Sex is everywhere, and we have a pragmatic and mature relationship with sex and sexual content at Hachyderm. We want Hachyderm to be a home for science, technology, and collaboration while also embracing the beauty and depth of all walks of sexual life.
Modern society functions with deep-rooted and historical sexual norms that are exploitative, unfair, harmful towards marginalized people, where the danger for these individuals is often overlooked. Product marketing, sales tactics, and even corporate policies are often structured and allow for harmful culture to thrive, often in the name of hetero-normative traditions and expectations.
Many parts of the industry operate with a bias towards keeping traditional and hetero-normative sexual culture protected while demonizing sex work, kink culture, queer culture, polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, furry, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, or any other sexual area of what we refer to as “The Alphabet”.
We understand that sex work is real work, and we view sex workers equally as professional as the rest of users. We deeply believe in validating, legitimizing, and confirming many sexually marginalized cultures on our platform. We understand that silencing sexual content is typically used as a weapon to target gender minorities and sexual minorities.
Our Policy
To be candid our general policy on sexual content is:
keep it legal, and practice consent.
Absolutely under no circumstance is 18+ content allowed without a content warning.
We believe the first step in understanding how to navigate sexual content is to be a good steward of the content. We expect all Hachydermians to lead by example with regard to consent.
In other words we expect all Hachydermians to have a mature understanding of consent, and to practice consent in their daily usage of the service by offering their content with a content warning.
The first step in practicing consent is learning how to listen to the needs of others, and be respectful and cognizant of their needs. It is important that everyone understands that their own personal definition of sexually charged content will likely be different from others. We encourage users to be respectful, and ask for consent before sharing images, topics, or content that is potentially outside the scope for other users.
Additionally, we encourage anyone who finds something they deem out of scope or jarring to consider how they manage the situation.
NSFW Content
Each corporation has unique rules and policies in place to manage content that is not safe to access while on the job. It is impossible for Hachyderm to police this content on behalf of all the corporations in the world.
Here we draw on our general advice to practice consent by putting any content that you suspect to not be safe for work behind a content warning such that users can opt-in to the content.
The Law
There are many global laws in place that attempt to measure and determine what is and isn’t sexually acceptable. We acknowledge that many of these laws are structured in ways to unfairly harm marginalized communities.
These laws vary drastically by country, and in some cases by state, or city codes. It is every user’s responsibility to adhere to their local laws to the best of their ability.
Do not, under any circumstance deliberately violate the law, or your account and your content will be permanently destroyed. Hachyderm, and our governing body and legal entity assume no accountability, liability, or responsibility for our user’s content.
The general advice we have for our users is to keep any content that is potentially legally restricted to 18+ audiences well protected and well advertised. We want your sexual content to be obnoxiously “loud” about how well it is protected from the general public, and how well you practice opt-in and consensual techniques.
To be clear, we ask that any sexual content, imagery, videos, language, or suggestive content by clearly marked “18+”.
In the event we find a user is sharing content that puts Hachyderm in legal risk, we will step in and moderate accordingly. The best way to prevent your account from being moderated, is to practice marking any questionable content as “18+” as clearly and often as possible.
In the event there are noticeable instances or accounts that post 18+ content without consent, we will likely step in and moderate accordingly.
Limitations with Mastodon
Currently, Mastodon does not allow users to:
- Specify that they are 18 or over
- Mark that content is specifically 18+ or otherwise NSFW
Content Warnings, as a feature, do help by allowing users to make use of warnings to obscure text and visual media with an explanation. That said, by itself the Content Warning feature does not comply with what is legally required to prevent minors from seeing content the law considers to be 18+.
Since Hachyderm is geared for adult professionals, in order to be legally compliant and accommodate the limitation in the Mastodon tools, servers deemed to be 18+ will be either Limited or set to Reject Media.
Staying on Topic
We put the decision making power in the hands of the community on what content they chose to share will operating an account on Hachyderm. However, we do want to remind any user that Hachyderm is a place for technical professionals who will likely be looking at their federated timelines at the office.
If you are interested in sharing high volumes of sexually charged imagery, pornography, or pictures, videos, and language specifically about sex, having sex, or fantasizing about sex Hachyderm might not be the best home for you. Ultimately “how much is too much” will be up to our moderators, and our users.
Many Hachyderm mods, operators, and volunteers operate alternative accounts on other instances where they isolate their off-topic hobbies and interests such as full nudity, kink culture, sexual content, BDSM, and more. Additionally many Hachyderm mods, operators, and volunteers openly bring their sex work, dom/sub dynamics and kink articles to their work on the project. We believe we can stay on topic, while also being respectful of the vast array of sexual dynamics in the world.
General Advice
Our general advice is to not post adult 18+ content that is intended to provoke sexual arousal or openly invite behavior that is legally considered to be 18+.
In other words, don’t post adult content unless you are confident you are practicing consent and that your content is relevant to the mission, topics, and goals of Hachyderm.
We can’t guarantee that our users are 18+. If you continually post 18+ adult content, you are likely putting the service at risk, and you will likely be moderated or asked to leave Hachyderm.