A place-based community for all those who live in, work in or otherwise have a connection with Naarm/Melbourne.

A Mastodon instance for Naarm/Melbourne. Welcome to all those that live, work or are visiting here, or otherwise have a link to this great metropolis.

We accept sign-ups from any person over the age of 16, anywhere in the world, using any supported language.

For the time being, companies or corporate brands are not allowed. While you may add business links in your profile, please do not regularly share ads.

Creatives, individuals in the public eye or with a personal brand are allowed, as are nonprofits.

Bot accounts are permitted, but not on the local timeline, and must turn on the "this is a bot account" checkbox and identify the bot owner in the bio.

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:

Any NSFW / 18+ content MUST have a content warning Any account posting (regular) NSFW / 18+ content must be marked as sensitive. (Bulk) Re-Posting other peoples content/stolen content is not acceptable even with citation, and will be removed. Accounts focused on posting material fitting a genre/category of interest is likely to be removed, as our focus is hosting people. Accounts exclusively posting videos are a financial burden and is likely to be removed. 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 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 or sexual harm against individuals or groups Harassment of any kind, including consistent baiting, bad faith gaslighting, unwanted sexual advances, etc Promotion of scams, including web3/crypto 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.

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.

1. soc.jrconlin.com: limitation