Want to join Cloud Island?

Cloud Island is a paid membership instance, and payments are currently handled through the Cloud Island Patreon.

If you can't afford our subscription fee but would like to join anyway, please reach out via the contact information above!

About

Cloud Island is a paid membership, pro-actively moderated instance. Cloud Island exists because it's important to have locally-owned social networking, a neighbourhood community that's by us, for us, and seeks to resist the systemic oppression that may impact us.

We keep all our data in Aotearoa New Zealand, don't track you, and won't sell your data.

We're charging money to help get to a point where we can pay moderators and developers to improve both Cloud Island and the fediverse as a whole.

"Cloud Island" is a registered trademark of Eiara Limited.

Emoji

Pride flag emoji on this instance are CC-BY-SA, and can be found on Github.

Blobhaj emoji on this instance are CC-BY-4.0 https://plush.city/@heatherhorns and can be found on this post.

Can of worms, Enbyghost, Transghost, and Breaddab are courtesy of olivvysaur.

The x-ray emoji on this instance is CC-BY-SA 4.0, courtesy of OpenMoji.

The :forg:, :kakapo:, :shramp: and :subtoot: emoji are CC0, courtesy of https://mastodon.art/@Curator/.

The :rss: emoji is GPL licensed, sourced from Wikipedia

The :laserkiwi: emoji was sourced from Mastodon.nz, based on the "Fair use" terms listed on Wikipedia

Hosting

This instance is proudly hosted in Aotearoa New Zealand, on the Catalyst Cloud.

Code of Conduct

Version: 1.01
Last updated: 2022-12-01

TLDR:

Cloud Island has a zero-tolerance policy for racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, casteism, and any other forms of discriminatory and bigoted conduct. Nudity, sexually graphic, and violent imagery is not permitted on Cloud Island.

Harassment of other fediverse users is not permitted on Cloud Island.

Misinformation and content harmful to the public good (for example, “5G causes coronavirus” or “vaccines cause autism”) is not allowed and will be removed, and may result in an account suspension.

Sexual harassment is an instant ban.

Far-right content, expression of far-right ideologies, and/or the advocation thereof is an instant ban.

Aside from producing legal nudity or sexually graphic imagery, Cloud Island considers all other conduct performed outside of Cloud Island to be applicable under this Code of Conduct, and users may be reported based on that conduct.

The Long Version

The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of Cloud Island; they are here to provide you with an insight into our content moderation policies:

Unacceptable Content

The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:

• Excessive advertising, and
• Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources.

The following types of content will be removed, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:

• Any nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions,
• Any gore and/or extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions,
• Racism or advocation of racism,
• Sexism or advocation of sexism,
• Distribution of content harmful to the public good, examples including (but not limited to):
  • “5G causes coronavirus”,
  • “Vaccines cause autism” (or, for clarity, any other anti-vaccine content)
• Misinformation,
• Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocation thereof,
  • Including "gender critical" and other transphobic content,
• Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism, or the advocation thereof,
• Casteism, or the advocation thereof, and
• Ableism or the advocation thereof.

The following types of content are explicitly disallowed, and will result in permanent revocation of access to the service:

• Content such as holocaust denial, Nazi symbolism, promoting the ideology of National Socialism, or any adjacent ideologies.

The following types of content are explicitly disallowed, will result in permanent revocation of access to the service, and will result in a referral of any and all user-generated content, including all personally identifiable information, to the New Zealand Police Force:

• Content that is “objectionable”, as defined by the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act (1993),
• Content that is in breach of Aotearoa New Zealand court-mandated suppression orders.

Harassment

Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other users, or to impede other users from utilising the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other users, or to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service and/or referral to the New Zealand Police force, at our discretion.

This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviours:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion,
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment,
• Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names,
• Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate,
• Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop,
• Threats of violence,
• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm,
• Deliberate intimidation,
• Stalking or following,
• Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes,
• Sustained disruption of discussion,
• Unwelcome sexual attention,
• Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others,
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease,
• Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse,
• Publication of non-harassing private communication,
• Continuing to engage in conversation with a user that has specifically has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed,
• Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person's demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxxing) may be considered harassment,
• Inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.

Cloud Island and Eiara Limited prioritise the safety of marginalised people over the comfort of privileged people. As a result, we will not act on complaints regarding, but not limited to:

• ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’,
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as ‘leave me alone’, ‘go away’, or ‘I’m not discussing this with you’,
• Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial, and
• Criticising racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions.

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

Reporting

If you are being harassed by a user of Cloud Island, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact Eiara Limited at abuse@cloudisland.nz, or using the ‘Report Post’ or ‘Report User’ feature in Mastodon.

If the person who is harassing you is on the moderation team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

This Code of Conduct applies to Cloud Island, but if you are being harassed by a user of Cloud Island outside our Service, we still want to know about it.

We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by Cloud Island members, especially our moderation team, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time.

We reserve the right to exclude people from Cloud Island based on their past behaviour, including behaviour outside Cloud Island spaces and behaviour towards people who are not users of Cloud Island.

Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.

These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user's access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law.