The Commons · Community Guidelines
Free speech. Real rules. Due process.
The Commons is a free-speech space. You may be wrong here. You may be unpopular here. You may argue politics, faith, science, sports, and taste as hard as you like, with people who think you’re completely mistaken — we moderate behavior, never viewpoints. The lines below are about conduct, they are published in full, and they do not move with the news cycle.
And this space is bigger than civics: your family photos, your team, your music, your business, your jokes. Outpost’s civic tools live one tab away — never forced into your feed.
The hard lines (behavior, not opinions)
No true threats or incitement
Threatening a person, calling for violence, or organizing harm — the speech the law itself does not protect — is removed and, where required, reported.
No exploitation of minors
Zero tolerance, zero appeals, mandatory reporting. This is the one category where removal is instant and permanent.
No doxxing
Publishing someone's home address, private phone number, or other private identifying information to expose them is an attack, not an argument.
No impersonation or coordinated fakery
Pretend accounts, bot swarms, and coordinated inauthentic campaigns poison every genuine conversation. Parody is fine when it says it's parody.
No spam or platform manipulation
Flooding, scraping, engagement fraud, and deceptive links degrade the space for everyone.
Your controls come first
Most disagreements never need a referee. Before anything reaches moderation, you hold the tools:
Mute — silent and invisible
Stop seeing anyone without unfollowing or unfriending. They are never told. Reversible in one tap.
See-less — your feed, your recipe
Turn down topics or people without cutting ties. A viewer preference, never a signal sent to anyone.
Block — a real wall
Severs the connection both ways and keeps it severed.
Your feed is chronological and chosen
No engagement algorithm decides what you see. You do — by who you follow, what you mute, and the sort you pick.
Due process — what the big platforms never gave you
- Notice: if something you posted is actioned, you are told what, and exactly which guideline it broke.
- Reasons in plain language — never 'violating community standards' with no explanation.
- Appeal: a human review you can request, with a response commitment.
- The record: enforcement statistics published in a periodic transparency report — how many actions, which categories, how many appeals succeeded.
- No shadow moderation: we will never secretly limit your reach while telling you nothing. If distribution is restricted, that is an action, and actions come with notice.
Kids are different
The Commons is 18+. Minors are outside the social graph entirely — kids’ learning surfaces are device-local, account-free, and connection-free by architecture, not by policy. See About Us for the full commitment.
These guidelines take effect when publishing opens (after the moderation, reporting, and privacy systems ship) and will only ever be changed in the open — dated, explained, with the old version preserved.