Community Guidelines

Digest is a new kind of platform: the love child of a blog and a social network. Like any civilized society, Digest thrives when every member of our community follows its written rules and unwritten norms. These are ours — they serve as our acceptable use policy and code of conduct.

It is worth noting that we are striving to build a space free of violence in its many forms. We understand that some may find our rules constraining, but the beauty of the Internet is that there is a space for everyone. If Digest isn’t a good fit for you, we’re certain there exists another space where you’ll feel right at home.

We may enforce, or not enforce, these policies at our own discretion, and the policies presented here do not create a duty or contractual obligation for us to act. This is especially true when a user’s content or behavior falls into a grey area. Some of these rules are subjective, and we will use our discretion to learn and act to improve the health of our community. Consequently, we may change these rules at any time, and we’ll endeavor to inform you about material changes before they become effective.

This policy is incorporated into our Terms of Service and you must agree to it to use Digest.

Don’t break the law

Don’t violate laws or regulations. Period.

No threats or incitement of violence

Don’t threaten, encourage, organize, or incite violence directly or indirectly. This includes using Digest to support off-Digest campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. Targeting celebrities and famous people is not okay either. Historical or newsworthy content is okay if the context is clear.

No glorification of violence

Don’t glorify, celebrate, downplay, or trivialize violence, suffering, abuse, or deaths. This includes the use of scientific or pseudoscientific claims to pathologize, dehumanize, or disempower others. No promotion or glorification of violent organizations like terrorist groups and gangs. Historic or newsworthy content is okay if the context is clear.

No hate speech

Don’t promote or glorify hatred, intolerance, exclusion, segregation, violence, or misinformation against people based on protected characteristics. This includes characteristics like race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. Also, don’t target people based on their weight, or their immigration or veteran status. Promotion or glorification of people, groups, texts, images, or symbols which do any of the above is not okay. Historical or newsworthy content is okay if the context is clear.

No harassment

Don’t harass, bully, threaten, shame, or spread misinformation about others. This includes posting things likely to encourage others to do so; using Digest features in a way intended to annoy or harass someone; researching and broadcasting private, sensitive, or identifiable personal information (e.g. doxing), including the aggregation of publicly available information to target, shame, blackmail, harass, intimidate, threaten, or endanger; posting copies of private communications between private individuals without the explicit consent of all parties to the communication; posting intimate or explicit images taken or posted without the subject’s express consent; and using Digest to support off-platform campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. Content that is simply critical of celebrities, people in the news, or other topics of public interest is generally okay, as are negative or mean-spirited content or jokes about no one person or class of persons in particular.

No promotion of harmful behavior

Don’t promote or glorify harmful behavior or self-harm, including suicide, self-mutilation, eating disorders, drug abuse, and medical misinformation that could lead to serious harm.

No harmful misinformation

Don’t promote false or inaccurate information or distortions, especially if it is harmful to the health, safety, or civic participation of individuals, a targeted group, or the general public. This includes harmful medical advice, conspiracy theories or claims that incite harassment or violence, and deceptive images, videos, and other content intended to spread harmful disinformation. Yes, people are wrong sometimes, but if you spread lies that have extreme real-world negative consequences, you are not welcome on Digest.

No exploitation or sexualization of minors

Don’t post nude imagery of anyone who is or appears to be a minor (except infants). Don’t solicit or target minors, and don’t promote the exploitation of minors, real or fictional. If we find such content, we’ll report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

No porn

Don’t post or link to porn, erotic images, images of fetishes, nude or partially nude people in sexually suggestive poses, or imagery intended to cause sexual arousal.

No promotion of sexual services

Don’t promote sexual services — this includes escorts, prostitution, and sensual massages.

No private buying or selling of regulated goods

Don’t sell drugs, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, products from endangered species, or other regulated items.

No hacking Digest users and systems

To help keep Digest secure, only use Digest’s official sites and apps. Do not: use our undocumented APIs to access or amend any part of Digest; tamper with Digest’s or our providers’ systems; deliberately bypass our security measures to access our Services; send our users or employees viruses, spam, mail-bombs, etc.; or scrape our Services for any purpose whatsoever. Violations of system or network security may result in civil or criminal liability.

No copyright & trademark infringement

You must respect others’ copyrights and trademarks. 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. Refer to our Terms of Service to understand how we respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement.

No deceptive content or accounts

Don’t impersonate a person or organization in a way that’s likely to deceive people. Parody and satire are fine as long as they’re clearly seen as such.

No phishing or fraud

Don’t use tags, links, titles, or other metadata in misleading ways. Also, don’t link to or embed malicious or harmful code or software in your posts.

Disclose commercial partnerships

You must be transparent about any compensation—money, goods, services, or anything else of value—you receive for content that you post to Digest, and for any affiliate links you include where you are compensated for clicks. Clearly disclose your business partnerships to your followers within the same content that you receive compensation for. You are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations, including the FTC’s Endorsement Guidelines.

No paid, automatic, bulk, or non-genuine interactions

Digest occasionally relies on various user behaviors — follows, emojilikes, replies, and so on — to determine what content to feature. We don’t allow artificial behaviors that skew this system. This includes: buying, selling, or trading in accounts or interactions, including follows, likes, or replies; using services, apps, or arrangements that offer you more follows, likes, replies, or other interactions on your Digest account or content; and registering accounts, posting content, or interacting with users or content automatically, systematically, or programmatically.

No spam

We do not allow spam on Digest, and when we find it, it is promptly removed. While it is hard to define spam with precision, here are some representative behaviors we look for that are characteristic of spam: 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; posting duplicate content, whether from a single account or across multiple accounts; posts where the content is clipped with the sole purpose of linking to the rest of it on a different website; performing a disproportionately large number of interactions, particularly by automated means, including bulk, indiscriminate interactions, such as following digests or liking posts; repeatedly using replies or other interactions as a method of promotion; participating in bounty campaigns or brigades to artificially inflate rankings for posts, digests, users, businesses, or products.