Bluffton scraps Facebook Live before first in-person meeting. How to watch, comment
The Town of Bluffton will no longer stream its public meetings on Facebook Live, the town announced Monday afternoon.
Instead, meetings will be broadcast live on Beaufort County’s County Channel streaming service. The move to scrap Facebook Live comes just one day before Bluffton’s first in-person council meeting since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the council will be meeting in the council chambers, the public is not permitted to attend Tuesday’s meeting, the town said.
Bluffton is now the second local government in the area to move away from Facebook’s streaming service during the pandemic. In October, Beaufort County Council Chair Joe Passiment abruptly canceled plans to stream county meetings on Facebook just moments before a council meeting began. He gave no public notice. The county’s decision was due to “derogatory” comments made about council members and staff, Passiment said.
At the time, Beaufort County was facing backlash on Facebook due to the council’s handling of its former administrator’s resignation and its COVID-19 face mask rules. Passiment’s decision fueled even more backlash.
That same week The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette reported that a small but vocal local group of COVID-19 mask mandate opponents had used Facebook’s streaming service to commandeer public comment and spam livestreams of local government meetings.
Bluffton’s news release did not say why the town was moving away from Facebook, nor why the public will not be allowed at the meeting.
For those wanting to watch Tuesday’s meeting, it will be broadcast on Hargray Channel 9 and 113 or on Spectrum Channel 1304. The meeting will also be streamed online at https://www.beaufortcountysc.gov/the-county-channel/live.html.
If members of the public want to make a comment, they must submit a request to the town up to two hours before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. meeting. Once the comment form is submitted, the requester will receive an email with instructions on how to call in to the meeting.
To request a public comment, visit https://www.townofbluffton.sc.gov/formcenter/town-15/public-comment-60.
This story was originally published May 10, 2021 at 6:50 PM.
