Acrimonious social-media pile-ons can do much more than cause hurt feelings. On a personal level, at their worst, they result in court cases alleging slander and defamation.
They contribute little of a positive nature to public discourse.
Even more significantly, something larger is at play that threatens our very system of government and citizen involvement in civic matters: when an elected official uses social media to attack an identifiable public citizen and his business, it has a chilling effect on who participates in government.
The audience on social media matters.
Gallatin citizen and small business owner Randy Barrett is an outspoken critic of current City Hall policies on growth, high-density real estate development and lack of transparency in government.
He posts regularly under his own Facebook account, not his business account. He pulls no punches, but his comments are not personal attacks, they are criticisms of policies. His Facebook detractors, however, adhere to no such scruples.
Fair game, one could think, given the rough-and-tumble of social media. But when a detractor is a sitting councilman, and questions in not one, but three separate posts, “why (residents would) patronize Randy Barrett’s business, given his negativity,” it becomes something else.
When one citizen is publicly targeted by someone in authority holding elected office, other citizens and business owners are watching. They may decide that criticizing city hall is not worth the possibility that their own businesses, customers, employers or personal lives will become part of the political fight.
It is civic disengagement before actual retaliation ever has to occur.
This is self-censorship: it creates a citizenry that retains the formal right to speak under our Constitution but is less willing to exercise the right to free speech because it is perceived that detrimental personal or economic consequences will result.
Fewer people will seek public office; fewer still will ever stand up during public comment in public meetings and speak their minds. The cost is too high: their livelihood, their families, their dignity. Eventually they don’t even vote … because, why bother?
In 2022 in Newton Falls, Ohio, residents confronted the Newton Falls City Council with screenshots and complaints regarding Councilwoman Tesa Spietzer’s Facebook activity. A resident said the councilwoman had made derogatory comments about her, her family, other residents, businesspeople and the fire department. Spietzer’s resignation was called for.
Facebook conduct by a council member became a referendum on how the councilwoman perceived her constituents, and it was not a good look.
In 2025 in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., a private citizen criticized city government, and a councilman subsequently published a lengthy Facebook post attacking the citizen personally and shared it to a large community Facebook group. The citizen argued before the council for action, because he feared the councilman’s post would make other citizens reluctant to criticize their elected representatives.
Councilman Hakeem Brown was documented in 2022 in Vallejo, Calif., as responding to constituents who criticized him by sending, both in email and on Facebook, communications laced with profanity, personal attacks and sexualized insults.
These incidences illustrate the breakdown that occurs when an elected representative begins treating constituents as personal adversaries, rather than answering their political criticism.
And as in Barrett’s case, there is an important difference: if a business owner endorses a candidate or offers a criticism under his business’ name, that business itself has entered the political discussion. But if the business owner makes a negative comment under his own name, the business has not spoken: the citizen has spoken. And that speech is protected under our Constitution.
The broader question is not whether the councilman is likely to be on the losing end of a lawsuit for defamation, but what does every other business owner think, watching the Facebook melee?
The florist sees it; the restaurant owner sees it. The contractor who may need a city permit sees it. The “little guy” given lip service every day in “shop local” campaigns, starts thinking silence is safer than becoming the next target.
This November’s Gallatin city elections are a referendum on many things: high-density development and the disappearance of family farms and land that once characterized Gallatin as a close-knit community of people who looked out for each other, versus a bedroom community of commuters who do not even know their neighbors’ names.
This election is personal: it is about missing a child’s soccer game because of traffic; about strained city services and the possibility of older residents being taxed out of the homes they worked a lifetime to pay for.
This election is also about transparency in government, and the willingness to answer the hard questions with civility and concern for differing points of view.
Let’s all tone down the Facebook rhetoric, starting with elected officials. Twenty years ago that would not even have had to be said. Today, it must.
Ending citizen participation and healthy discourse is not always done at the point of a sword or a gun: sometimes all it takes is a vitriolic Facebook post threatening a business owner’s ability to put food on his table and meet his basic needs.
In today’s political climate, we have more to lose than friends and feelings. At stake is the free speech and citizen participation in government upon which our country was founded 250 years ago.
We have come too far to lose that now.
Donna Hartley Lucas is a published author, former investigative journalist, newspaper reporter and editor and tour creator/presenter at Gallatin Ghost Walk.