Community Guidelines
Written by Amy Peikoff
Updated at July 27th, 2024
Table of Contents
Effective date: January 22, 2024
Our Community Guidelines are part of our Terms & Conditions; they govern your relationship with and use of PayChute, as well as your access to our services and products. By accessing PayChute, you agree to these terms. These Guidelines are designed to foster productive civil discourse and voluntary exchange among people with differing interests, experiences, and viewpoints.
Our goal is to provide all users with a welcoming, ideologically neutral forum where they can build or join fulfilling communities. While the First Amendment does not apply to private companies such as PayChute, our mission is to provide a platform for exchange of values and ideas in the spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Consitution. On PayChute, we empower individuals to think, speak, share, create, and live freely.
With respect to guidelines enforcement, we prefer to avoid, whenever possible, removing users or user-provided content from the platform. We prefer to leave to individual users decisions about what they may subscribe to, support, and have in their feeds. In no case will PayChute decide what content will be removed or filtered, or whose community or account removed, on the basis of the opinion expressed within the content at issue. PayChute's policies are, to use a well-known concept in First-Amendment law, viewpoint-neutral.
We do not “curate” your feed; we do not pretend to be qualified to do so. We believe only you are qualified to curate your feed, and so we give you the tools you need to do it yourself. Subscribe to only those communities whose founders or members you would like to hear from regularly. And soon we will be introducing the mute and block features to which you've become accustomed on other platforms. We encourage you to use these tools whenever the content you would rather not encounter is not otherwise addressed by what follows.
At PayChute, we're committed to continuous improvement toward achieving our mission. Accordingly, these Guidelines are subject to modification at any time. Consult this page regularly to keep abreast of any changes; the effective date of the current version appears at the top of this page.
The substance of our Guidelines consists of two basic principles:
First, PayChute will not knowingly allow itself to be used as a tool for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts. We will remove reported user content that a reasonable and objective observer would believe constitutes such activity. We may also remove the accounts of users who abuse our platform in this way.
Sometimes the law properly requires us to exclude content from our platform once it is reported to us. Obvious examples include: child sexual abuse material, content posted by or on behalf of terrorist organizations, and intellectual property theft. However, even when the law may not require removal, we will nonetheless do so when we deem it necessary to prevent our services from being used in the commission of a crime or civil tort--particularly when these are likely to interfere with our mission of providing a welcoming, ideologically neutral forum for communities. Examples include fraud and criminal solicitation.
Second, spam and bots are nuisances and are not conducive to productive exchange of ideas and values. In addition, spamming is unjust to our creators, public intellectuals, and influencers, who have put time and effort into building their followings and goodwill, and who deserve unfettered enjoyment of the product of their hard work. Accordingly, whenever this behavior negatively affects the vibrancy of our founders' communities, PayChute will remove accounts of those who engage in this behavior.
A detailed discussion of the types of actions encompassed by these two principles is provided below.
In addition to other precautionary measures, PayChute relies upon its community members to report violations of these Guidelines. PayChute asks that users, whether community founders or supporting members, submit reports of potential violations of our terms by email to report@paychute.com. Please include URLs of any relevant content, as well as a description of the suspected violation(s).
The Particulars.
No content conveyed using our service may contain:
Defamation: statements or other content found to be defamatory by a court of law. We avoid making our own determinations about the truth or falsity of statements posted on PayChute.
Sexualization of Minors: images, videos, or other depictions involving nudity of, or sexual involvement with a minor, or links to same.
Sexually Explicit Content: depictions of real or simulated sexual acts, including sexual intercourse or sexual arousal. No community cover images or user profile pictures containing actual or realistic nudity.
Violence, Gore, and Other Graphic Content: any image, video, or other depiction of death or of serious physical violence or injury, including nonconsensual sex or sexual assault, that, considering all the context, appears to be gratuitous and presented to threaten only. Neither community cover images nor user profile pictures may contain this content.
Fraud: any attempt to gain money or other value(s) by means of wrongful or criminal deception, including knowingly sharing synthetic or manipulated media where intended to deceive or manipulate.
Intellectual Property and Impersonation: trademarks or other intellectual property belonging to another individual or entity, used without permission or proper attribution, as appropriate. Use of another's name or likeness in a confusing or deceptive manner is also prohibited.
Doxxing: another's private information (including non-public contact, financial account, location, medical, or other information), or a threat or offer to publicly expose these.
Threats: serious expressions of intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals with either intent or reckless disregard as to whether the communication will place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.
Advocacy of Imminent Lawless Action: an explicit or implicit encouragement to use violence, or to commit a lawless action, such that (1) the user intends his or her speech to result in the use of violence or lawless action, and (2) the use of violence or lawless action is the likely result of the post, comment, or message.
Bribery or Criminal Solicitation: an offer to give or receive money, or other goods or services, in exchange for (1) a favor from any public official, or (2) the commission of any illegal action by anyone (including the sale of illicit drugs or prescription drugs without a prescription).
Terrorism. Terrorist organizations officially recognized as such by the United States are forbidden from using PayChute, as is anyone--including state actors--recruiting for them.
And a few Nuisances:
Spam: Spam is repetitive content that does not contribute relevant, solicited substance to the conversation, but instead prevents others from sharing their own thoughts and experiences. Spam content and accounts serially spamming PayChute communities are subject to removal.
Unsolicited Advertisements. Those wishing to advertise products or services on PayChute may do so in their own communities, or by approaching the founders of other communities for permission. Techniques frequently used to avoid paying for advertising, such as unsolicited, unrelated links posted in comments in others' communities, or the use of “fan” communities, or otherwise deceptive use of an influencer's or public figure's name, likeness, or brand, are prohibited.
Bots. Accounts may not overutilize the service via issuing excessive queries to our system, continuously, at a rate suggesting it's a bot. Accounts doing this are subject to immediate removal, to be reinstated only upon paying PayChute restitution for damages caused and value received by means of circumventing our system.
Ban Evasion. New accounts created by previously banned users are subject to immediate banning.
Exemptions
For material that, on its face, seems to fall under the above categories, we consider the context, intent, and whether it qualifies for an exemption under any of the following: