The Hawk Eye Des Moines County may stop allowing comments on any county-operated Facebook pages rather than deal with the headaches that come with running the platform. "If it is informational, we do not need to have comments," county attorney Lisa Schaefer said Wednesday during a meeting with county supervisors and department heads regarding portions of the county's new employee handbook. If a government entity operates a platform that allows for open comments, it is considered to be an open forum in which members of the public can express their opinions. When it comes to social media use, government officials still are required to abide by the First Amendment just as they would in any public forum. This imposes a number of restrictions on government pages including that the government cannot remove comments unless they clearly are not protected by free speech, such as direct threats.