One constant about working in public policy is that many people work on various aspects of putting together research, highlighting principles, cross-referencing other statutes, incorporating model language, and talking to different stakeholders to hammer out the best language for a piece of legislation or policy.

You need additional voices and talented legal minds to envision what laws are needed and which are superfluous and amount to nothing but fluff.

In all my years of doing this at various levels of government in a few countries on dozens of topics, I have never once even flirted with the hair-brained idea of posting a bill on social media with the logo of my organization on it and rallying “it’s mine”. It’s an ethical line that most don’t cross because they understand the more finite points of politics.

This is such a demeaning approach that not only begets lies, but it invites scandal for lawmakers, invites easy court challenges, and creates yet more incentives to exaggerate or unethically take credit when none is due for pure social signaling (that’s really just noise).

When social media influencers are taken seriously as policy operators rather than 🚨 hype men, it’s laying the groundwork for inevitable backfiring.