This Code of Conduct is not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the moderators of mastodon.africa. By joining the instance, you agree to conduct yourself in line with these principles.
The purpose of mastodon.africa is to provide a secure, neutral social media platform that you (the person) can rely on - whether for your personal social profile, or that of your organization or business. To that end, these guidelines should give you an idea of what to expect when posting content directly to your mastodon.africa account.
Every South African has a basic set of rights:
To ensure we all get to enjoy those rights, we must first afford them to others. Consequently, when engaging on mastodon.africa, bear in mind that:
There are no “hard and fast” rules around what to say, what not to say, or when to say it: Society, culture and language all move too fast for that. Instead, just consider the human being on the other end of the screen, and give the benefit of the doubt wherever you can.
These conduct guidelines are meant to create an environment that enables productive connections. There are many well-documented behaviors in internet forums that run contrary to this:
This is always a tricky area in moderation - intent is often lost in the medium of online posting, sincere questions can be misinterpreted as attempts at trolling - and vice versa, trolling can be carried out in the guise of sincere-sounding questions. Replies made in frustration aren’t always attacks, and defensively-written responses aren’t always a provocation.
In service of finding a useful middle-ground, mastodon.africa will only intervene if posts (or people) are reported using the built-in moderation tools, and action will only be taken in extreme cases. As a user of the system, you do have the ability to mute and block other users, and we’d usually recommend that as the first response.
We’re endeavouring to create a safe, welcoming space for experienced users and newcomers alike. Along with that, we expect some basics from the people that register on mastodon.africa.
There are many behaviours that constitute harassment - this is by no means an exhaustive list, but should illustrate what most people might consider harassment to include:
If behavior of this sort is reported to us, we’ll apply a simple three-strike rule: If we point out what you’re doing and you keep doing it, eventually, we’re going to reserve our right to ban you from the instance. There are other instances in the fediverse that would be more accommodating.
As an instance (and an operating company), mastodon.africa is not licensed or properly equipped to classify and age-restrict content of an erotic or pornographic nature. In addition, the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020 has provisions that criminalize “revenge pornography”. To ensure a safe and professional environment for everyone, the distribution of erotic or pornographic content is prohibited.
More a technical point than anything else: Don’t take actions with the intent of breaking, overloading or otherwise compromising the service for everyone else:
We do actively monitor the health of the service, and if we see behavior like that, we’ll take immediate action: Anything from banning your user account, to blacklisting an IP range.
Last updated: 22 December 2022