This document lays out our ground rules for participation in the SFBA community. We have designed these policies to create a space that is safe for all community members. Our goal is to be welcoming and inclusive to as many Bay Area residents as possible. This is a living document, and the SFBA team will amend it as necessary.
This is not a document that lists the rules for the purpose of litigating whether or not a rule applies, and our team will address gray areas as they arise. This document is to provide insight into the values that drive moderation decisions.
Goals
- Provide a safe and welcoming community for discussing San Francisco Bay Area activities, news, events, and experiences.
- Provide a venue for both casual and serious conversation, with the ability for users to opt out of unwanted content.
- A place for fun! We aim to foster a community of individuals and business that love the SFBA. We welcome personal posts, event notices and organizing.
Non-Goals
While SFBA aims to be welcoming and inclusive, it’s important to understand what SFBA is not. SFBA is not:
- A “free speech” zone. We encourage genuine conversation, even with disagreement, but we do not tolerate all forms of speech. Everyone on this instance is a peer. We do not tolerate hate speech of any kind.
- A place for commercial advertisement (with certain exceptions for Bay Area businesses and organizations). Promoting your original work is welcome, but do not post paid advertisements. Personal reviews or recommendations by individuals are also welcome.
If you’re looking for either of the above, check out instances.social or joinmastodon to find a server that is a better fit for your needs.
What Action Can I Take?
Our moderators enforce server policies to limit bad behavior. Please help us protect the community by reporting content that violates server rules. You can help us by adding relevant context in your report!
You also have many options available to curate your own timeline.
- Mute accounts you don’t want to see content from, but you’re okay with them seeing yours.
- Block accounts you don’t want to see you.
- Disable notifications from accounts that don’t follow you.
These tools help you address specific accounts. Mastodon also provides several unique tools for broader curation of your timeline.
- Hide instances that produce content you would rather not see.
- Filter keywords or hashtags, so you can hide content that contains text you don’t want to see.
Rules for All Posts
All posts (public and private) should abide by the following rules:
- Do not use slurs or racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory or hateful jokes or language; or promote white supremacy, anti-Semitism, transphobia, casteist, or other hateful ideologies.
- Do not post content that is illegal in the USA or California. This includes unlicensed media. We will remove copyrighted content in response to a valid DMCA notice per our policy.
- Do not harass anyone, participate in group harassment of anyone, or otherwise engage in name calling or personal attacks.
- Do not post or threaten to post other people’s personally identifying information (“doxxing”).
- Do not tone police.
- Do not post spam.
- Do not “shitpost” hateful content – while humorous posts are allowed, even encouraged, “shitposting” is not an exception to rules 1 or 3. There are no ironic slurs.
- Do not sell or promote cryptocurrencies or NFTs.
- Do not litigate moderation decisions on the timeline. You can direct message @moderators with concerns.
- Make your post accessible to those using screen readers. Use CamelCase (#ThisIsHowToDoIt) for multi-word hashtags and add alt-text to images.
- Mark content that contains nudity, gore, violence, etc. as sensitive and clearly label it with a content warning and/or hashtag.
- Be nice and have fun!
Activism is a welcome part of our community, and has been foundational to the development of the SFBA region. We encourage organizing and sharing opportunities for civic engagement.
With these rules, the SFBA team aims to be as complete and clear as possible about what content is allowed and what is encouraged on SFBA sites. Because neither the full range nor all the nuance of human interaction can be described in a short list, there will be times where the rules are not clear or do not apply. When that happens, the moderators apply their best judgment, looking to the spirit of the rules and our goals for the SFBA community.
If you think we need a new rule, please send a direct message to @moderators with your concerns.
After a Report
When our moderators receive a report, we will investigate to understand the context of the account being reported and the interactions that led up to the report. If our team decides that the content goes against our Code of Conduct, we will take corrective action.
If you disagree with or do not understand a moderation decision, you can file an appeal using the link in the email you receive. Appeals abide by a few rules:
- Be respectful. If your appeal is disrespectful, it’s unlikely to be approved.
- You will not be assessed by the same moderator twice. Appeals will be assessed by a different moderator than the one that took corrective action.
This policy was last updated December 8, 2024.