Becoming “Facebook official” has meant something to teens, tweens and twenty-somthings for a long time now. But it wasn’t until two weeks ago that it started meaning something for elected officials and municipalities in Pennsylvania.

That’s when the state’s Office of Open Records issued a final ruling that sets an important precedent: public officials’ Facebook pages are public records in Pennsylvania.

The ruling came on an appeal from a Chambersburg woman who claims the mayor, Darren Brown, altered comments on posts to his Facebook page and subsequently refused a formal request for copies of the original material.

On one hand, managing online comments isn’t such a big deal. News outlets, including The Butler Eagle, regularly police the comment sections on their websites and social media pages. Every company’s standards are slightly different, but in general comments that include vulgar language, racism, or calls for violence are either summarily deleted or hidden from public view.

That’s not the same thing as what Brown has been accused of doing — namely, intentionally curating posts and the comment section of his Facebook page to alter the record of public opinion and debate over a controversial mural that had been proposed for a borough-owned retaining wall.

When a pro-mural advocate filed an official records request to get copies of the original, unaltered pages and comments, she was denied by borough officials, who claimed that the mayor’s page was his personal Facebook account and wasn’t covered by the state’s Right-To-Know law.

That is, of course, patently ridiculous.

Not only was Brown’s Facebook page linked on the borough’s website, it was created and controlled by an elected official and trafficked in borough business and public debate while providing a, online forum for people’s opinions.

All of which the state’s Office of Open Records noted in its decision granting access not only to the Facebook posts and comment sections, but to any direct messages Brown sent via Facebook Messenger about the mural.

Chambersburg officials might well decide to appeal OOR’s decision, but it’s hard to imagine them prevailing in what seems to be a very clear-cut matter. And the bigger question now is how wide-ranging this right of public access to records on social media should be.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of municipalities in Pennsylvania have so-called “mayor’s forum” Facebook pages or other groups — some public, some private — that are either run exclusively by or with help from elected officials. They create these pages themselves or participate as one of a group of administrators with authority to close discussions and delete or hide posts and comments.

Should these groups be subject to RTK requests?

Should it be acceptable for elected officials to create or help run online forums which aren’t open to all members of the public?

What about officials’ own social media accounts, where they have the ability to delete posts and comments, ban them entirely, and restrict access to information and images the public can see?

The simplest answer to these questions comes from the state’s Right-To-Know Law, which states that its overarching goal is to “ ... prohibit secrets, scrutinize the actions of public officials and make public officials accountable for their actions.”

In other words: Yes; no; and they should be open and unaltered forums for respectful debate and comments dealing with matters of public interest.

That’s the role each public official signed up for when they put their name on an election ballot or accepted an appointment to fill a vacant position.

Social media already gives public officials enormous power to communicate directly with the public and each other with little or no oversight. The public is left to take it mostly on faith that officials aren’t improperly discussing public business in direct messages, altering or stifling public debate by blocking the accounts of those who disagree with them, or operating through smurf accounts using false names.

This has resulted in some elected officials doing basically whatever they want on social media — whether that’s spreading “fake news” or censoring critics — with little accountability. To make matters worse, many officials — especially those who serve in smaller municipal governments — appear to believe they should be considered private citizens on social media.

This state of affairs cries out for a formal remedy, and OOR took a vital step in issuing its final ruling in the Chambersburg matter. But more needs to be done.

It’s clear that many elected officials either still don’t grasp what’s expected of them when it comes to social media, or are willfully exploiting the lack of a uniform code of online conduct.