DubVee is not your typical federated link aggregator. In order to achieve our goals, we have to do things a little differently compared to other instances. We want the “default” experience to be positive, welcoming, and non-toxic without requiring new users to discover and deal with the toxic parts on their own. We want everyone to be able to go to the homepage without the default experience making them say “what the fuck?!” and turn away. (That’s literally what happened when I tried inviting a few Reddit colleages to the fediverse).

Some people may disagree with that; that’s fine and is part of the beauty of the Fediverse. There are plenty of other instances that let you rawdog everything (and everyone) the Fediverse has to offer which you can then curate on your own.

Dubvee is not such an instance, and that is a feature we’re proud to offer.

As an instance, we’re pretty heavily moderated in order to maintain a welcoming atmosphere that fosters civil discussion. We don’t “tone police” everything, but we do expect users, local and remote, to behave themselves and act in a rational, civilized manner. Those who cannot, local or federated, are quickly shown the door.

We also expect people to be here because they want to be here (the Fediverse) rather than being here because they’re too toxic and/or have been banned everywhere else.

Instance Rules

Unless otherwise stated, these rules apply to both local accounts and those interacting from federated instances.

#1 Be Civil and Nice

You should absolutely not consider this instance a “bastion of free speech” in any way, shape or form. Please read our Free Speech Policy for further details.

Be here because you want to be here. This is not a refuge for people who have been banned from other social sites. If you’re here because you’ve been banned everywhere else, you’ll definitely get banned here too - probably faster.

There is a zero tolerance policy in place for hate speech, bigotry, racism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, xenophobia, and any other uncivil or hateful behavior.

Inappropriate usernames/display names, especially those containing racist or any other inappropriate slurs will not be approved, and any interacting from remote instances will be banned without warning.

#2 Bot Policy: No Fscking Bots

The only “bots” allowed are ones that are run by a human using a scheduler to queue up posts. Automated/indiscriminate bot-posting is a scourge; content for content’s sake and just noise wasting space and resources. This is a platform for humans to interact and talk about cool stuff. If you want botspam, go somewhere else.

#3 AI-Generated Content

I do not care what you asked ChatGPT or asked an “AI” to crap out for you, and I will not waste resources on my systems hosting it. AI generated drivel will be removed with prejudice. This instance is for humans to interact.

#4 NSFW and Controversial Content

In short: Try to keep posts and comments rated R at most, preferably PG-13 or lower. I don’t give a fuck about language; just don’t be an asshole.

Pornography is strictly prohibited. Any content posted that is deemed pornographic will be removed and the account banned. We also consider “moe” and other similar content to be pornographic because both of the admins here think it’s extremely gross to fetishize cartoons like that.

#5 No Advertising/Self-Promotion

Accounts are prohibited from advertising products or services. There’s a big difference between posting about a cool project you’ve been working on/found and shilling for a product/company that will be enforced on a know-it-when-we-see-it basis.

Blogspam is also prohibited. If you’re only here to farm clicks to your personal blog, then you’re going to be shown the door.

#6 Mis-/Disinformation Policy

Submissions should not deliberately contain or spread disinformation / misinformation. This includes pushing conspiracy theories and highly sensationalized content. Submissions determined to fit that criteria will be removed. This includes any and all posts from sources MBFC deems low credibility (regardless of community) or any non-news source presented as a news article.

All links to news articles must be to the original source. Link shorteners, archive links, etc are prohibited as the main URL for a post. If you wish to provide such a link, it may be added as an addendum to the post in the body.

Remote communities must also be compatible with this rule. Remote news communities that do not enforce submission credibility minimums, or those which allow non-credible sources, will be removed upon discovery. Similarly, news/politics communities that encourage archive links instead of canonical URLs will also be removed/hidden.

There will be absolutely no exceptions to this rule.

#7 Agendas, Astroturfing, Sockpuppeting, and Brigading

We do not allow accounts to push agendas outside of dedicated communities; that’s not what we’re here for. This is a little difficult to codify, but basically if you want to push a stance on something, keep it to a community dedicated to that topic. Local users are free to create and grow a community for this purpose as long as it adheres to all other instance rules.

For example, if you don’t like cars, keep your anti-car sentiment to appropriate communities such as c/fuckcars rather than dredging up every anti-car post you can find and spreading those across news and other communities. Similarly, don’t jump into the comments of unrelated communities just to push your anti-car stance (unless it’s directly relevant).

This rule sounds way more draconian than it is, but the purpose of it is to discourage brigading and keep communities civil and on topic.

Accounts should not engage in astroturfing, sock-puppeting, or vote manipulation.

#8 Absolutely No Extremism, Calls for Violence, Doxxing, Threats, etc.

We don’t care which end of the spectrum you’re on. Any content calling for or glorifying violence, especially political violence, doxxing, threats (veiled or otherwise), etc will be removed. Offenders will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but permabans are the norm and swift for violating this rule. Instances whose admins encourage, espouse, or condone this kind of rhetoric are candidates for de-federation.

Upvoting other people advocating violence is still advocating violence. You’re fine to read it and agree, but a vote is an action (i.e. this isn’t “thought-crime”).

Well-intentioned extremism is still extremism, and I would dare say all extremists consider themselves “well-intentioned”. Either way, they are not welcome here, and we’re not here to platform anyone’s digital lynch mob or revolution. No matter how justified you feel violence may be, that’s not something we will allow here nor the lynch mob demographic we want to have around. This is a chill space; leave your perceived war outside.

#9 No Activists, Identity Politics, -ist's, nor -ism's

Be a person, not a mouthpiece.

Alternate Frontends

The default UI for DubVee is called Tesseract and is developed by the admins of this instance. We no longer offer Lemmy-UI as the devs have decided to add a giant “donation” banner that cannot be disabled and puts words in the mouths of all instances regarding what content is acceptable.

If you do not like Tesseract, you can use any app of your preference by installing and/or running it locally and pointing it to DubVee.

For a comprehensive list of Lemmy apps, check out https://www.lemmyapps.com/