Just about any website you visit will have some terms of service that both parties abide by regarding the usage of the site and external factors. And your Pleroma site is no different. Pleroma provides an easy way to edit the site’s terms of service and, by default, will display your terms to new users at the point of registration. This way, you can make sure new users see those terms. And, if you decide you don’t want to bother with terms, you are not required to use them.
- How To Add Terms Of Service To Your Pleroma Site
- Do You Need Terms of Service?
- Security Procedures
- Speech and Discourse Policies
- General Conduct
How To Add Terms Of Service To Your Pleroma Site
You can easily edit your site’s terms of service through the Admin FE interface:
- Log into Admin FE
- Click Other under Settings
- Edit the Terms of Service field with your own terms
Do You Need Terms of Service?
Having updated terms of service is not at all a requirement for having a Pleroma site. By default, your site has a dedicated place for you to add terms, but you don’t have to use them.
However, there are benefits to having terms of service available to new users. All new users will see your terms of service at the time of registration.
Most of all, for you, as the admin of the site, terms of service provide a binding legal agreement for how your site works and how users and admins agree to manage the site. You and your users are bound to these terms. There are many instances in which having a binding set of rules available can help adjudicate a possible conflict. Basically, having terms of service is a good protection for you.
Security Procedures
The terms of service is an ideal place to inform your users about relevant security practices. For example:
- How do you protect user identity?
- What security measures are taken to protect the server?
- What practices do you recommend to users in order to protect their own accounts?
- What sorts of mitigation strategies are in place to recover from a potential hack?
It is not recommended to say so much about security applications and practices that you could compromise your site. However, a paragraph or two outlining the basic facts can be very helpful for your users who may be curious.
Speech and Discourse Policies
In a community where speech and discourse on all sorts of topics is encouraged, you might worry about certain patterns of negative speech, such as hate speech or harassment of some kinds. A good rule of thumb is to bind your users to the free speech laws that govern their country of origin. It’s easy to add this to your terms to service with as little as a sentence. This way, you can moderate your community as needed without worrying about writing elaborate speech codes.
General Conduct
Likewise, if you have any particular notes on expected or desired conduct for the community, you are best advised to put them in your terms of service. Conduct rules can include notes of bullying, intimidation, or anything you might find objectionable. It’s your community so you make the rules.
