These Community Standards are a part of the Murmuration, Inc. Terms of Use. You can find our full Terms of Use here.

Murmuration’s community standards are intended to ensure that our partners use our products and services to foster safe and trusted spaces for supporting, enabling, and encouraging community-centered collective power. As such, treating people with dignity is at the core of our community standards.

TREAT PEOPLE WITH DIGNITY: Partners commit to taking reasonable steps to create and promote their content in a considerate manner, free of vitriol, that aligns with Murmuration’s vision of creating thriving communities through civic engagement and a healthy participatory democracy. 

To ensure partners are treating others with dignity, the following activities are explicitly DISALLOWED from any partner using our services:

Engaging in the dissemination of misinformation and/or disinformation.
Misinformation and disinformation undermine the integrity of our democracy. Misinformation is misleading, untruthful, or outdated information that erodes the trust in people and systems that are essential for individual and community safety, security, and growth. Misinformation also includes out-of-context information that is misleading; including, but not limited to, outdated scientific information, conspiracy theories, and debunked stories.

Disinformation is false, misleading information that is created with the intent to deceive, or a willful disregard for generally accepted facts.

Disinformation may also include the following intentional misrepresentations by way of example:

• Misrepresentation of the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
• Misrepresentation of who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information and/or materials must be provided to vote.
• Misrepresentation of who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided to participate.
• Content stating that census or electoral participation may or will result in law enforcement consequences (for example, arrest, deportation, or imprisonment).
• Explicit claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.

Perpetuating racism, sexism, or xenophobia or bullying any population of people.
Partners may not create or distribute content that uses pejorative language or promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups. Such statements, which can be considered hate speech, undermine equality, and impact the wellbeing of individuals, which is unacceptable in our communities. Any statements of inferiority based on the following categories or calls for segregation may be considered hate speech:

• Age
• Sex
• Gender Identity and Expression
• Sexual Orientation
• Caste
• Accessibility
• Ethnicity
• Nationality
• Race
• Immigration Status
• Religion
• Victims of a Major Violent Event and heir Kin
• Veteran Status

Bullying or intimidating any individual.
We do not tolerate bullying or harassment of any kind. Bullying includes any habitual badgering intimidation targeted at a specific person with the intent to harass, as well as encouragements of self-harm.

Discouraging or restricting access to civic engagement, particularly voting.
We believe that ensuring individual voices are heard is a critical component of creating a healthy democratic culture. We do not accept any efforts by partners that discourage or hinder individuals from participating in voting activity on any level. This can include supporting broad efforts to limit the ability for voters to participate or communicating with individuals in a manner that could be interpreted as dissuading them from participating in civic engagement or voting.

Undermining trust in the democratic process, particularly elections.
The democratic culture that we are striving for is built on the assumption that the democratic processes represent the intentions of communities across the nation. We will not tolerate any efforts by partners that will undermine, propagate distrust, or directly threaten the laws and the organizations, peoples, and positions of those who create and support them – including the refusal or rejection of the legitimacy of an election without credible evidence.

Opposing reasonable regulations or government oversight, or undermining our government’s ability to serve its constituents.
We believe that government exists to protect its citizens and provide public services that lead to healthy, free, and dignified lives for all. Any efforts by partners to oppose any reasonable regulations and oversight undercuts the democratic process that our nation is built upon and prevents its constituency from the power it is intended to wield.

Diminishing trust in scientific knowledge or the scientific process itself.
There is an important factual basis behind the scientific process that is critical for our society to have the most accurate information to drive knowledge and understanding. We expect that the engagement and dialogue Murmuration’s tools can support rely on fact to ensure accurately informed communities. Partners cannot perform activities that cast doubt on information driven by reputable scientific evidence or activities that have been proven incorrect by such evidence.

Opposing or diminishing bodily autonomy.
In a healthy democracy, people must feel their individual rights are respected and control over their social well-being. We believe that individuals have the right to make their own decisions as it relates to their own body. Any efforts by partners to promote efforts that challenge those expectations will not be tolerated.

Promoting sugary beverages, tobacco, vaping, weapons, and/or fossil fuels.
We believe there are a limited number of products that should not be actively supported to ensure healthy and safe lives in our communities. Therefore we expect our partners to avoid supporting products and efforts that promote sugary beverages, tobacco, vaping, weapons and/or fossil fuels that lead individuals and communities to live in an environment that can impact their health and security.

Threatening or fomenting violence.
Partners may not threaten violence towards others or use our products, tools, or services to organize, promote, or incite acts of real-world violence or terrorism, or generate or distribute content that is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. When using our services, partners must think carefully about the words they use and the images they choose. They must work to ensure their content may not be interpreted by others in a way that could negatively impact the safety and security of communities. If a partner thinks that someone else might interpret the content that is being created as a threat or as promoting violence or terrorism, they should rethink their content and not send such content to their constituents. In extraordinary cases, Murmuration may report threats of violence to law enforcement or the appropriate government agency if we think there may be a genuine risk of physical harm or a threat to public safety.

Impersonating other persons.
Partners may not impersonate another person with the intent to deceive as this behavior can contribute to an erosion of trust and creates an environment for the dissemination of misinformation. This includes posting content under another person’s email address, intentionally using a deceptively similar username, or otherwise posing as a different entity with the intent to deceive.

Doxxing or invading of privacy.
To support an individual's right to privacy, partners may not post the personal information of private persons, including phone numbers, private email addresses, physical addresses, credit card numbers, social security numbers, unique governmental IDs, passwords and other types of personal, financial, or health data. Depending on the context, such as in the case of intimidation or harassment, we may consider other information, such as photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent, to be an invasion of privacy, especially when such material presents personal, financial, and safety risk to the subject.

Disseminating sexually explicit content.
Partners may not post or distribute pornography.

Spamming or engaging in commercial solicitation.
Partners may not engage in any forms of commercial solicitation. Within the content that they create using our tools and services, partners may not post commercial advertisements, link to spam websites, or otherwise vandalize a community. Those activities are not aligned with the community-building intentions of Murmuration’s products.

Designing malware or exploits.
Partners are not permitted to use our tools and services as a means to deliver malicious executables or attack infrastructure (e.g. organizing denial of service attacks or managing command and control servers). This also includes implementing or taking advantage of vulnerabilities Murmuration’s tools and services.

Adherence to these standards will help us to realize our vision of creating thriving communities in which every individual can lead a free, healthy, and dignified life. As such, Murmuration reserves the right to enforce this policy at its discretion and through any methods we deem necessary; including, but not limited to, warning letters, probationary periods, additional scrutiny, suspending partners or other users from the services, implementing technical changes, or taking appropriate legal action including reporting that partner to a law enforcement agency or an appropriate government agency or investigatory vendor or other entity.

If you believe a Murmuration partner has violated this policy please reach out to info@murmuration.org.