Community Guidelines & Acceptable Use

1. Our principles

• Safety first. Activists face real risks. Nothing here may put a person in danger.
• Respect. Argue with ideas, not people.
• Truth with sources. We cite everything we publish and ask you to do the same.
• Privacy. Protect your own and other people’s personal information.

This list is not exhaustive. Conduct not listed can still break these guidelines if it harms people or undermines the community.

2. Not allowed

2.1 Harassment, threats and hate

• Threats of violence, or wishing or celebrating harm against anyone.
• Harassment, bullying, pile-ons, or encouraging others to target someone.
• Attacks on people based on sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, religion, disability, age or similar characteristics.
• Unwanted sexual content or advances; any sexual content involving minors (reported to the authorities).

2.2 Doxxing and other people’s data

• Posting or sharing anyone’s private information without consent, including home addresses, phone numbers, workplaces, immigration status, or photos that identify protesters or bystanders where that could put them at risk.
• Collecting other users’ personal data, or scraping the site to build lists of people.

2.3 Violence and illegal activity

• Inciting, planning or organizing violence, property destruction or other illegal acts. Peaceful, lawful protest is welcome; organizing harm is not.
• Selling or promoting weapons, drugs or other illegal goods or services.
• Fraud, scams, or fundraising that misrepresents who receives the money.

2.4 Deception and manipulation

• Impersonating a person, organization, official or Change Starts With Her.
• Spam, bots, fake accounts, or coordinated attempts to manipulate feeds, hashtags or reactions.
• Deliberately false information about voting, elections, public safety or emergencies, or about when and where events happen.

2.5 Site integrity

• Trying to gain unauthorized access to the site, other accounts or our systems.
• Introducing malware or harmful code, or disrupting the site (including denial-of-service attacks).
• Circumventing security, rate limits, blocks or bans (including by creating new accounts).
• Reverse engineering the site except as the law allows, or scraping it in a way that burdens it or ignores robots.txt.

2.6 Intellectual property

• Posting material that infringes someone else’s copyright, trademark or other rights. See the copyright section of our Terms.

3. Accuracy and misinformation

We ask for sources, and we label or limit content instead of silencing debate. Content that is likely false and could cause real-world harm (for example about voting, safety or event details) may be labeled with context, shown to fewer people, or removed. Opinions and good-faith disagreement are not misinformation.

4. Protest and personal safety

• Do not post plans that could expose people to arrest or harm, or details that identify participants without their consent.
• Blur faces and identifying details in protest photos unless the people agreed to be shown.
• Check event details against the organizer’s own announcement; we link to it for every event we list.
• Think before sharing your own location, schedule or identity. Encrypted messages protect contents, not what you choose to post publicly.
• Choose who sees each post: “In community” (signed-in members only) or “All” (anyone, including search engines). You can move a post to “In community” later, and a post in community stays there, but copies others already made, such as screenshots or search engine copies, cannot be recalled.
• If someone is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first.

5. Messages

Private messages between members are end-to-end encrypted, so we cannot read them. You can message one member or a group of up to 20, and nobody can join a conversation without an invitation. These guidelines still apply: if you receive an abusive message, you can block the sender and report the message, with a copy of it if you choose, and we can act on the account that sent it. One block covers both posts and messages (section 10): her messages and invitations are hidden from you, neither of you can invite the other, and she is not told.

6. Using our data

You may share and quote our summaries and report cards with attribution and a link, keeping the cited sources. You may not bulk-download them, republish them as your own, or present them without their sources.

7. Security research

We welcome reports of security problems at team@changestartswithher.org (also listed in security.txt). Act in good faith: do not access other people’s data, do not degrade the site for others, and give us reasonable time to fix an issue before disclosing it. We will not pursue legal action against good-faith research that follows these rules.

8. Moderation and enforcement

We review reports and may use automated tools to flag likely violations; a person makes the final decision on any action against an account. Depending on how serious a violation is, we may:

Posts. When we hide a post, it disappears for everyone except its author and our moderators, and we email the author which post, which guideline it broke and how to appeal. We do not tell the author who reported it. To limit spam and pile-ons, accounts in their first 7 days can post, reply, report and add links less often than older accounts, and the same words cannot be posted twice within 10 minutes.

Emergencies. We may act without notice when there is a credible threat to someone’s safety, and may share information with the authorities where the law requires it or a life is at risk, as described in our Privacy Policy.

9. Appeals

If you believe we made a mistake, write to team@changestartswithher.org within 10 business days of the action, explaining why. A person who did not make the original decision will review it, and we will reply within 10 business days.

10. Reporting

Every post has a report button (under “More”): choose which of these guidelines it breaks and, if you like, add a note for our moderators. Reports go to our moderators’ queue, and a person reviews each one. You can also email team@changestartswithher.org with a link or description, including for content that puts someone at risk. Every message you receive has a report button too (in the conversation, under the message): choose what is wrong, add a note if you like, and choose whether to send us a copy of the message; because messages are encrypted, we see only what you send us and our server’s record of who sent it and when. We email you when your report has been reviewed. We do not tell the reported person who reported them.

Block and mute. You can block or mute any member from her page or from any of her posts. When you block someone, neither of you sees the other’s posts, and neither can reply to, quote, repost or like the other’s. The same block covers private messages: her messages and invitations are hidden from you, and neither of you can invite the other. Unblocking undoes both. When you mute someone, her posts leave your feed and topic pages. Nobody is told. You can undo either at any time under Your account.