Albany City Commission yanks live streaming of meetings from Facebook
File Photo: Alan Mauldin
By Alan Mauldin
[email protected]
ALBANY — To FB, or not to FB, that was the question for Albany City Commission members on Tuesday on the future of live streaming their meetings.
The Facebook social media platform has drawn comments from commissioners concerned about the, well, comments that users have been posting.
The only solution to eliminating erroneous, vulgar and negative comments would be having city information technology staff monitor the comments prior to their posting, according to city staff.
In a 5-2 vote, the commission went with a recommendation to instead continue broadcasting meetings on local access Channel 16 and to use the BoxCast service to provide live streaming of city meetings.
The public will be able to access the meetings directly from the city’s website.
Over the years, the commission has gone back and forth between broadcasting meetings, and the arrival of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 was when the move was made to provide live streaming. Since the virus hit, social distancing restrictions have limited the seating in the meeting chambers, and several commissioners also routinely participate remotely instead of attending in person.
BoxCast also offers bonuses such as storage of video for future viewing by the public and for city record-keeping purposes, Information Technology Director John Dawson told commissioners during the meeting.
“It allows us to be transparent and to address some of the concerns commissioners expressed during the last meeting,” he said.
The service also is more mobile than the current video configuration, which mostly limits recording to the commission chambers, he said. With BoxCast meetings can be recorded and broadcast relatively easily from other locations, Dawson said.
Facebook does not offer the option of disabling comments, but staff could monitor them before they are posted.
Commissioner Demetrius Young, who voted against the change along with Commissioner Jon Howard, said the public has grown used to accessing meetings through Facebook.
“Facebook is the platform of choice for streaming, for access for the vast majority of the public,” Young said during a Wednesday telephone interview. “I don’t think it’s a good move to move to another platform because we have a couple of people making negative comments.”
The move is akin to moving meetings from the Government Center to another location to avoid comments from the public, he said.
“I don’t think that’s fair or the right solution to the potential problem,” Young said.
The issue is not so much negative comments but the spreading of misinformation that comes with unfiltered remarks being made on Facebook, Commissioner Chad Warbington said. Residents are able to communicate with commissioners with their concerns, but the idea behind providing meetings online is to give the public the opportunity for viewing.
“Our responsibility as elected leaders is to be open and transparent and broadcast our meetings,” he said during a telephone interview on Wednesday. “I don’t want anybody to use our meetings for (spreading) misinformation.”
In addition, with the BoxCast system, the city will own its own video, whereas Facebook is the owner of video broadcast on its platform, he said. Having city staff monitor and delete inappropriate comments before they are posted also is not a good use of their time.
“What I’m excited about is we have a great platform,” Warbington said. “It can be accessed by any media. We should broadcast our meetings without staff having to monitor comments. Most, if not all, cities are now doing that.”
The comments posted on Facebook provided a negative image of the community to people living outside Albany, and with the meetings being available on television and online through the city’s website, the public still has the opportunity to watch, Commissioner B.J. Fletcher said.
“I think what was concerning a lot of commissioners were the nasty comments,” she said during a telephone interview. “That was the whole mindset. The negative comments were killing our community. We’re big boys and girls, but it’s another thing when you put out blatant misstatements.
“This needed to be done. We had talked about it for quite a while.”
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