[RFC][Discussion] Social Media and Marketing Communications Policy

> On Mon, May 18, 2026, at 10:09 AM, Roman Pronskiy wrote: > > Hi internals, > > > > I'd like to start a discussion on an RFC proposing a formal policy for > > PHP's official social media presence and marketing communications. > > > > RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/social-media-policy > > Policy PR: https://github.com/php/policies/pull/32 > > > > The proposal addresses three gaps in current practice: > > > > 1. Custodianship of credentials for official accounts is not formally > > defined, with no documented succession procedures. > > > > 2. There is no documented process for content decisions on official > > channels — what gets posted, by whom, and under what authority. > > > > 3. There is no framework for deciding which platforms PHP should > > maintain presence on, leading to platform-by-platform ad-hoc > > decisions. > > > > The policy text itself lives in the php/policies repo (PR linked > > above). The wiki RFC is a wrapper proposing its adoption. Inline > > comments on specific policy text are welcome on the PR. > > > > The proposal reflects feedback already received on the previous draft. > > Further feedback is welcome. > > > > -Roman > > For the record, I do support greater clarity and process around this > topic, so I welcome this RFC. However, I do have concerns with it in its > present form: > > As I noted in a comment (before realizing I should likely post here > instead): Saying "not political" is a trap. In the current environment, > not being political is simply not an option, because so many things have > become politicized. Simply whose name we mention can be political, for > reasons noted in the comment there. > > Similarly, the presented guidelines make no allowance for values-based > selection of target platforms. While it would be lovely to say that we're > neutral, the platforms aren't. I reiterate my previous question: Would you > (general you) be OK with PHP having an account on Truth Social? Or on the > Daily Caller forums? Or 8chan? > > To be blunt, if your answer to that is "yes" then I don't want you in my > project. Any claim of "neutrality" needs to be moderated to allow avoiding > platforms whose values directly contradict ours. The exact line for that > can be somewhat squishy and contextual, but that allowance MUST be in there. > > Regarding membership, there's 2 issues: > > 1. The social media team is completely self-regulating. That means it > operates without accountability. At bare minimum there needs to be some > way for the project as a whole to kick someone out, whether by RFC or some > other mechanism. (Eg, if catturd2 tried to join, I certainly hope most of > us would be opposed to that.) > > 2. The infrastructure team is completely undefined. Is the Infra team's > membership defined and regulated and documented elsewhere at present? If > so, it should be linked. If not, that's a prerequisite for this policy > doc, because we are giving formal authority to a committee that doesn't > technically exist. That's not cool. Infra having a tighter membership > policy than Social Media makes total sense; it does not need to operate the > same way. But its operation needs to be defined somehow. > > --Larry Garfield >

> > As I noted in a comment (before realizing I should likely post here instead): Saying "not political" is a trap. In the current environment, not being political is simply not an option, because so many things have become politicized. Simply whose name we mention can be political, for reasons noted in the comment there.

> Similarly, the presented guidelines make no allowance for values-based selection of target platforms. While it would be lovely to say that we're neutral, the platforms aren't. I reiterate my previous question: Would you (general you) be OK with PHP having an account on Truth Social? Or on the Daily Caller forums? Or 8chan?

> 1. The social media team is completely self-regulating. That means it operates without accountability. At bare minimum there needs to be some way for the project as a whole to kick someone out, whether by RFC or some other mechanism. (Eg, if catturd2 tried to join, I certainly hope most of us would be opposed to that.)

> 2. The infrastructure team is completely undefined. Is the Infra team's membership defined and regulated and documented elsewhere at present? If so, it should be linked. If not, that's a prerequisite for this policy doc, because we are giving formal authority to a committee that doesn't technically exist. That's not cool. Infra having a tighter membership policy than Social Media makes total sense; it does not need to operate the same way. But its operation needs to be defined somehow.