What's allowed on Towne
The short version: talk about anything you would talk about with a neighbor. Disagree with ideas, not people. That is most of it.
Yes, you can post about politics
National issues, local issues, elections, policy, the news. All allowed. Towne has no political slant and nobody here decides which views are the acceptable ones.
What Towne does instead is sort. Every post has a “mark as political” button. If enough neighbors mark one, it moves to Towne Hall, a channel for civic conversation that you visit when you want it. People who came for the lost dog and the plumber recommendation are not reading an argument they did not ask for, and the argument still has a home.
Nothing is deleted, nothing is hidden, and the author is told where their post went.
Two things worth knowing. Marking a post political is a category, not a downvote, and it never counts against the author. And nobody is shown who marked a post.
The five rules
- No harassment or personal attacks. Disagree with ideas, not people. You are going to run into these neighbors at the store.
- No discrimination. Content targeting people for their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or other protected characteristics is not allowed.
- No doxxing. Do not share someone's private information, like a home address or phone number, without their consent.
- No spam or commercial solicitation. Marketplace is for neighbor-to-neighbor. Recommend a business you actually use; do not advertise your own.
- No misinformation. Do not knowingly post false safety alerts or fabricated claims. Being wrong is human; inventing a threat is not.
What happens if something crosses the line
Report it. Every report is read, and nothing comes down because one person disliked it.
A short list comes down wherever it appears, in any town: threats of violence, sharing someone's private information, hate aimed at people for who they are, anything illegal, and fake or spam accounts. Those aren't a matter of local taste, so they get the same answer everywhere.
Everything else belongs to the neighborhood. Someone being rude, argumentative or wrong is a neighborhood, not a violation. Towne is built so neighbors sort that out themselves, through votes and the Mark as Political flag today, and, as each town grows, through its own established neighbors reviewing reports about their neighbors.
Accounts are removed for abuse, not for disagreement, and never for being quiet.
If you think a call was wrong, email [email protected] and say so.
This page is the plain-language version. The binding document is the Terms of Service, where section 8 covers conduct in full. If the two ever disagree, the Terms win and I have made a mistake here that I would like to know about.