Tennessee Town Passes Policy Banning Negative Comments About The Town's Government

The commissioners of a small Tennessee town have just voted to ban negative comments about it from social media. This stupid move was prompted by "criticism and lies" being posted online, which supposedly "hampered" the town's government from performing its duties.

South Pittsburg City is a town of 3,000. This fact will limit the damage done by its city commissioners' new policy (which passed with 4-1 vote), but only because the town itself is tiny.The ban, however, is super-broad. (via Ben Swann and BRACE YOURSELF for always-awesome AUTOPLAY)

It applies to all city elected representatives, appointed board members, employees, volunteers, vendors, contractors and anyone associated with the town in an official capacity who uses social networks. The policy says those persons can't post anything negative about the city, its employees or other associates.
Examples include posted videos, blogs, online forum discussions, Facebook and Twitter, Commissioner Jeff Powers said.

Now, it's obvious that this ban violates the First Amendment rights of everyone involved. It's obvious to the lone dissenting voter, Paul Don King. It's not so obvious to the rest of the commissioners, who have offered a variety of terrible defenses the new policy.
Commissioner Jeff Powers:

"It seems like every few meetings we're having to address something that's been on Facebook and created negative publicity," he said. "This is just an industry standard nowadays."

Oh, lord. Have you ever heard of such a slight inconvenience? "Every few meetings." Sounds exhausting. If he thinks it's a drag dealing with negative comments periodically, just wait until he has to actively police social media for violators.
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