Social Media Community Guidelines

The Health Research Board operates four social media channels – Youtube, X, Bluesky and LinkedIn – to inform the public and our stakeholders about our mission to improve health and solve societal challenges through excellent research, data and evidence.

We make every effort to ensure our social media channels are safe and informative spaces to view, share and comment on content. To that end, anyone using our social media channels is subject to our community guidelines.

These require users to show courtesy and respect by ensuring posts are legal, non-discriminatory, do not have a commercial aim and are within commonly held boundaries of good taste.

By engaging on HRB social media channels, users agree to these conditions.

• These guidelines apply to comments and content, including shared content, which:
• Could reasonably be perceived as defamatory, discriminatory, obscene, demeaning, offensive, threatening, abusive or harassing
• Promotes discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, political belief, disability, sexual orientation or age
• Promotes or contains sexually explicit material or violence
• Discloses sensitive, private or confidential information about another person or enterprise
• Contains spam or is deceptive for a commercial, vexatious or illegal purpose
• Constitutes commercial advertising or promotes a commercial purpose
• Clearly breaches copyright or other intellectual property rights
• Contains viruses or programmes that could damage devices
• Contains references to criminal or illegal activity
• Breaches the terms of any of the social media platforms we use

The HRB will hide or delete comments and block if necessary, any user who does not follow these guidelines. We will also send any posts required by law – or in our view, that may break the law – to the authorities for investigation.

Any user of our social media channels who wants to query any steps taken by the HRB to enforce these guidelines can email communications@hrb.ie.

We hope all users recognise the HRB’s responsibility to adopt these guidelines and for users to follow them.