Even though Cringe Cafe Akkoma is and will remain a tiny instance, I should put a little work into defining expectations and boundaries for folks wandering in from the outside world. And I won't do it today, but there are legal considerations even for a small instance in the world of federated social networking.
Keep in mind that this is a breakdown of my thought process and NOT any kind of instruction guide.
I started by looking at TOS and "About" pages for other instances such as My Crowd and pondering what was different for my particular use case.
I'd love to have something about community and culture, but this site is just the two of us. Maintaining it is a part-time hobby for me. Should probably set expectations low.
Cringe Cafe Akkoma is a closed personal instance. As such, terms of usage and privacy policy are informally defined. This document declares what has been established with certainty, and will be updated as our definitions evolve.
There's some content I just do not want to see. Refined the list from My Crowd into something a bit more specific to my needs.
- racism
- gender essentialism and other forms of sexism
- homophobia, biphobia, and anti-queer sentiment in general
- anti-sex worker perspectives or advocation against sex workers
- sexualization of children
- ableism, fatphobia or discrimination against disabled people
- xenophobia and nationalism
- depictions of gore and graphic violence
- advocation of self-harm
- stalking, harassing, or advocating harm against individuals or groups
- scams
More general than their list. All the specific examples would be included if I wanted my list to be specific too. And a lot more besides, which is why I went with general descriptions.
One way to piss me off is to throw in stuff like "what about affirmative action? Is that not also racism? Is it TERFy to say I love trans folks but don't want them to have the same rights I do? You blocked my instance and have not responded to my previous 30 emails asking for clarification; I demand you respond to this one."
(what about it; no; yes; no)
So:
- sealioning and other forms of bad-faith debate
I'm sure I'll come up with something else.
- additional categories as they come to mind
I can't exactly ban myself from my tiny instance. Well I could but that would be weird. Besides, knowing me I'd just set up another server somewhere else.
But I can describe my expectations for myself, and what I'll do when I fail to meet those expectations.
We avoid posting it. We remove it when we slip up.
I can also use it to set boundaries for other people and instances I interact with, along with what happens if I find those boundaries have been crossed.
If I see it from you, I'll probably block you. If I see it from your instance, I will evaluate Cringe Cafe's interactions with that instance and take actions up to and including defederation.
I could put more here about the reporting process and stuff. How I respond when my other users — okay, other user — okay, my wife — reports a post. Honestly she'll just lean over my way in our shared office and ask me WTF she's looking at. But it might be a good idea for me to use Akkoma's reporting system for myself so I can track the historical WTFs.
Here's what you'll see on the About page right now:
Cringe Cafe Akkoma is a closed personal instance. As such, terms of usage and privacy policy are informally defined. This document declares what has been established with certainty, and will be updated as our definitions evolve.
Unacceptable Content
We avoid posting it. We remove it when we slip up. If I see it from you, I'll probably block you. If I see it from your instance, I will evaluate Cringe Cafe's interactions with that instance and take actions up to and including defederation.
- racism
- gender essentialism and other forms of sexism
- homophobia, biphobia, and anti-queer sentiment in general
- anti-sex worker perspectives or advocation against sex workers
- sexualization of children
- ableism, fatphobia or discrimination against disabled people
- xenophobia and nationalism
- depictions of gore and graphic violence
- advocation of self-harm
- stalking, harassing, or advocating harm against individuals or groups
- scams
- sealioning and other forms of bad-faith debate
- additional categories as they come to mind
Describing the above is not the same as posting the above, i.e. talking about racism is not racism. But that's a clarification, not a loophole. I'm not GPT. With personal instances, it's very much "my house, my rules."
Some kind of Privacy Policy. I'm not too concerned about what I do with my data, but federation means my system has data from other users on other instances. At this split second I'm doing whatever Akkoma does by default. I need to find out what that is, make adjustments to be ensure it's deleted regularly, provide a means for someone not on my instance to request its removal, and describe all of the above adequately on my own About page. Then there's all the DMCA considerations. Ugh.
But I won't be doing that today.