Community Terms
Version 1.0. Effective 1 September 2026. Superseded versions will be listed at the foot of this page as they are replaced.
The short version
This is a small, slow place, run by one person.
Be decent to the people here. Everyone is welcome — women, trans and nonbinary people, every race and faith and origin — and nobody here has to justify their own existence to you.
No bigotry, no harassment, no grinding unpleasantness. I don't have to prove you're a bigot before I show you the door, and I'm not going to argue about definitions.
If you support the site financially and I ban you for breaking these rules, you don't get your money back.
The long version below is the one that governs.
0. Preamble
Overstory Social is a small and deliberately unhurried place, operated by one person, at that person's expense, and at that person's discretion. It is not a public square, a common carrier, or a neutral utility, and it does not aspire to be any of them. It is closer to a house to which you have been invited, and the ordinary courtesies of a house apply.
What follows describes the character of this place, the conduct expected of those within it, and the circumstances under which an invitation may be withdrawn. Please read it before you accept.
1. Membership is a privilege, not an entitlement
Access to Overstory Social is granted at the sole discretion of the operator and may be restricted, suspended, or revoked at any time, for any reason or for no stated reason, with or without prior notice, and with or without explanation.
Nothing in these terms creates a right of continued access, a right of appeal, or any obligation on the operator to substantiate a decision, disclose the evidence for it, or entertain argument about it.
The sections that follow describe how that discretion is ordinarily exercised. They are a description of customary practice, not a limit upon it, and no omission from them should be read as permission.
2. The character of this place
This is intended to be a hospitable place — for women, for trans and nonbinary people, for people of every race, faith, disability, sexuality, and origin, and for anyone else who arrives in good faith and treats the people here as people.
Everyone here is presumed to be the authority on their own life and their own name. That presumption is not a topic of discussion, and it is not something anyone here will be asked to defend.
3. Conduct incompatible with membership
Your membership will ordinarily be ended if you do any of the following, whether in public posts, letters, profile material, or elsewhere insofar as it bears on the safety of this community:
(a) Advocacy of subordination. Promoting, organizing toward, or apologizing for the exclusion, subjugation, expulsion, or elimination of any group of people — however the argument is dressed, whether as politics, scholarship, faith, satire, or mere inquiry.
(b) Denial of others' personhood. Treating another person's identity or self-description as a claim to be adjudicated. This includes agitation against trans and nonbinary people, which is unwelcome here in every register, from the vulgar to the studiously polite.
(c) Misogyny, and contempt for anyone who is not a man. Sexual harassment, unsolicited sexual attention, and the broader habit of treating women and nonbinary people as lesser participants — whether it arrives as hostility, as condescension, or as flattery.
(d) Harassment. Pursuing, brigading, dogpiling, or persistently contacting someone who wishes to be left alone; publishing another person's private information; threatening anyone, in any degree of seriousness.
(e) Insignia and atrocity. Circulating the iconography, slogans, or numerology of movements organized around racial, ethnic, or national supremacy; denying or celebrating mass atrocity.
(f) Sustained unpleasantness. The accumulated small cruelties: contempt presented as candor, bad faith presented as debate, condescension presented as correction, and the practice of making oneself tiresome to everyone in the room. No single instance may warrant action. The pattern does.
(g) Anything else that, in the operator's judgment, makes this a worse place to be.
4. On the litigation of definitions
The operator is not obliged to establish that you belong to any named category before acting. It is enough that your conduct is of the kind described above.
Accordingly, arguments of the form "I am not technically a fascist,""that is not the real definition of misogyny," or "I merely have concerns" are not defenses. Demands that the operator produce evidence, submit to cross-examination, or debate the boundaries of a term are not defenses either, and a sufficiently determined attempt at one may itself furnish the grounds for removal.
5. This is not a censorship question
The operator's choices about what to host are editorial choices made by a private party on private infrastructure at private expense. They do not implicate anyone's freedom of expression, which remains entirely intact elsewhere, on the very large number of other places available for the purpose.
6. Enforcement
Depending on circumstance, the operator may do nothing, issue a private word, remove material, restrict a feature, suspend an account for a period, or terminate membership permanently. There is no tariff of offenses and no entitlement to a warning first; grave conduct will be met with permanent removal on the first occasion.
Where a membership has been terminated, returning under a new account is itself a breach of these terms, as is procuring another person to act on your behalf.
Upon termination the operator may retain or delete your material at their discretion, subject to the Privacy Policy and to any obligation imposed by law. Your writing is yours to take with you at any time: the account page builds a complete archive of it on request, in a format that reads back into this or any other site. Take it before you delete an account — deletion hides everything at once and erases it for good fourteen days later, and there is no export afterwards.
7. Supporters and money
Financial support is voluntary. It contributes to the operation and upkeep of Overstory Social; it is not the purchase of a right of access, an insurance policy against moderation, or a claim upon the operator's judgment. Supporters are held to precisely the standards set out above, and to no lesser ones.
If your membership is terminated for breach of these terms, sums already paid are forfeit. No refund, credit, or proration will be issued for any unexpired portion of a subscription or for any supporter benefit thereby lost.
Where the operator ends your membership for reasons unrelated to your conduct — including the discontinuation of the service — a pro-rata refund of the unexpired portion may be issued at the operator's discretion.
You may cancel a recurring subscription at any time from your account page; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and access continues until then.
Nothing in this section limits any refund right you may have under mandatory consumer protection law in your own jurisdiction, to the extent such law applies and cannot be waived by agreement.
8. Changes
These terms may be amended. Material changes will be announced on this page, with the version number raised and the previous version listed below, not less than fourteen days before taking effect — save where an earlier change is required by law or by an urgent risk to the community. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
Questions
Questions, and reports of anything above, go to hello@overstory.social.
Earlier versions
None yet — this is version 1.0.