Census Bureau Social Media Channels Comment Policy

The purpose of the Census Bureau’s Web 2.0 presence that includes social media channels is to engage residents from across all walks of life in an online platform where they can learn about and share their important topics regarding Census Bureau programs and services. 

Census Bureau Blog(s), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media channels allow visitors to interact with the agency and others, and encourage visitors to freely comment and give welcomed feedback.  We encourage your comments. Your ideas and concerns are important to us because we want you as an active participant in our programs and to be well informed about how the Census Bureau’s work gets done.

Visitor-generated comments made on any and all Census Bureau social media channels become public domain.

We also want to publish your comments, but we expect conversations to follow the conventions of polite discourse. Therefore, we moderate social media; meaning that all comments are reviewed before we post them.  In our review process, we try to remove any objectionable content.

Objectionable content includes but is not limited to:

• Abusive or vulgar language
• Offensive or threatening language
• Personal attacks of any kind against any individual or group
• Spam
• Links to any site
• Off-topic statements
• Advertising and/or other endorsements about products, businesses, individuals, or parties
• Any comment with specific allegations of misconduct will be removed and referred to the appropriate authorities.
• We will not post any comment that contains personally identifiable information (PII):

Your privacy is important to the Census Bureau, and we make every effort to ensure your privacy under Title 13 and other applicable laws (See the Census Bureau’s Privacy Policy for more information).  We ask that you also protect your own privacy by not including any personally identifiable information within your comments.

Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, persons under the age of 13 years old are not allowed to submit questions or comments. 

We recognize that the Web is a 24/7 medium and your comments are welcome at any time. However, given the need to manage federal resources, moderating and posting of comments submitted after hours or on weekends/holidays will be posted as early as early as possible the next regular business day.

Reporters are asked to send any comments or questions to the Census Bureau’s Public Information Office through their normal channels and to refrain from submitting questions on our social media channels. Reporter questions will not be posted. 

For quick answers to questions related to receiving and filling out your census form, please visit our Question and Answer Center. Administrative questions will not be posted on this blog.

For official public statements and releases, please contact the Public Information Office. 

This comment policy may be updated at any time without notice at the discretion of the moderator, so check back for changes.

The Director of the Census Bureau Robert M. Groves will leave comments only under the name Dr. Robert M. Groves, BOC.

 We encourage you to share your comments with us.  If you have questions about the comment policy or how we apply it, please contact us.