Our social media guidelines

The Essential Services Commission has a social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube to provide information about our work and engage with the community.

Community standards

It is important that our online environments are safe, respectful and constructive places, and remain welcoming and useful to the community. We will not tolerate disrespectful, offensive, crude, hateful or irrelevant comments, or comments that make another person feel unsafe.

We will delete comments that are:

• discriminatory, potentially defamatory, false or misleading, racist, off-topic, inflammatory, repetitive, offensive or otherwise inappropriate
• disrespectful to another person or makes them feel unsafe
• commercial content, advertisements or spam
• campaigning for a product, service, cause or initiative
• unlawful, including language and materials that infringe the privacy, intellectual property or legal rights of others.

If you post or comment material that we consider is inappropriate, we may also:

• suspend or permanently block you from posting on our social media channels
• report your conduct to the relevant social media platform and to any appropriate law enforcement authorities
• take legal action where appropriate.

The views, opinions, and information expressed in user-generated comments or posts remain with the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Essential Services Commission or our employees. The Essential Services Commission is not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of information posted by other users.

We encourage you to refer to the Meta Community Standards, LinkedIn Professional Community Policies and YouTube Community Guidelines for further guidance on respectful interactions.

Record keeping

The Essential Services Commission is required to maintain a public record of all activity on its social media accounts pursuant to the Public Records Act 1973. Please be advised that should you choose to engage with the commission’s social media accounts, your name, purpose of the message, date and time may be retained as a public record. For more information on the privacy requirements for record keeping, please visit the Public Record Office Victoria’s website.

Moderation

Our social media channels are monitored Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm AEST excluding public holidays.

We aim to respond to enquiries within 48 hours, excluding weekends and public holidays. Sometimes we might require a longer time frame to provide you with a definitive response if it requires further investigation. We will still aim to respond within the 48-hour time frame to let you know if this is the case. If your query relates to an individual circumstance, we may not be able to respond due to privacy or other laws.

Complaints

You can make a social media complaint by emailing communication@esc.vic.gov.au if you see anything on commission managed social media accounts that you think is: 

• inappropriate
• potentially defamatory
• doesn’t meet our social media guidelines. 

What happens once a social media complaint is made

If you make a social media complaint, we will evaluate if the content/comment meets our social media guidelines and make a decision as soon as possible. During this process, we may need to reach out to you for more information. 

If you provide your name and contact details, we will acknowledge your communication within 10 working days to tell you how we will address your feedback or complaint. If the complaint can be resolved immediately we will confirm this in our response. If the complaint requires a staged resolution process, we will notify you and keep you informed about the process.

Once a decision has been made, we will notify you of the outcome. 

We can accept anonymous complaints if enough information about the complaint is provided.

Your complaint will be recorded securely in our system.

Our complaint process is confidential and secure. No confidential information is shared, and your privacy is protected. 

All community members and stakeholders are treated with courtesy and respect. 

If you are unhappy with the outcome of this process, you may make a complaint to the Victorian Ombudsman. 

Last updated: 25 September 2025