This template provides a reusable set of community guidelines designed for new communities. Crafting server rules from scratch can be challenging, especially when trying to balance comprehensive safety coverage with concise, readable rules that fit within platform limits.
This ruleset is designed to be grounded, relatively unopinionated, and adaptable across diverse communities while remaining firmly rooted in international human rights principles and core IFTAS moderation values. The ruleset incorporates all harms listed in the Community Library Shared Vocabulary.
While designed as a plug-and-play baseline, admins/community managers are encouraged to add instance-specific policy nuances (such as local federation policies or specific topic restrictions) as your community grows. Additional guidance can be found in each label’s dedicated page in the Library.
- Zero Tolerance for Abuse, Exploitation, and Violence
Severe harm is strictly prohibited. This includes child sexual abuse material or exploitation (CSAM/CSEA), non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), sextortion, threats or glorification of violence, incitement to harm, and violent extremism or terrorism (TVEC). - No Harassment, Hate Speech, or Dehumanisation
Respect human dignity. Do not engage in harassment, doxxing, personal threats, defamation, or hate speech. Discrimination or dehumanisation against race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, native language, age, ability, marital status, family status, caste, national origin, socioeconomic status, religion, geographic location, or any other dimension of diversity is prohibited. - Authenticity and Honest Engagement
Engage in good faith. Do not engage in impersonation, catfishing, sock-puppeting, or inauthentic behaviour like astroturfing, farming, or cross-platform/networked brigading designed to manipulate or harass. - No Spam, Scams, or Technical Abuse
Keep the network safe and usable. Unsolicited commercial spam, phishing, account takeover, malware distribution, or intentional service abuse designed to disrupt platform infrastructure will result in account removal. - Proper Use of Sensitive Content and Synthetic Media
Respect viewer consent. Explicit sexual content and gore must be tagged and/or marked “Sensitive”. Misleading or deceptive synthetic media used to manipulate or defame is prohibited.
–Or–
Explicit sexual content, gore, and misleading or deceptive synthetic media used to manipulate or defame is prohibited. - Information Integrity
Do not intentionally distribute dangerous disinformation or misinformation campaigns that can lead to physical, financial, or civic harm. - Respect Intellectual Property and Legal Rights
Respect original creators and applicable laws. Unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material or counterfeit goods is prohibited. - Enforcement and Appeals
We enforce these rules predictably and proportionately based on severity, ranging from warnings, post removal, account limitation to account removal. In general, account holders can appeal a moderator action within 30 days.
IFTAS uses the DTSP definitions as labels, and they are grouped into seven rules as shown below. Definitions (and additional example rules) can be found at https://about.iftas.org/library/shared-vocabulary-labels/
- Rule 1 (Severe Harm): CSAM, CSEA, NCII, Sextortion, Violent Threat, Glorification of Violence, Incitement, TVEC.
- Rule 2 (Interpersonal Harm): Hate Speech, Online Harassment, Doxxing, Dehumanisation, Defamation.
- Rule 3 (Inauthentic Activity): Impersonation, Catfishing, Sock-puppet, CIB, Astroturfing, Brigading, Troll, Farming, Cross-platform Abuse.
- Rule 4 (Technical & Security Risk): Spam, Phishing, Account-takeover, APT, Service-abuse.
- Rule 5 (Content Standards): Explicit-content, Synthetic-media, Content-and-conduct-related-risk.
- Rule 6 (Information Standards): Misinformation, Disinformation.
- Rule 7 (Legal/Rights): Copyright-infringement, Counterfeit.
- Rule 8 (Governance): Proportionate enforcement, fair warnings, predictable appeal processes.
