Community Guidelines
Welcome to mastodon.acerbo.me. This server exists to support thoughtful conversation, high-signal sharing, and a respectful environment. These guidelines explain what we expect from participants and how moderation works.
1. Core Principles
- Respect: Treat people as humans. Disagree without demeaning.
- Signal over noise: Prefer substance, context, and originality over spam and engagement bait.
- Safety: This is not a place for harassment, doxxing, threats, or intimidation.
- Good faith: Assume misunderstandings before malice. Don’t weaponize reporting.
2. What’s Not Allowed
Content or behavior that may result in removal, suspension, or a ban includes:
- Harassment or hate: Hate speech, slurs, dehumanization, targeted harassment, dogpiling, stalking.
- Doxxing: Sharing private personal information (addresses, phone numbers, private identities, etc.).
- Threats and incitement: Threats of violence or encouragement of harm.
- Non-consensual content: Sexual content involving minors, or any non-consensual sexual imagery (immediate ban).
- Illegal content: Content that violates applicable law or facilitates wrongdoing.
- Spam and manipulation: Mass-following, follow-churn, repetitive promotion, scams, phishing, coordinated inauthentic behavior.
- Impersonation: Pretending to be someone else in a deceptive way (parody is fine if clearly labeled).
- Malware / exploits: Attempts to compromise accounts, services, or users.
3. Sensitive Content and Content Warnings
Use Content Warnings (CW) and the “sensitive media” toggle when posting content that could reasonably surprise or disturb others. Examples include:
- Graphic injury, gore, or explicit violence
- Sexual content or nudity
- Extreme cruelty, abuse, or self-harm discussion
- Highly distressing imagery
When in doubt, add a CW with a short, neutral label (e.g. “Violence”, “NSFW”, “Medical”, “Spoilers”).
4. Misinformation and Harmful Claims
Debate is allowed. Deception is not. Don’t knowingly spread false information, falsified documents, or manipulated media presented as real, especially where it can cause harm.
- If something is speculative, label it as speculation.
- If sharing breaking news, provide context and avoid definitive claims without evidence.
- Medical and financial claims should be framed responsibly and not as professional advice.
5. Federation, Remote Servers, and Boundaries
Mastodon is federated. That means posts and media can travel to other servers and be stored there. We may limit or suspend federation with other instances that repeatedly enable abuse, harassment, or spam.
You are responsible for who you interact with and for reviewing the servers your followers belong to if you post followers-only content.
6. Moderation Approach
We aim to be fair, consistent, and proportionate. Moderation actions may include:
- Content removal
- Content warning / visibility adjustments
- Temporary account limitations
- Suspension or permanent bans
- Domain blocks / federation limits for abusive instances
Decisions may consider context, patterns of behavior, impact on others, and whether the account acts in good faith. Severe violations (e.g. doxxing, credible threats, non-consensual sexual content) may lead to immediate removal.
7. Reporting and Appeals
If you encounter behavior that violates these guidelines, use the built-in reporting tools. Reports should be factual and include relevant context.
If you believe a moderation action was incorrect, you may appeal by contacting the server admins via the About page. Provide:
- Your account handle
- What happened (briefly)
- Why you believe the decision should be reconsidered
- Any relevant links or timestamps
8. Best Practices
- Be legible: Add context, summarize links, and avoid quote-tweet-style dunking.
- Respect consent: Ask before posting identifiable images of others in sensitive contexts.
- Tag responsibly: Don’t hijack trending hashtags for unrelated promotion.
- Rate-limit yourself: Avoid flooding timelines. Thread long posts when needed.
9. Contact
Administrative and moderation contact details are available on the About page.
By using this server, you agree to follow these guidelines. We reserve the right to update these rules to protect the community.