Code of Conduct

This document lays out the ground rules for participating in the Mastodon.Coffee community. It is intended to protect all members of our community from harassment and to ensure that our community is as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This is a working document, so the Mastodon.Coffee team may amend this CoC to better meet these goals in the future.

The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of Mastodon.Coffee; they are here to provide you with an insight into our content moderation policies:

1. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:
   1. Excessive advertising
   2. Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources
   3. Untagged nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions
   4. Untagged gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions
   5. Fake news, anti-vaccination spam
2. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:
   1. Racism or advocation of racism
   2. Sexism or advocation of sexism
   3. Casteism or advocation of casteism
   4. Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocation thereof
   5. Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism
3. The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:
   1. Sexual depictions of children
   2. Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism
   3. Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism
4. Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other users, or to impede other users from utilizing the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other users, or to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service. This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviors:
   1. Continuing to engage in conversation with a user that has specifically has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.
   2. Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person’s demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxing or dropping dox) may be considered harassment.
   3. Inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.

These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user’s access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law.

Goals

• Provide a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or other similar characteristic.
• Create a supportive community, where people freely share their passions and are excited and positive about each other’s successes.
• Provide a venue for casual conversations.

Non-Goals

While it’s important to know what Mastodon.Coffee is, it’s just as important to understand what we’re not. Mastodon.Coffee is not:

• A free speech zone. Mastodon.Coffee is a community with specific — and high — standards of behaviour. If you would like to exercise your full free speech rights, you can do so somewhere else; while on Mastodon.Coffee, you should agree to follow the community rules set out in this CoC.
• An advocacy space. There are many important, controversial and political issues; and advocating for what you believe is important. However, Mastodon.Coffee is not the place for that advocacy. Even correct views can violate our CoC.

Reporting Violations

If you notice a toot that violates this code of conduct, please report it. It is easy to assume that someone else has already reported a toot, but it is easy for everyone to feel that way and no one to report the toot.

Catch-all

The moderation team will always take a pragmatic approach to every report they receive - if they feel that a problematic Toot isn’t explicitly called out in this CoC, yet is inappropriate for Mastodon.Coffee, the Toot will likely be removed and the member will be dealt with appropriately.

Cross-posting

“Cross-posting” is the automatic copying of posts from one platform to another. That definition does not include the simultaneous posting to multiple platforms from the same app, such as Twidere or PostyBirb. If you use those apps, we consider those posts original, and the following need not apply.

Cross-posting from Mastodon to other platforms is fully permitted. Cross-posting into Mastodon from another platform is permitted under the following terms:

1. The posts do not include platform-specific references, e.g. talking about “here” meaning Twitter, or including text from other non-Mastodon users verbatim (e.g. cross-posted quote tweets)
2. The account is at least semi-regularly monitored by the author, so that interactions from Mastodon users are not ignored
3. The account being cross-posted is owned by the same person. Third-party copying of content is not permitted

Terms of Service

What information do we collect?

• Basic account information : If you register on this server, you may be asked to enter a username, an e-mail address and a password. You may also enter additional profile information such as a display name and biography, and upload a profile picture and header image. The username, display name, biography, profile picture and header image are always listed publicly.
• Posts, following and other public information : The list of people you follow is listed publicly, the same is true for your followers. When you submit a message, the date and time is stored as well as the application you submitted the message from. Messages may contain media attachments, such as pictures and videos. Public and unlisted posts are available publicly. When you feature a post on your profile, that is also publicly available information. Your posts are delivered to your followers, in some cases it means they are delivered to different servers and copies are stored there. When you delete posts, this is likewise delivered to your followers. The action of reblogging or favouriting another post is always public.
• Direct and followers-only posts : All posts are stored and processed on the server. Followers-only posts are delivered to your followers and users who are mentioned in them, and direct posts are delivered only to users mentioned in them. In some cases it means they are delivered to different servers and copies are stored there. We make a good faith effort to limit the access to those posts only to authorized persons, but other servers may fail to do so. Therefore it’s important to review servers your followers belong to. You may toggle an option to approve and reject new followers manually in the settings. Please keep in mind that the operators of the server and any receiving server may view such messages , and that recipients may screenshot, copy or otherwise re-share them. Do not share any dangerous information over Mastodon.
• IPs and other metadata : When you log in, we record the IP address you log in from, as well as the name of your browser application. All the logged in sessions are available for your review and revocation in the settings. The latest IP address used is stored for up to 12 months. We also may retain server logs which include the IP address of every request to our server.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in the following ways:

• To provide the core functionality of Mastodon. You can only interact with other people’s content and post your own content when you are logged in. For example, you may follow other people to view their combined posts in your own personalized home timeline.
• To aid moderation of the community, for example comparing your IP address with other known ones to determine ban evasion or other violations.
• The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications about other people interacting with your content or sending you messages, and to respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information. Among other things, your browser session, as well as the traffic between your applications and the API, are secured with SSL, and your password is hashed using a strong one-way algorithm. You may enable two-factor authentication to further secure access to your account.

What is our data retention policy?

We will make a good faith effort to:

• Retain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server, in so far as such logs are kept, no more than 90 days.
• Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users no more than 12 months.

You can request and download an archive of your content, including your posts, media attachments, profile picture, and header image.

You may irreversibly delete your account at any time.

Do we use cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety.

Your public content may be downloaded by other servers in the network. Your public and followers-only posts are delivered to the servers where your followers reside, and direct messages are delivered to the servers of the recipients, in so far as those followers or recipients reside on a different server than this.

When you authorize an application to use your account, depending on the scope of permissions you approve, it may access your public profile information, your following list, your followers, your lists, all your posts, and your favourites. Applications can never access your e-mail address or password.

Site usage by children

If this server is in the EU or the EEA: Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 16 years old. If you are under the age of 16, per the requirements of the GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation ) do not use this site.

If this server is in the USA: Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old. If you are under the age of 13, per the requirements of COPPA ( Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ) do not use this site.

Law requirements can be different if this server is in another jurisdiction.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

This document is CC-BY-SA. It was last updated March 7, 2018.

Originally adapted from the Discourse privacy policy .