are Furious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By <strong>CCN Florida<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fighting misinformation or silencing taxpayers? Polk County commissioners voted unanimously to disable public comments across 21 county-managed social media channels. Officials say it&#8217;s about stopping misinformation and online attacks, but critics call it another blow to government transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Should government officials be able to shut down public feedback?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"POLK COUNTY SILENCES FACEBOOK COMMENTS!\" width=\"563\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xr_oQHMHEws?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CCN Florida Fighting misinformation or silencing taxpayers? Polk County commissioners voted unanimously to disable public comments across 21 county-managed social media channels. Officials say it&#8217;s about stopping misinformation and&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvbGFrZWxhbmRnYXpldHRlLmluZm9cL25ld3NcL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcL3VwbG9hZHNcLzIwMjZcLzEwXC9kb3dubG9hZC01LndlYnAiLCJ0eHQiOiJXaHkgUG9sayBDb3VudHkgSnVzdCBCYW5uZWQgQWxsIEZhY2Vib29rIENvbW1lbnRzXHUyMDE0QW5kIFdoeSBDcml0aWNzIEFyZSBGdXJpb3VzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJkb2lzIiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.OG9hFBtxGoQHZ8NB9VRxj-Tonl2EpsOaN6gR2eXDABEMQ"},"version":2,"media_source":"sig","attached_media":[{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/jetpack.com\/redirect\/?source=sigenerate&query=t%3DeyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvbGFrZWxhbmRnYXpldHRlLmluZm9cL25ld3NcL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcL3VwbG9hZHNcLzIwMjZcLzEwXC9kb3dubG9hZC01LndlYnAiLCJ0eHQiOiJXaHkgUG9sayBDb3VudHkgSnVzdCBCYW5uZWQgQWxsIEZhY2Vib29rIENvbW1lbnRzXHUyMDE0QW5kIFdoeSBDcml0aWNzIEFyZSBGdXJpb3VzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJkb2lzIiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.OG9hFBtxGoQHZ8NB9VRxj-Tonl2EpsOaN6gR2eXDABEMQ","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[18431,15306,15636,15298,18301,18433,18285],"class_list":["post-85674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-facebook-comments","tag-first-amendment","tag-government-transparency","tag-local-government","tag-misinformation","tag-public-feedback","tag-social-media-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85677,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85674\/revisions\/85677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}