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 of.

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.

Note on Image Uploads

Uploaded images are limited to 250 KB. If you’re using the main Tesseract frontend, you can pre-process images to webp during the upload to reduce them below that limit. Otherwise, you will need to crop, scale, and/or compress them before uploading or host them externally (imgur, catbox, etc).

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, 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.

Definitions of Free Speech:

Free speech: Done in good faith. “I can speak my mind without fear of being arrested”
“Freeze peach”: Done in bad faith. “I can say the worst things imaginable without consequences because ‘free speech, y’all’”

We try our best to respect the right to free expression (within the bounds of civility), but “freeze peach” will not be tolerated.

#2 Bot Policy

In short, no bots are allowed unless explicitly approved in advance by a site administrator.

Approved bots must flag themselves as a bot and must have their operator’s contact info in their bio. Any/all unauthorized bots or bots that do not identify themselves and their operator will receive a permanent ban; no exceptions. Bots interacting from remote instances will be banned as well if they are annoying.

If there is a bot that is banned and you would like to see it unbanned, please DM one of the admins, and we will review it.

#3 ChatGPT and AI-Generated Content

I do not care what you asked ChatGPT or asked an “AI” to generate 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 generally also disallow “moe” or other similar content because both of the admins here think it’s kind of gross to fetishize cartoons like that. A lot of people disagree, and we realize our generalization of that is controversial, but we have decided to lump that in with NSFW / pornography since it’s not something we want to see or moderate.

#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.

#6 Mis-/Disinformation Policy

Submissions should not deliberately contain or spread disinformation / misinformation. This includes pushing conspiracy theories. 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 must be added as an addendum to the post in the body. This will be enforced for both posts to local communities as well as posts from federated ones.

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. Our moderation toolset can detect this, and offending accounts will be banned (local or remote).

Vote manipulation is defined as using multiple accounts under the control of a single individual or group to boost or demote specific content (yours or someone else’s) for any purpose (pushing a specific narrative, trying to silence someone you disagree with, etc). Sock puppeting is similarly defined, but for the act of creating a false quorum and steering discourse. For the purposes of enforcement of this rule, astroturfing is defined the same as sock-puppeting; the difference being that the accounts are possibly operated by different people for the same goal of intentionally steering discourse.

#8 Absolutely No Extremism

I don’t care which end of the spectrum you’re on. Any post/comment calling for or glorifying violence, especially political violence, will be removed. Offenders will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but bans will be the norm and swift for violating this rule. Well-intentioned extremism is still extremism, and I would dare say all extremists consider themselves “well intentioned”. Either way, they’re not welcome here, and we’re not here to platform anyone’s revolution.

We define two forms of extremism for the purposes of rule enforcement:

Explicit Extremism:

Explicitly praising or justifying acts of violence
Explicitly justifying / advocating for violence / “revolution” / whatever
Suggesting, justifying, or advocating political violence, vigilantism, and/or breaking with the foundational principles of this country in order to “solve” a problem.
Hypocritical posts/comments that amount to “Fascism / authoritarianism / whatever -ism is bad, but a little bit is okay when it’s my side doing it”
Stirring the pot by jumping into otherwise civil discussions and suggesting acts of violence
Purity tests: “If you’re not with me, you’re against me” attitudes. Expecting others to bend to their every, often illogical, whim or else they’re a valid target / collaborator / sympathizer, etc. Grow up.

Implicit Extremism:

Patterns of upvoting or boosting posts/comments that explicitly praise, endorse, or advocate for violence (or any of the ‘explicit’ items above)
Patterns of downvoting posts/comments that denounce violence or those that advocate for lawful/peaceful solutions.

Alternate Frontends

The default UI for DubVee is called Tesseract but we also have, sigh, Lemmy UI if it’s not your cup of tea: https://lemmy.dubvee.org/

You can also 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/