Guidance on not linking to social media is inconsistent with GOV.UK

[matteason]

Related documentation

Help users to contact a department or service team

Suggestion

The current guidance contains the following:

If you have social media channels:

• list these channels last
• do not include a link to the social media sites you’re using - read more about this in GOV.UK’s external linking policy
• tell users not to share personal information with you

The example given is:

You can use Twitter to get general help. We cannot discuss specific cases or individual applications, so please do not give any personal details.

Twitter: @‍GOVUK

I don't think omitting links to social media is the best thing for the user, because:

• it means they need to memorise the handle to search for it on the social media platform, which may be more difficult for those with short-term memory issues
• it increases friction, especially for users of assistive technology
• it increases the risk of the user finding the wrong profile if they misremember the handle, make a typo or the search results aren't as expected - this could mean they find fraudulent profiles instead

The guidance implies that linking to social media profiles is forbidden by the GOV.UK external link policy, but almost every ministerial department on GOV.UK links to social media on their homepage, for example for MOD:

[CharlotteDowns]

Hi @matteason,

Thanks for raising this. I'm not familiar enough with how government departments use social media as a whole but my thoughts would be that anything published on the social media channel should also be visible on GOV.UK pages.

I've started a conversation with my team about this and we'll see what improvements we can feed into the guidance.

[matteason]

Thanks @CharlotteDowns. This is in the context of using social media as a contact/support channel so it's not necessarily about informational content that should hopefully also be included on GOV.UK - for example DVLA reply to enquiries on Twitter as a matter of course. In my mind, not linking to the account is akin to not making an email address a link - it's fine but not ideal and it's more error-prone