Scotland’s Grand Lodge Axed Social Media — Were They Right?

A fraternity built on discretion opened a Facebook page. It went about as well as you’d expect.

The Grand Lodge of Scotland — the governing body for Craft Freemasonry north of the border — has pulled the plug on its social media accounts. Twitter, Facebook, all of it: binned. Or, as their curator Robert Cooper more diplomatically put it, “put on hold pending review.”

The accounts had been part of a publicity drive launched roughly five years earlier, an attempt to modernise the organisation’s image and attract new members. On paper, it made sense. Freemasonry had spent decades battling misconceptions — handshake conspiracies, shadowy power brokers, all the tired clichés. A social media presence seemed like a reasonable way to show the public that Freemasons are, for the most part, ordinary men doing charitable work and enjoying a shared tradition.

But somewhere along the line, it went wrong.

What Actually Happened

According to Cooper, the problem wasn’t the official accounts themselves. It was the members. “As with any organisation there are internal private discussions that shouldn’t be aired in public,” he said. “Unfortunately, some of our members are doing that.”

The specifics are telling. Members were posting on Facebook asking things like, “What do you think about what the Grand Lodge are proposing?” — effectively turning internal policy debates into public spectacles. Worse still, some brethren were being identified as Freemasons online without their consent. That last point matters more than most people realise.

Discretion is baked into the Masonic tradition. It’s not about secrecy in the way tabloids like to suggest. It’s about trust. When a man joins a lodge, there’s an implicit understanding that his membership is his own business to share or not. Having that choice taken away by a well-meaning brother with a Facebook account isn’t transparency — it’s a breach of confidence.

Was Social Media Diluting the Experience?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth that very few Masonic commentators want to say out loud: social media is fundamentally at odds with what makes Freemasonry work.

The lodge room is the experience. The ritual, the atmosphere, the face-to-face connection between men who’ve committed to something together — that’s where the value lives. You cannot reduce a third-degree ceremony to a tweet. You cannot convey the weight of an obligation in an Instagram story. The minute you start trying to package that experience for public consumption, you strip it of the very thing that makes it meaningful.

And when internal debates spill onto public platforms, they don’t look like healthy governance to outsiders. They look like dysfunction. The average person scrolling past a heated Facebook thread about Grand Lodge policy doesn’t understand the context, the tradition, or the process behind those discussions. They just see a group of men arguing in public about an organisation most people already find baffling.

The Counterargument

All that said, it’s worth noting that the United Grand Lodge of England has maintained its social media presence without imploding. The Masonic Charitable Foundation uses platforms effectively to promote its work — millions of pounds distributed to causes ranging from medical research to disaster relief. Scottish lodges themselves have individual pages that function perfectly well.

So the problem isn’t social media as a tool. The problem is the absence of rules governing how members use it.

Compare it to any professional organisation. Law firms have social media policies. The NHS has social media policies. Even the local cricket club probably has guidelines about what you can and can’t post. The Grand Lodge of Scotland launched public-facing accounts without, it seems, establishing clear boundaries for what constitutes appropriate online conduct from its members. That’s not a technology problem. That’s a management problem.

The BBC Got It Right

The irony is that the Grand Lodge had already demonstrated how to open up to the public on its own terms. When they allowed cameras inside for the BBC documentary The Craft, the result was controlled, curated, and largely positive. The production team worked within agreed boundaries. The story was told with context. Members who appeared did so voluntarily.

That’s the model. Professional, boundaried engagement with the public — not an open free-for-all where any brother with a smartphone can broadcast internal business to the world.

What Should Have Happened

Rather than axing social media entirely, the Grand Lodge of Scotland needed a social media policy. Something that made clear:

• Internal discussions stay internal. Full stop.
• No member is to be identified as a Freemason online without their explicit consent.
• Official accounts are managed by trained communications staff, not volunteers with good intentions and no media training.
• Breaches carry consequences — just as they would in any regulated profession.

None of this is revolutionary. It’s basic organisational hygiene. And it would have allowed the Grand Lodge to keep the benefits of a public presence — recruitment, myth-busting, showcasing charitable work — without the chaos.

The Real Lesson

Pulling the accounts was the easy option. It stopped the bleeding, but it didn’t treat the wound. The underlying issues — members who don’t understand the boundary between lodge business and public discourse, a lack of formal communications governance — remain entirely unresolved.

The Grand Lodge of Scotland didn’t have a social media problem. It had a governance problem. Social media just made it visible.

And if the review currently underway doesn’t result in a proper policy framework before the accounts come back online, they’ll be right back where they started — staring at Facebook, wondering who’s posted what now.

Related reading: Understanding Freemasonry: An Honest Beginner’s Guide From Inside the Lodge · Stop The Bleed Kits- Volunteers Needed!!