Loomio
Mon 24 Sep 2012 8:34PM

Community Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

ST Sean Tilley Public Seen by 74
ST

Sean Tilley Mon 24 Sep 2012 8:34PM

One of the more important issues that Diaspora's community members have been concerned about is the inclusion of Terms of Service and a Privacy Policy.

Many pods at the moment have no TOS at all, and some countries require that every site hosted in their country have something. Not having clear policies in place can be problematic; moreso to the point that it can create legal barriers for those that just want to host their own pod.

Here's what I think: We need a generic TOS and PP. They are important for creating a form of legal protection for podmins and users, and they also help establish the guidelines of that specific pod's culture. Some pods, like Diasp.org, don't allow for pornographic content. Of course, users can still access it by federating with other pods, but general guidelines for memberships on a pod can set a certain standard for the type of audience that uses it.

For example, a school/work-appropriate pod could be encouraged to follow a set of guidelines for language and content that sets the standard for how people interact there, but other pods geared towards different communities could have much more relaxed restrictions, or in some cases, no restrictions at all.

Of course, the Terms should also address that a podmin is not responsible for the content and users of the site, so as to produce a Safe Harbor. For that matter, it ought to also be indicated that a podmin isn't responsible for content from other pods on the network.

JH

Jonne Haß Mon 24 Sep 2012 8:41PM

Sorry Sean, this feels like a duplicate of http://loom.io/discussions/728 to me (except that this one has a better title).

ST

Sean Tilley Mon 24 Sep 2012 8:41PM

What would also be extremely useful is to have a system in place for podmins to easily change the TOS. I think it'd be neat to keep the generic TOS/PP in a database table as a string, or failing that, part of the app config. Modifying the terms could work like so:

  1. Podmin updates terms to the site via some field in the admin panel.

  2. As soon as the TOS is updated, all users are flagged with a simple value of true or false for a "signed-tos" variable.

  3. Users that have the value "false" are presented with a popup modal presenting the new Terms of Service, with a checkbox for a user stating that they understand and agree to the terms. In the future, it'd be nice to allow for users that disagree to still be able to export their data and photos to move to a pod with terms that they DO agree with.

  4. As soon as a user signs it, their personal value is flipped to "True", and they don't have to worry about it until the terms are updated again.

ST

Sean Tilley Mon 24 Sep 2012 8:45PM

@Jonne: Although this too points to the need for a TOS/PP, this applies more to a project-wide support of easily being able to update the Terms of Service / Privacy Policy on any Diaspora pod, rather than illustrating that joindiaspora.com itself needs them.

JH

Jonne Haß Mon 24 Sep 2012 9:04PM

Well the discussion over there went to project wide stuff pretty fast, that's why I said the title is just better here :)

T

tortoise Mon 24 Sep 2012 9:15PM

While the original discussion began with the absence of TOS/PP on JD, the proposal there actually asks for what you are discussing here. Sometimes discussions are not algorithmic! :) (I suppose I will get a beautifully friendly comment from Jonne on that.)

@Sean, these are excellent ideas. I am grateful to see some serious consideration about this. Podmins should be free to modify any TOS/PP to reflect what they deem to be fair use and fair conduct they expect on their pod, but there should be something that is actually posted and easy to find.

The boilerplate in the install sounds good (if this is what you are decribing). Also how users are pinged if there is a new revision.

Might it be possible that a "auto-survey" is done on the network that shows if a TOS/PP is posted at a pod. Could there be a way this is verified with some kind of ping? The results would be posted at a neutral site, such as DiasporaFoundation, or whatever.

If a pod has one posted, the link is downloaded and a thumbs up icon is displayed. If none, then a thumbs down.

People can decided where they want to go by surveying the different pods and the variety in their TOS/PP off of one page.

Perhaps even a grid that shows "features" like Porn OK? (check). Trolling not tolerated? (check). Animated avatars? (check). OK these are just illustrations.

This reporting chart also encourages a podmin to stay on top of it. It encourages trust. If people want to go to the dark side of the tracks they certainly are free to. But at least people are better informed before they sign on to a pod.

EP

elf Pavlik Tue 25 Sep 2012 11:00AM

I encourage you to collaborate on ToS topic with friends from http://tos-dr.info (of http://unhosted.org fame)

G

goob Tue 25 Sep 2012 4:17PM

Sean, your ideas look good to me on first reading. I think it would be worth developing two things (which are really two instances of the same thing):

  1. a generic, default ToS/PP for Diaspora pods, which can be adapted by podmins to suit the kind of pod they run (for instance, you mention diasp.org not allowing pornographic imagies);

but within this,

  1. a minimum ToS/PP, to which any pod must subscribe in order to be able to connect to the Diaspora network. In this, what are the 'deal-breakers' - such as basic respect for user privacy; not to retain a copy of user data once an account has been closed or migrated; not to harvest or retain any user data from accounts on other pods, and so on. This gives users some security, knowing that any pod they sign up to will subscribe to these minimum terms, and any pod which doesn't come up to these standards will be kicked off the network (if that's possible).

Does that make sense?

ST

Sean Tilley Tue 25 Sep 2012 4:38PM

Hey Goob,

I agree that a generic, minimalistic TOS is probably fine for shipping by default, but I'm not sure about forcing pods to have a TOS to be part of the network. It just strikes me as something that is not only difficult to enforce, but it could be viewed as a restriction against the Open Web ("Accept these conditions as a podmin, or you can't federate with us.").

I think if we're going to really be a decentralized network that federates with other platforms, those kind of restrictions are problematic in principle.

As for working with TOS;DR, I'm all for it. Maybe if we talk to them, they could set up a section for Diaspora pods or, failing that, maybe PodUptime could link to each pod's TOS through the TOS;DR service?

JR

Jason Robinson Tue 25 Sep 2012 6:30PM

Yeah I would strongly be opposed personally to forcing some kind of TOS on pods. Podmins should be able to set their ToS as they wish.

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