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 promotion of anti-democratic ideologies.
2. No violence, threats, or incitement to violence.
3. Be kind to other users. No trolling, harassment, personal attacks, dogpiling, or brigading.
4. This community is United States based. It's primarily a community for liberals/progressives interested in meeting other liberals/progressives although anyone who follows our guidelines is welcome.
5. No racism, sexism, antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, or gender discrimination.

About this community

We are a United States-based liberal/progressive instance that promotes voting, elections, activism, and voter participation, in particular for the Democratic party and left-leaning Independents.

We share news related to those subjects. We also toot about personal interests like any other community in the Fediverse.

Our goals are to see the U.S. return to democratic norms, defend democracy, increase citizen participation in voting and activism, help people be involved in their own government and elections, and to expand access to those who have been historically marginalized/disenfranchised.

Social networking, back in your hands

Follow friends and discover new ones among more than 2.2M people. Publish anything you want: links, pictures, text, video. All on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free.

Mastodon isn’t just a website, it is a federation—think Star Trek. Thousands of independent communities running Mastodon form a coherent network, where while every planet is different, being part of one is being part of the whole.

Mastodon comes with effective anti-abuse tools to help protect yourself. Thanks to the network's spread out and independent nature there are more moderators who you can approach for personal help, and servers with strict codes of conduct.

Sharing your thoughts has never been more convenient

You have 1000 characters. You can adjust the thumbnails of your pictures with focal points. You can use custom emojis, hide things behind spoiler warnings and choose who sees a given post. Messed it up? You can delete & redraft for quick corrections.

Mastodon for the individual

Without an incentive to sell you things, Mastodon allows you to consume content you enjoy uninterrupted. Your feed is chronological, ad-free and not controlled by algorithms—you decide what you want to see!

Staff

The server admin is @TonyStark. Our moderators are:

@MariaHill
@SteveRogers
@MJ
@SpiderMan

Code of Conduct

The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of democracy.town; they are here to provide you with an insight into our content moderation policies:

1. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:
   1. Commercial or advertising-only accounts. Art you make or similar is fine.
   2. Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources
   3. Untagged nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions
   4. Untagged gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions
   5. GoFundMe pages and other fundraisers not fundraising for legitimate candidates for office against Republicans
   6. Disinformation or misinformation that would mislead voters or depress the vote
2. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:
   1. Racism or advocacy of racism
   2. Sexism or advocacy of sexism
   3. Ableism or advocacy of ableism
   4. Casteism or advocacy of casteism
   5. Antisemitism or advocacy of antisemitism
   6. Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocacy thereof
   7. Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism
3. The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:
   1. Sexual depictions of children
   2. Content illegal in the United States
   3. Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism
   4. Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism
4. Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other users, or to impede other users from utilizing the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other users, or to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service. This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviors:
   1. Continuing to engage in conversation with a user that has specifically requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.
   2. Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person's demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxing or dropping dox) may be considered harassment.
   3. Inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.
   4. Inciting users to engage in violence against other users, human beings, groups, or animals, or depictions thereof or wishing death, physical harm, or illness to any individual or groups of people.

We are not an instance for any right or, in alphabetical order, alt-right groups, anarchists, authoritarians, communists, libertarians, or any authoritarian-style left or right philosophies in the U.S. as we find that it runs contrary to our values and a government that works for all people.

Symbols, toots, or accounts promoting these will be removed from the community. There are other instances in the Fediverse that welcome such material. This instance promotes and believes in representative democracy. This list does not mean that we find these groups equivalent. It is simply a further explanation of what this community is and it not.

Boosting content is the same as posting content. If you boost something, you endorse it and it must follow these rules.

Posts disparaging the instance or it's members will result in immediate suspension. Do not block the administrator or moderators of the instance. That makes moderation, an important part of Mastodon safety, impossible. Accounts blocking the administrator or moderators will be suspended if they do not respond to requests to unblock.

Please add a picture, header, and basic information to your account prior to use. Ask any administrator or moderator for help if you need it.

This type of information is typically skipped by bot or automated accounts and accounts without such information look suspect to other users on and off the instance. Bot accounts, dupe accounts, and accounts made to circumvent suspensions are subject to permanent removal.

These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user's access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law. No spam. No gaming accounts created solely for the purpose of spam. And no being one of social media's worst plagues, a reoly guy.

Cross-posting

"Cross-posting" is the automatic copying of posts from one platform to another. That definition does not include the simultaneous posting to multiple platforms from the same app, such as Twidere or PostyBirb. If you use those apps, we consider those posts original, and the following need not apply.

Cross-posting from Mastodon to other platforms is fully permitted. Cross-posting into Mastodon from another platform is permitted under the following terms:

1. The posts do not include platform-specific references, e.g. talking about "here" meaning Twitter, or including text from other non-Mastodon users verbatim (e.g. cross-posted quote tweets)
2. The account is at least semi-regularly monitored by the author, so that interactions from Mastodon users are not ignored
3. The account being cross-posted is owned by the same person. Third-party copying of content is not permitted

Character accounts

You’ll notice that many of our instance members have chosen names of characters from movies or comics. People may need anonymity online for personal or professional reasons or may simply prefer it, and this is a fun way to do it.

As a small instance, we have no need to duplicate characters and like to let anyone who chooses to use a character to have their own identity here. If you’d like to make an account with a character name, please contact one of our moderators to get the process started.

Direct impersonation of a real person who you are not is not permitted. Parody accounts are permitted if clearly marked.

Source material

Our moderation team are experienced fact checkers.

Blatant conspiracy theories, misinformation (especially COVID-19 misinformation), and news that is unsourced or poorly sourced is subject to removal.

Funding

This server is crowdfunded by  donations. We operate it as a free service because we love social media on Mastodon.

Since we do not accept advertising, commercial accounts, or sell personal data of any kind, we rely on community support.

Currently our total costs are $640/ month for the servers, media storage and email services.

You can help out the community by donating in several ways:

PayPal

Patreon

Buy Me a Coffee

Ko-Fi