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A lewd, antisemitic profile image popped up on the Zoom screen during the Atherton Town Council meeting Sept. 20. A few seconds passed before the offensive graphic was noticed and taken down.
But then, call after call came in, laced with racist or homophobic remarks. One caller dropped the N-word, and some blasted out profanities.
Similar hate-laden speech via Zoom jolted recent city council and other public meetings in Redwood City, San Carlos, Pacifica and elsewhere.
The spate of so-called Zoom bombings – part of a nationwide trolling campaign by extremists – has local municipalities wrangling with how to counter the derogatory disruptions while still allowing public comments and freedom of expression as protected by state and federal laws.
Atherton, for instance, plans to tighten up Zoom participation, but Redwood City has decided to suspend taking virtual real-time comments.
“Yes, we are taking numerous steps toward meeting management to mitigate what happened,” Atherton City Manager George Rodericks told this news publication in an email. “We do have to provide an opportunity for public comment, but we can manage how we provide it.”
Zoom participants at an Atherton meeting will no longer be able “to unmute themselves, share screens or independently change their login name,” Rodericks said. “All participants joining the meeting will be automatically muted.”
Other safeguards are disabling the chat feature and not allowing participants to go directly into the main-meeting discussion, he said.
He noted that at the last meeting, the council ended taking public comments through Zoom earlier than expected because of all the insensitive remarks coming in and required those who still wanted to address the town to email their thoughts to the clerk. The council could do that again if the Zoom attacks continue.
“We retain the option to remove participants or suspend them,” Rodericks added.
Atherton is also collaborating with other jurisdictions to put together best practices that address Zoom bombing, he said.
For now, Redwood City is dispensing with Zoom comments all together. The community will still be able to view and hear council meetings on Zoom but not be allowed to comment through the video-conferencing platform. Instead, the city will take comments in person during meetings or by email.
If the email comment is sent by 5 p.m. on the day of the meeting, pertains to an agenda item or is a general remark on matters under the city’s jurisdiction, it will be read out loud.
“Many public agencies in our region have had meetings disrupted with hate speech in recent weeks,” Redwood City Mayor Jeff Gee said in a news release. “Vile comments and images were displayed by those participating by Zoom. To ensure the city can continue to conduct the city’s business in a manner that allows all residents to participate, we are modifying our public-comment procedures now through December. We will reevaluate our procedures in January 2024.”
But such a change in how people are allowed to comment has raised concerns of possible censorship and limiting public participation.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinions, good or bad, regardless of our own personal views, biases or prejudices,” Redwood City resident Cary Bloomquist said in an email to the city.
“It’s truly discouraging to read, via email, our rights (as) taxpaying citizens are being infringed upon via censorship of messages received on a public platform. All messages should be heard and shared when presented in a public forum. Anything else is discriminative and repressive by definition.”
Addressing the Redwood City council face-to-face during Monday’s meeting, resident Rona Gundrum argued that the change in commenting procedure puts an undue burden on people by restricting how they can relay their views and the speed in which they can do it.
But another Redwood City resident applauded the city’s decision to suspend Zoom comments.
“Restricting real-time commenting is not free-speech suppression,” Nick Chiochios said in his email to the city. “One only has to do it through proper channels.”
The rights-advocacy group First Amendment Coalition pointed out on its website that it is critical to differentiate between what is indeed “unlawful and disruptive” and what could be protected speech.
The coalition noted that a public meeting using Zoom, for instance, can’t exclude participants based on their viewpoint even if it comes in the form of heckling.
On its website, the freedom-rights organization American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) maintained that the First Amendment protects someone’s right to express his or her opinion even though it may be unpopular.
However, the ACLU said, this right doesn’t cover libel, slander, obscenity or what’s called a true threat, which is speech that intimidates someone or a group into believing serious bodily harm or death will occur.
The rash of the antisemitic and other bigoted views spewed on Zoom during municipal meetings lately appeared to have been timed around the major Jewish celebrations of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur last month.
Such cases, however, have been going on for a while across the country since local governments turned to video conferencing amid the pandemic to conduct public discourse safely and continued to provide that technology as another option for people to follow or participate in meetings.
In August, the anti-hate organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a spike “in antisemitic speech and trolling efforts at public forums such as city council, county board and state house committee meetings.”
Extremist groups are taking advantage of “the public comment portion of these events, especially those with the option to call in virtually, to push antisemitic, white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ narratives,” the ADL said.
Michelle Iracheta contributed to this report.