community guidelines

last modified august 16, 2024

thanks for using cohost! we ask everyone who uses cohost to follow a few rules to keep the site a healthy place to share stuff you care about.

if you think you can resolve a problem you’re having with someone’s behavior without getting the site staff involved, we encourage you to. this obviously saves us work, which we appreciate — but, more importantly, early interventions from someone’s friends and acquaintances are way more likely to actually fix someone’s bad behavior than letting it fester until we need to step in. that said, please get in touch with us if you think it’s something you can’t deal with.

violations of these guidelines can be reported to site staff by clicking the report button on any post, comment, or profile. the report button is located within the menu represented by three dots next to the post, comment, or profile in question. we highly encourage you to use this reporting system, but if you need to contact us about something else, you can do so at https://help.antisoftware.club

site staff reserves the right to take whatever action deemed necessary if these guidelines are violated, including but not limited to: warnings, temporary suspension, and site bans. all potential violations are manually reviewed by a human being; we do not use any automated systems to take disciplinary action, although we may use automated tooling to help detect certain violations.

all enforcement decisions can be appealed by replying to the enforcement notice, which you will receive at the email you have listed in your account.

we reserve the right to amend these guidelines in the future, and we will provide you with notice when we do. conversely, behaviors which are not listed herein are not necessarily endorsed by the staff; we reserve the right to address misbehavior or abuse which is not covered by this list.

abuse and harassment

• do not post hateful or violent rhetoric directed toward any group of people on the basis of race, ethnic or national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.
• do not abuse, harass, or threaten others.
  • do not attempt to contact someone who has taken action to stop you from contacting them, either on or off site.
  • do not intentionally refer to another person with incorrect pronouns or a former name/deadname.
• some users may suffer from photosensitive epilepsy. we encourage everyone to use cohost’s content warning system to hide media with large flashing areas behind a click-through. to be clear, do not post flashing images or video intending to trigger people’s epilepsy “as a joke”; it can cause serious and permanent injury.

privacy

• do not disclose the private information of a person without their consent, particularly (but not limited to) sensitive information like physical addresses, unlisted contact information, and government IDs.
• do not share intimate photos or videos of a person that were taken without their consent.
  • this includes adult content edited to appear to feature a different person (e.g. ”deepfakes”).
• do not impersonate others in a manner that is intended to, or does, mislead, confuse, or deceive others.
• do not publish or link to content intended to damage or disrupt another person’s computer or compromise their privacy, such as malware.

site integrity

• do not sell access to the site in unintended ways:
  • do not “username squat”: register accounts or pages under names you think will be worth money, then sell them.
• do not intentionally try to interfere with the operation of cohost itself. if you suspect cohost has a technical issue that could cause problems, please get in contact with us at support@cohost.org and we’ll work with you to get it fixed; we can’t afford a flashy big-dollar-value bug bounty program yet, but we’re happy to pay you to work as a consultant for your assistance in fixing severe issues.
• do not evade bans, or otherwise create multiple accounts or pages in an attempt to circumvent the moderation actions of site staff.

other prohibited content

• do not post content which is illegal in the United States, or use cohost to conduct or facilitate illegal activities.
  • child sexual abuse material is illegal, morally repugnant, and banned from cohost. we will fully cooperate with law enforcement in prosecuting anyone who posts it.
    • “child sexual abuse material” refers to realistic depictions of human minors, either actual photographs/videos, or visual art difficult to distinguish from actual photographs/videos
    • this also includes non-explicit depictions which are obviously intended to be sexual. (e.g. creepshots, underage “fashion modeling”, etc)
• do not post content that actively glorifies or promotes self-harm, terrorism, or human trafficking.
• do not post misleading content that would be likely to cause physical harm
  • for example, do not post harmful misinformation relating to the covid-19 pandemic
• do not post content that interferes with the integrity of local, regional, or national public office elections. this includes content designed to intentionally suppress, intimidate, or confuse voters.
• do not post spam, including but not limited to:
  • repeatedly following users or sharing or liking their posts in order to pester them with notifications;
  • posting large numbers of unwanted mentions or comments on other users’ posts;
  • posting low value content which contains off-site links in an attempt to improve their search engine result ranking;
  • posting sponsored content without disclosing that you are receiving promotional consideration;
  • using an account or page largely to post solicitations to join referral marketing programs, make-money-from-home schemes, multi-level marketing, Ponzi schemes, or the like. we consider pretty much everything going on with cryptocurrency to be in this class of schemes, and uncritically promoting it is a violation of site policy.
• we are required by the DMCA to receive and process reports of copyright infringement from rightsholders and remove it upon a valid report. users who post content removed pursuant to a DMCA report can appeal it. you can find more information about our DMCA policies in our terms of service.

ai-generated content

you are allowed to post content produced by “off the shelf” generative models (”AI-generated” content) to cohost, however, there are additional restrictions you must follow.

• if the entirety of your post is AI-generated, the post must be tagged as “AI-generated”;
• if your post only contains some AI-generated content, it must contain a disclaimer before the AI-generated content. the “AI-generated” tag is recommended.

additionally, you may not:

• post AI-generated content intended to mislead someone or spread misinformation;
  • e.g., an AI-generated voice clip mimicking an important political figure saying the Navy Seal copypasta would be fine. an AI-generated voice clip of an important political figure discussing a war would not.
• post AI-generated pornography depicting real or living persons;
• create a page solely to post AI-generated content;
• solicit donations or payment for AI-generated content.

18+ content

we consider the following things to be 18+ content which should only be accessible to users 18 and over:

• pornography or nudity, either photographic or drawn;
• other material which depicts or describes sexual acts in explicit detail.

for the purposes of this policy, we refer to content which isn’t 18+ content as all-ages.

please do not post 18+ content in the following places:

• all-ages posts;
• comments on all-ages posts;
• your page’s profile picture or header image, even if it is marked as an 18+ content page. this content shows up in all-ages contexts.

registered users who are under the age of 18 are unable to see posts which are marked 18+ content; unregistered users must attest that they're over the age of 18 before viewing it. users over the age of 18 can also choose to hide 18+ content behind a click-through by default, to prevent it from unexpectedly appearing on their screen in public. if you often post 18+ content from a particular page, you can set it as an 18+ content page to have its new posts marked as 18+ content by default to avoid mistakes; even so, you can still mark individual posts from that page as all-ages.

fictional 18+ content featuring minors

• do not post photography or photorealistic depictions of minors
  • as described above, photography and photorealistic sexual depictions of human minors are illegal, morally repugnant, and banned from cohost. please refer to that section (under “other prohibited content”) for full details.
• do not post sexually explicit non-photorealistic visual art of characters who are apparently minors.
  • we will not be using third-party evidence (i.e. fan wikis) when determining if a character depicted is a minor.
  • non-explicit art with suggestive themes is allowed with a mandatory content warning
• written material is generally permitted with a mandatory content warning, barring two major restrictions:
  • do not post written fiction involving real people (i.e. RPF) who are minors or depicted as minors.
    • this does not apply to content written in a documentary capacity (e.g. describing personal experiences) however these instances must include a content warning
  • do not post anything encouraging, glorifying, or advocating sex between adults and minors.

content warnings

cohost allows for creators to provide content warnings for posts containing sensitive content.

for most sensitive content, content warnings are optional but strongly recommended. the staff reserves the right to add or modify content warnings on posts without them, but in most cases we won’t lock or ban you for forgetting them.

sensitive content includes but is not limited to:

• depictions of graphic violence or self-harm;
• depictions of sexual violence of all kinds;
• depictions of explicit racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or other bigotry in a documentary capacity (actually espousing these beliefs is prohibited);
• depictions of abuse, particularly of children or animals;
• depictions of drug use and abuse; descriptions of self-harm, suicide, or suicide baiting (telling people to commit suicide) in a documentary capacity;
• gross-out or shock content. a good rule of thumb is to not post without a content warning something that you or your friends wouldn’t appreciate seeing without a heads-up first.

however, there is a list of content warnings that we consider to be mandatory (”mandatory content warnings”) on posts which are described by them; the site automatically behaves differently for these in the following ways:

• posts with mandatory content warnings will only be hidden from general tag search results. these posts appear as normal on the poster’s profile, as well as on your stream if you follow them.
• for example: posts tagged with the mandatory content warning “noncon” will not appear in search results for #fanart but will appear in direct tag searches for #noncon.

the list of mandatory content warnings can be found on our support site.

if your post calls for any content warning included in this list, you MUST include a content warning. if you accidentally forget to include a mandatory content warning, we’ll go in and add it for you and remind you to be more careful. however, repeatedly failing to add mandatory content warnings, or intentionally attempting to circumvent the site filters (”n0nc0n”), is entirely prohibited and punishable with a ban.

behaviors to avoid

we discourage you from taking these actions, but once-off doing so does not necessarily warrant an instant warning or punishment. Repeated or severe violations will still be dealt with accordingly.

• posting or reposting other people’s content without attribution.
  • if the content you want to share is already on cohost, please use the built-in share feature to boost it instead of reposting it.
  • if it’s not, make sure you link back to an original source. if the creator asks you to remove your post, change where you’re linking, or anything else, you should listen to them.
  • IMPORTANT TO NOTE: if your page is built around unsourced posting, we may ban you.
• sharing the content of private conversations with someone’s identity attached without a good reason.
  • it’s okay to call out really harmful behavior; it’s okay to laugh at something weird someone said if you post it without a name attached; it’s okay to anonymously amplify your friends’ good jokes from their alt pages. but please use discretion.
• trying to downplay bad behavior with “it’s just a joke” when said behavior was not even a little bit funny. we reserve the right to determine what “funny” is.

missing stair policy

there is value in being in the same place as everyone, but this value quickly diminishes when assholes crash the party.

in addition to the guidelines above, cohost reserves the right to remove anyone for reasons outside the rules under certain conditions. You may be banned from cohost if you are frequently reported for or found to be shitstirring, getting into arguments, or otherwise being routinely unpleasant to others.

this doesn’t mean you can’t get into an argument, say a snide remark, or get fired up about something. it does mean that if it becomes a habit you may face consequences. at first, we will offer warnings. actions taken will escalate from there if insufficient.

we still encourage you to use first-line responses, such as blocking, if someone is being disruptive. however, if you believe another user is demonstrating a pattern of being a pain in the ass, please send in a report.

it is not our intention to excessively police the tone of users, nor ignore the context in which things are said. when someone speaks out against injustice or wrongdoing, broadly or specifically, it is common for people to retaliate by attacking that person’s tone. as such, any policy seeking to root out assholes can be easily weaponized against marginalized people. applications of this policy will be context-dependent judgment calls with this in mind; we will take both the context of the conversation and the broader dynamics at play into account.

if you have questions about anything listed here, please email us at support@cohost.org and we’ll do our best to help!