The rules

Last updated May 3rd, 2020

Pinian exists to help people express their ideas and perspectives, and to show them those of others. It is designed to help people build collaboratively and constructively on the ideas that came before. Publishing in this way is a vulnerable act, and requires a degree of safety. To provide that safety, and to promote a healthy community, we have rules, informed by the work of many other online communities. Although there’s a lot of them, reasonable people interacting earnestly in good faith will likely never run afoul of them.

We welcome thoughtful and civil positions from a broad spectrum of viewpoints. Nevertheless, to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for a wide range of people to engage in meaningful conversations, we prohibit certain conduct.

Each participant in our community is responsible for maintaining these standards.

As a reminder, you have no expectation of first amendment protections on Pinian. Writing a robust and challenging position is fine. Denying someone’s basic humanity is not. Taking a contrarian point of view is fine (subject to these rules). Falsifying data to support a position is not. Don’t write your opinions as facts. You get the idea.

In deciding whether someone has violated the rules, we will take into account things like newsworthiness, the context and nature of the posted information, the likelihood and severity of actual or potential harms, and applicable laws.

Violations of our rules may result in consequences such as account restrictions, limited distribution of your positions, and suspension of your account.

Threats of violence and incitement

We don’t allow content or actions that threaten, encourage, or incite violence against anyone, directly or indirectly.

Hate speech

We don’t allow content that promotes violence or hatred against people based on characteristics like race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.

We don’t allow positions or accounts that glorify, celebrate, downplay, or trivialize violence, suffering, abuse, or deaths of individuals or groups. This includes the use of scientific or pseudoscientific claims to pathologize, dehumanize, or disempower others. We don’t allow calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation based on protected characteristics, nor do we allow the glorification of groups which do any of the above.

We don’t allow hateful text, images, symbols, or other content in your username, profile, or bio.

Harassment

We don’t tolerate harassment, which includes:

• Bullying, threatening, or shaming someone, or posting things likely to encourage others to do so
• Addressing positions to individuals or organisations, rather than responding to a question directly.

Privacy and Reputation

We don’t allow the following:

Posting copies of private communications between private individuals without the explicit consent of all parties to the communication

Doxing, which includes not only private or obscure personal information but also the aggregation of publicly available information to target, shame, blackmail, harass, intimidate, threaten, or endanger

Posting intimate or explicit images taken or posted without the subject’s express consent

Content that violates others’ privacy, including sensitive or confidential information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, non-public phone numbers, physical addresses, email addresses, or other non-public information

Restricted categories

We don’t allow positions or accounts that engage in the following restricted categories of activity:

• Promotion of harmful conspiracies
• Facilitation of gambling or betting
• Facilitation of buying or selling social media interactions, including off-platform
• Facilitation of illegal sexual services
• Facilitation of copyright violation

Related conduct

We don’t allow positions or accounts that engage in on-platform, off-platform, or cross-platform campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. We may consider off-platform actions in assessing a Pinian account, and restrict access or availability to that account.

Duplicate content and plagiarism

Re-use of someone else’s positions is only allowed through Pinian’s adoption mechanism. It’s ok to rewrite someone else’s position in your own words, but don’t rewrite the exact text in an attempt to circumvent Pinian’s mechanisms for attribution. You’re better than that.

Spam

We don’t allow spam on Pinian. All spam will be immediately removed from Pinian, without notification. We all know what spam is, even if we can’t define it precisely or exhaustively. It includes:

• Publishing positions that don’t respond to the question
• Posting content primarily to drive traffic to, or increase the search rankings of, an external site, product, or service
• Scraping and reposting content from other sources for the primary purpose of generating revenue or other personal gains
• Adopting a position from multiple accounts to attempt to boost the apparent authority or influence of the original, or otherwise participating in bounty campaigns or brigades.
• Positions where the content is clipped with the sole purpose of linking to the rest of the article on a different website
• Performing a disproportionately large number of interactions, particularly by automated means. This includes bulk, indiscriminate interactions, such as adopting or respecting
• Repeatedly using positions as a method of promotion

Paid, automatic, bulk, or non-genuine interactions

Pinian depends on various user behaviors to determine what content to feature and make the site work well for everyone. We don’t allow artificial behaviors that skew this system. This includes:

• Buying, selling, or trading in accounts or account interactions
• Using services, apps, or arrangements that offer you more respect, adoption, or other interactions on your Pinian account or content
• Registering accounts, posting content, or interacting with users or content automatically, systematically, or programmatically

Copyright and trademark infringement

Respect the copyrights and trademarks of others. Unless you’re authorized to use someone else’s copyrighted work or trademark (either expressly or by legal exceptions and limitations like fair use), don’t do it. We respond to notices of alleged infringement as described in our Terms of Service, and various policies.

Deceptive conduct

We don’t allow deceptive conduct on Pinian. This includes:

• Posting content or impersonating a person or organization in a way likely to deceive people. Pinian is a platform for constructively building upon others’ ideas. We don’t allow parody or satire which takes the form of impersonating someone else and putting words in their mouth.
• Using Pinian for phishing or fraud. Don’t adopt content from URLs that embed malicious or harmful code or software.
• Deliberately adopting a position that takes a different point of view and selectively editing it to make it look like they agree with you.

Don’t use deception to generate revenue or traffic.

If you have received compensation, free goods/services or anything of value in connection with a position, you must make this clear.

Advertising

Third-party advertising and sponsorships are not allowed. You may not advertise or promote third-party products, services, or brands through Pinian positions.

Multi-level marketing content is not allowed.

Graphic content

We don’t allow pornographic images or videos. We do allow erotic writing and non-graphic erotic images.

We don’t allow gratuitously graphic or disturbing media, even if it’s not pornographic.

Exploitation of minors

We don’t allow content promoting the sexual or violent exploitation of minors, including the sexualization of fictional minors.

Promotion and glorification of self-harm

We don’t allow activities that encourage, promote or glorify acts of self-harm, such as cutting, eating disorders like anorexia, orthorexia, or bulimia, and suicide. If you encounter users contemplating or threatening self-harm, please report it to us.

If you break the rules

We strive to be fair, but we reserve the right to suspend accounts or remove content, without notice, for any reason, particularly to protect our services, infrastructure, users, or community. If you attempt to evade suspension by creating new accounts or posts, we will suspend your new accounts and posts.

Notice

Upon investigating or disabling content associated with your account, we will notify you, unless we believe your account is automated or operating in bad faith, or that notifying you is likely to cause, maintain or exacerbate harm to someone.

Miscellaneous

We may enforce, or not enforce, these policies at our sole discretion. These policies don’t create a duty or contractual obligation for us to act.

We also may change these rules at any time.