Server rules

Below is a summary of rules you need to follow if you want to have an account on this server of Mastodon:

1. No reactionary bigotry (nazis, TERFs or other transphobes, racists, etc).
2. Treat people on this server and in your online community with respect. This is lower priority than rule 1.
3. Don't do anything that will get this server in trouble with the law, or people with expensive lawyers.

Expectations for people on this server

1. This server is invite-only, consisting of people who are part of a community of transportation advocates centered in the Bay Area, who also know each other off of the Internet. If you know people on this server IRL, you can ask for an invite.
2. We don’t tolerate any form of reactionary bigotry: no nazis, no TERFs or transphobes, no racists, etc.
3. Generally, treat people within this server and related communities with respect. Rule 2 is higher priority than this rule. We also don’t expect you to be polite to, say, someone being racist. But if you make well-moderated servers that we have close ties with want to defederate with us, consider how you are affecting other people on the server.
4. Most of us are somewhere on the left politically. We don’t have strong ideological requirements, but if your politics are far from those of people on the server, this might not be the server for you.
5. We mostly want to reduce the use of cars and replace them with better forms of transportation. We don’t require you to be totally car free to use this server, but you should be on board with reducing car dependency.

Content warnings

Please put images of violence (e.g. a video of you being hit by a car) behind a CW.

Similarly, anything that would be uncomfortable to show up on your feed on, say, the bus, should be behind a CW.

In general though we see content warnings as a tool that you may choose to use in different ways. Someone may choose to put something behind a CW, but you don’t have to. In particular, you might see someone putting their personal experiences of experiencing racism behind a content warning, but that does not mean that it’s an expectation of this server.

Server Administration

The plan is to keep the server up indefinitely. Currently two people have access to the server infrastructure, and the intention is that there will always be at least two people who can run the server.

If circumstances change and it becomes necessary to entirely shut it down, we will give three months notice. If it makes sense, and the members of the server are fine with that, we would be willing to transfer ownership to a member of the server instead.

In general, we aim to make server decisions by consensus, and allow people to be as involved in the running of the server as they want to be.

Defederation policies

We will make any new and unexpected decisions by consensus, but to avoid having a discussion every time something comes up, we have already decided anyone can defederate from servers that are a danger to the people on the server or the server infrastructure. This includes:

• Servers that permit CSAM (child sexual abuse material) or content that resembles such
• Servers that host fascists or other political movements that are actively hostile and dangerous to our members
• Servers that host malware, conduct DDOS attacks, or otherwise interfere with the functioning of this server
• So-called “free speech” servers or servers with such poor moderation that they effectively fall into one of the previous categories

Moderated servers

Hometown generally allows you to view content from and interact with users from any other server in the fediverse. These are the exceptions that have been made on this particular server.

Suspended servers

No data from these servers will be processed, stored or exchanged, making any interaction or communication with users from these servers impossible: