`Zoombombing' of meetings must be halted

Technology has opened the doors of local council and board meetings so people can participate from the comfort of their homes.

They don't have to drive to city hall, find a parking space and wait around — sometimes for hours — until their item comes up on the agenda.

That technology was added to local civic meetings as a result of the pandemic's socialdistancing restrictions that shut down in-person meetings, replacing them with Zoom sessions.

Its advantages have not come without disadvantages.

Online participants can be anywhere the web connects them, lacking any assurance that they stand behind their comments using their real names.

The opportunity to comment over the internet, instead of standing in person at a meeting, has led some to use it to spread their hate-fueled racist and antisemitic rhetoric.

As town hall meetings have gone virtual, it has opened the door to what is a sad abuse of the privilege people have to express their opinions.

Such incidents have been reported at a variety of council and board meetings around the county.

During a recent Tiburon Town Council meeting, when addressing Tiburon's climate plan, one online speaker started out rejecting the science of climate change and then segued to deny the existence of the Holocaust. Another laced his comments with slurs and threatened violence against Jews.

These speakers weren't standing in the meeting hall. The names and addresses they gave are highly suspect.

They used the town's public platform to spread their hateful propaganda.

Would they say the same thing if they didn't have the cover of hiding behind their remote connection?

The question facing local officials is how much of this they should be playing host to? How much should they make the public endure and how much should they themselves have to sit through?

How do we curtail this virtual hate-fueled hijacking of a public meeting without trampling on the rights that we all share and want to protect?

The goal of this “Zoombombing” is to spread hate. Former Assemblyman Marc Levine, who is now regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, says such intrusive commentary “are coordinated attacks by these extremists to peddle in hate and stoke fear.”

The Mill Valley City Council has curtailed live video participation. Instead, it welcomes online participants, inviting the public to submit email comments that are screened and read by the meeting's clerk.

Such policies need to make sure that these comments are available to the council and the public before decisions are reached, not just added to the record after the meeting.

The presumption should be that most of the comments are relevant to the business that's being deliberated and those expressing their opinions or raising questions are local residents.

Mill Valley's goal is not wrongheaded. Keeping public dialogue civil, respectful, accessible and on-point benefits all.

As a news outlet, we are longstanding champions of free speech and a free press. But we also have professional standards regarding what we will and won't print or present online.

Comments should be appropriate to the forum.

The Zoombombing of hatefueled diatribes has no place at public meetings.

There is always going to be someone who can't abide by commonsense and respectful objectives. They have the right to free speech, but does this precious right also mean they can spew their message whenever and wherever they want? We don't think so.

These days they have plenty of other platforms, those that cater to their disturbing opinions and those that exercise only minimal control over their content.

It also is mind-boggling that they choose to spend their time intruding on council and board meetings given how few people watch them.