Follow @AusSocialAdmin for server news, status updates, planned downtimes, etc.

Follow @AusSocialMods for community news and server safety updates. Blocked instances will be announced there.

Admin Note

Hello new neighbour, and welcome to Aus.Social! This place is growing every day and I've found real community and value here. I hope you all have a great time.

Aus.Social is a "progressive" instance, and we recommend you read the rules to get an understanding of what that means to us. Good faith Comedy, humour, shitposting, memes and content is welcome here.

I will utilise my professional experience to secure our services, but Pwease no hacky 👉 👈 🥺

Any posts that punch down or break our rules will likely result in moderation action.

Eligibility

Aus Social is a community of people, not a billboard. We exist as a safe stable place for people to join and communicate with their friends and our greater community. We will not accept many brands and businesses that do not focus on community building.

We accept signups from any person aged 15 or older anywhere in the world; while our user base is primarily in the Australian (UTC+8 to UTC+11) time zones, we operate 24/7. We do not require or enforce English (Moderators may use automated translation to spot-check posts for adherence to our code of conduct). This server may host content that expresses sexuality, body positivity, and other adult themes. If this is of personal concern, we recommend joining another instance. (There are alternative instances, such as https://theblower.au that are safe for minors.)

Companies are not allowed

We do not accept companies and corporate brands here. These guidelines clarify our expectations:

Joe from Joe’s Plumbing is fine, Joe’s Plumbing is not. You may add links to a business you are connected to in your profile, just do not use your feed to regularly share ads.

Below is a small sample of accounts we will and will not accept. These are common examples which hopefully set the tone of our instance. Please contact us if you are unsure if this applies to you, and our team can review your request to join on a case-by-case basis.

Generally Not Allowed Accounts

We want to limit advertising, marketing, brands and promotion, while none of these are banned. In order to reach this goal, the administrator has banned a few kinds of accounts: - Corporations / Businesses - Retailers / Ecommerce - Newspapers and News Outlets - Mainstream Television Networks - Marketing, Advertising and Promotion - Political Parties (politicians or political figures are welcome) - Lobby Groups / Astroturf fronts

This is only for the businesses themselves. Workers of all stripes are welcome. There are other instances that welcome brands, and we’ll direct any accounts that break these guidelines to those instances.

Allowed

• Professionals
• People with a personal brand
• Politicians or Political figures
• Journalists, authors, writers
• Podcasts, Bands or entertainment groups
• Independent artists / Musicians / Performers
• Content Creators, Streamers, Youtubers
• Community spaces, HackerSpaces
• Social support and community organisations
• NFPs / NGOs and other humanitarian groups

Use your account to communicate and engage with the community, and don’t exclusively promote and advertise. You may take pride in and promote your personal work, but don’t use your account purely as a store front.

Bot accounts

Bot accounts (i.e., those with automated posting) are permitted on Aus Social, under these additional conditions:

• They must not post to the Local timeline (i.e., not Global, only Unlisted or Followers-only or DM)
• They must turn on the "This is a bot account" checkbox in their profile
• They must identify the bot owner in the bio
• They must not interact with other accounts unless those accounts have interacted with the bot first

User Code of Conduct (Rules)

The following types of content will be removed, which will result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:

Notice: List this will never be complete, and exists to set a tone. We will refine these rules over time.

• Any NSFW / 18+ content MUST have a content warning
• Registering accounts with inherently malicious intent
• Unauthorised distribution of any personal information or data (DOXing)
• Impersonation: You may not impersonate individuals, groups, or organisations in a manner that is intended to or does mislead, confuse, or deceive others. While you may maintain parody, fan, commentary accounts, you may not do so if the intent of the account is to engage in spamming or abusive behaviour. (Parody accounts must be labelled as such in the bio)
• Any conduct intended to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed
• Racism, and racial micro-aggressions
• Promotion of racial hatred, racial discrimination, and white supremacy.
• Queerphobia, or advocacy of queerphobia (comparisons to pedophilia, animals, dehumanising language)
• Sexism or advocacy of sexism
• Anti-sex worker perspectives or advocacy against sex workers
• Discrimination or advocation against genders and sexual minorities
• Homophobia, Biphobia & Transphobia (Trans Rights are Human Rights)
• Ableism, fatphobia, or discrimination against disabled people
• Xenophobia and/or violent nationalism
• Gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions
• Promotion or encouragement of suicide or self-harm
• Stalking; including advocating any physical, sexual, or emotional harm against individuals or groups
• Harassment of any kind, including consistent baiting, bad faith gaslighting, unwanted sexual advances, etc. especially towards marginalised groups, and minors
• Promotion of scams, including web3/crypto and other ponzi schemes
• Promotion of unhealthy lifestyle advice, including Promotion of anorexia
• Any content we deem harmful or distressing

Please report posts or users breaking the code of conduct, but please do not message people on behalf of the moderation team. Instead, you can scroll on, block, mute, or report to let moderators deal with it.

The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:

• Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism (Seriously. Absolutely no Nazis!)
• Holocaust denial, Nazi symbolism, or similar content
• White supremacy.
• Violence: Do not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people. This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism. Do not affiliate with organisations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes

- Child exploitation: you may not post sexually suggestive or exploitive images of minors in any way (regardless of context). Example: No bath photos

Content Warning (CW) and Hashtag Guidelines

Hashtags are heavily encouraged as the primary way for others to discover your themed content, while also allowing people to quickly filter content they do not wish to see on their feeds. Please note that hashtags must be used in the main body of a post - they do not work when used in the CW. To aid readability by humans and screen readers, please CamelCase #HashTags (capitalise the first letter of each word).

We encourage the use of Content Warnings (aka Content Wrappers, Summaries, Topics, Subject lines) on your posts. CWs are a courtesy to your readers and other members of the Aus Social community. CWs are not self-censorship: they do not suppress the indexing of posts, only their initial visibility. Aus.Social believes that CWs are an important tool to support people's self-autonomy, but they can also be used for expression and creativity.

Admin Note: CWs are not expected on posts made by historically and/or socially marginalised people about their own lived-experiences or activism, though authors may choose to do so.

Expected CWs and Hashtags

Everybody on Aus.Social must use Content Warnings (CWs) and hashtags for the following topics:

Politics, including party politics, electoral politics, geopolitic, elections and general governmental drama. Please use a AusPol CW and/or #AusPol Hashtag. Same with #USPol/#UKPol/#GeoPol etc Adult Content including Nudes / Lewds / NSFW posts Please use a CW (and any suitable hashtags) Advertising of products/brands (CW) Please use a CW (and any suitable hashtags) Depictions of violence and gore (CW) Please use a CW (and any suitable hashtags)

If you regularly post without using CWs or Hashtags for these topics, it will be both harder for those of us looking for #AusPol, and those looking to filter them. It will very likely result in other people reporting your posts, and our moderation team will be in touch with you to ask nicely to use CWs and Hashtags.

Recommended CWs

The following is a list of topics which have been commonly used by people on Mastodon/Aus Social CWs in the past.

A 2022 survey of public posts on the Aus Social local timeline showed that CWs had been used for the following topics. This list is advisory and intended only as a guide to the culture of Aus Social!

• Religion, or Proselytising
• Racism, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Blackness
• Sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, ableism, and fatphobia
• Rape, sexual harassment, bullying, psychological harassment
• Violence, war, party politics, electoral politics, conspiracy theories
• Climate change, environmental damage
• Landlords, renting, billionaires, celebrities
• Mental health, physical health
• Drugs, medical, blood, gore, surgery, hospitals, doctors, diseases
• Police, military, and legal
• Illness, death, suicide
• Food, meat, alcohol
• Eye contact (any animal), selfies
• Spiders and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians
• Animal cruelty
• Sports, particularly league sports
• Trypophobia, strobing lights, flickering
• Neurodivergence, autism, and ADHD
• Gambling, addictive, and obsessive behaviours
• Long posts > 500 characters
• Spoilers for movies/TV/books
• Content that is unfriendly to screen readers such as ASCII art
• Other social media platforms, large corporations
• Esoteric hobbies
• Excessive use of capital letters or Unicode typography Excessive use of emojis (as they are annoying for people using screenreaders)
• Excessive, or aggressive use of profanity
• Jokes where you tap to see the punchline
• Also often metadiscussions of the above.

Our Responsibilities

The administrator and moderators will endeavour to:

• Keep the atmosphere of the server as welcoming and enjoyable as possible.
• Keep this server online and functional for as long as possible.
• Clarify the standards of acceptable behaviour and are expected to take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any instances of unacceptable behaviour.

We will not act on complaints regarding:

• Criticising racist, sexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions.
• Good faith and non-malicious conduct whose object is to ameliorate (improve) the conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups.
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as "leave me alone," "go away," or "I’m not discussing this with you".
• Swearing or profanity.

Admin note: People are going to fight on the internet (this is a communication platform), and we generally try to ask people to block/mute people and take control of their social network experience as much as possible for situations where escalating to the moderation team via a report is not required... for issues that don't break any rules, but are still of concern to those involved (in or out of the fighting), Our moderation team might refuse to act as a mediator, but they will respond when (lines are crossed or) rules are broken.

Moderator code of conduct

Aus Social has a number of users who are also designated moderators. These moderators are currently @Bennytek @Dangerous_beans @morachbeag @prk @whatshisays @KarenWyld @harrym @grumpysmiffy. [Updated: 3rd Feb 2024]

Moderators can, in addition to any public information posted by users, see:

• How many posts a user has made
• All of a user's public, unlisted and followers-only posts, even if the account is configured to require approval for followers
• By extension, how many direct messages a user has written (but not the recipients or contents)
• A user's recently-used IP addresses
• A user's registered email address
• Whether a user has 2-factor authentication turned on
• A user's interface language
• Previous reports made by and against other users
• Notes about a user's account made by other moderators

Moderators may only use the above information to:

• Suspend, warn, or limit the visibility of a user who has broken server rules
• Delete or limit the visibility of posts that break server rules
• Respond to a report made by or about a user

Any other use, including in aggregate, requires approval by @aussocialadmin.

Moderators have no access to a user's direct messages (sent or received), phone numbers, or which posts they have bookmarked.

Moderators have the ability to view all reports made by and about Aus Social users, including historical resolved reports. Moderators can see the reported posts (which might be direct messages) and the accompanying report comment made by the reporter.

Moderators should reach a consensus about the result of a report (especially if it is not a clearcut decision), but a moderator can act unilaterally if end user safety is a factor or if actions are clearly informed by precedent. Moderation decisions may be reversed once further discussion between moderators has occurred.

Moderators may defederate Aus Social from an instance that is harmful to Aus Social users. This may happen if the remote instance does not sufficiently moderate its users or if its principles are incompatible with Aus Social's.

Moderators may place IP blocks or email domain blocks on signups to limit account signups that break Aus Social rules.

Moderators may contact the creator of a report and advise them of the outcome.

Moderators' decisions may be overridden by @aussocialadmin, whose decision is final.

1. Do not break the Code of Conduct.
2. Do not break the law (Australian).
3. Do not open a Business/Professional/Brand account (Art, Music or homemade stuff is fine).
4. Do not create accounts for Impersonation (individuals, groups, or organisations)