I. RECOMMENDATION:
This item was requested as a Future Agenda Item by Councilman Adkisson.
Staff does not recommend streaming to Facebook Live. Staff recommends streaming to YouTube Live instead.
II. BACKGROUND:
Staff has been directed by City Council to investigate streaming to Facebook Live.
III. DISCUSSION:
This past year, the Council Chambers saw a significant upgrade to its Audio/Video infrastructure. As part of this, the framework for streaming media to any platform was made possible. Zoom meetings are essentially streaming to a limited audience. Streaming to any other service is essentially the same. The only difference being the necessity for a connection to be made to the preferred platform. In the case of City Council, all of the audio and video is collected and coordinated via Open Broadcasting Software (OBS), and then sent from OBS to whichever platform with a simple “Stream Key”. All of this work has already been completed. Meetings are already recorded from OBS and uploaded to YouTube generally a few days after the meeting.
This essentially boils the conversation down to which platform do we want to stream our media to. Facebook vs YouTube. Both have remarkably similar capabilities and features. However, in the case of Facebook, comments cannot be disabled. This generates an issue where a moderator would be required to monitor the chat constantly. Controls to slow the chat could be set, and filters to remove the ability to use certain words could be used, and a “chat bot” is a likely possibility to control much of it. However, things will still slip through the cracks, and as such human monitoring will almost certainly be a necessity. Also, after the meeting is finished live streaming, people could still comment causing the City Manager or Assistant City Manager to continuously log in to delete comments from the Facebook page as it is one-way communication only.
This may also give the false perception to viewers that their questions and/or comments posed on Facebook would be acknowledged.
YouTube has the ability to remove the chat and comments features outright. Additionally, this is already home to much of our City Council meetings. All of the branding, video organization is complete. The process to move to YouTube Live would take minutes.
IV. ALTERNATIVES:
1. Stream to Facebook Live and create a chat moderation plan (not recommended).
2. Stream to YouTube Live
3. Continue to use Zoom Webinar
V. FISCAL IMPACT:
None. |