This document was last reviewed 27th of April, 2022. It was updated at that time with the following:

• GDPR-related obligations were clarified, and an attempt to explain in "plain english" each portion of the text was made.
• A segment of the data usage policy relating to public timeline access was removed, as this has been disabled for well over a year.
• A segment of the data storage policy was added, clarifying technical details around the storage and processing of posts and media, including DMs.
• A segment of the data usage policy was added, clarifying the information that will be shared when creating a report.

User conduct policies

Users are asked to abide by the following rules, to be considerate of others, and to act with respect on this service. The rules/policies of queer.party are as follows.

• Any content or postings which may be illegal under German or Scottish law are not permitted.
• Any content or postings containing Nazi symbolism, ideology and the promotion thereof, are strictly forbidden and seriously uncool.
• Racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and any other discriminatory conduct which attacks any individual or group of individuals based on what they are or what they believe in, is strictly forbidden and also seriously uncool.
• Any conduct which abuses this Mastodon instance, or which causes harm to other Mastodon instances, and/or the users thereof, is strictly forbidden and seriously uncool.
• Any conduct which attempts to further propaganda or disinformation, especially as relating to current events (eg. COVID-19 disinformation or russian propaganda) is strictly forbidden.
• Any content or postings advertising or publicising financial scams, especially NFTs, is strictly forbidden.
• While essentially all posts not violating the above are welcome on this instance, you are asked to be considerate and respectful of others - for example, tagging a post about a controversial subject or a commonly-held phobia using content warnings.
• Basic parts of your user profile, such as username/display name, profile picture and banner, must not be explicit in nature.
• Explicit/NSFW content is allowed, but must be appropriately tagged using the sensitive media and content warning tags.

In almost all cases, no action will be taken against an actual user (not clearly spam or a "troll") without discussing the matter first, but in cases of very clear disregard for queer.party's policies, moderation action may be taken immediately. In all cases, I will reach out, either via Mastodon direct messages, or via email to your registered email address, to discuss things that may break the above rules. Ignoring these messages and continuing to break rules will earn a suspension or other moderation action.

Data collection, storage and usage policies

queer.party is, first and foremost, user privacy oriented. Please exercise common sense where there are any gaps in this policy, as it was written by a human with no prior experience in writing such policies. This instance of Mastodon collects the following information for the purposes of handling user registrations and account management:

• Username (for purposes of identification on the platform)
• Email address (for purposes of verifying registration, sending platform emails such as digests or notifications, or for moderator communication)
• Most recent IP address (for purposes of manual verification in case of account recovery)
• Date and time of account creation, and date and time of most recent account activity (such as logging in, for purposes of manual verification in case of account recovery)

As part of your usage of Mastodon, your user preferences are also stored, for purposes of ensuring your personal preferences are consistent across login sessions.

As part of the basic function of Mastodon, your profile information, posts and media (pictures, videos, audio, etc) are stored on the server.
Any media, including profile pictures/banners, pictures/videos/etc attached to a post, is stored as a plain file, and served by an Amazon S3-compatible service hosted internally to queer.party. Where media is "orphaned" (ie., when you change your profile picture, delete a post to which the media was attached, etc), the files will be automatically deleted.
Any other data, including profile information, posts and DMs, is stored on disk within a PostgreSQL database.
From a purely technical standpoint, this means that I (@Maffsie, the administrator) have the ability to view anything stored in the database, including private messages, or stored as media. Unfortunately there is little that can be done about this without making Mastodon a much less accessible software package. Additionally, administrators of remote Mastodon instances to which people you send private messages to will have similar access to the private messages sent and received.
Please understand that in the vast majority of cases, and certainly within queer.party, nobody with access to this data actually wants to have access to it.
Nonetheless, when using the service, please keep in mind that your private messages are technically accessible to administrators whether we want it or not. For security when communicating over private messages, I recommend looking into systems such as OTP encryption for each message.
Finally, if a participant of a private conversation chooses to report a private message, the private message(s) that were reported will be visible to administrators in the report.
I respect your privacy, and wish I could do more to protect it.

Data made available externally of this instance of Mastodon is done so exclusively for the purposes of federating with other instances. This data must not be obtained, stored, re-published outside the context of another ActivityPub instance, such as a Mastodon or Pleroma instance. Access to or collection of information from this Mastodon instance outwith the above ("normal federation activity within the Fediverse") is expressly disallowed. No information (whether data or metadata) may be accessed, collected, stored, aggregated, analysed or otherwise obtained, processed or retained. This policy applies retroactively, and you are required to immediately remove information stored if in violation of this policy.

This paragraph pertains to the legal obligations of this service and your use of it. I have done my best to word it clearly, and a "plain english" reading will precede each line and will look like this.

queer.party, as a service operated within the EU, needs to comply with the law, called the GDPR, and by using this service (by registering an account) you are agreeing to the following terms
As a function of your agreement with queer.party as a GDPR Data Controller and Processor, which is indicated by your registration, there are several terms to which you are consenting, agreeing and confirming that you understand.
You will receive email when you do certain things - these are called transactional emails - or when I as the administrator need to contact you about your account - these are called administrative communications. You cannot turn these off. If you want, you can get periodic emails about new posts or interactions, and you can turn these on or off as you please.
For the purposes of normal operation of an account on this service, you consent to email being sent to your registered account address relating to your account, including opt-in periodic emails, transactional emails and administrative communications.
queer.party is part of the fediverse - a network of servers that talk the same language and allow users to freely interact across boundaries. By making and using an account, you're agreeing that your profile information can be shared with other parts of the fediverse, and you are in control of how public or private your posts are.
For the purposes of normal operation of this service, you consent to, agree and understand that your usage may be transmitted ("federated") to other ActivityPub services ("instances", "nodes") in accordance with the privacy settings under your control.
By making and using your account, you agree to the terms of service and acceptable use policies listed, and you are agreeing to any future changes made to them. You can revoke your agreement by deleting your account.
For the purposes of enforcing the published terms of services and acceptable use policies of this service ("ToS", AUP", collectively referred to as the "contract"), you agree and understand that these are "living" documents which may be updated as the need arises, and that any changes made are applied immediately.
If you break the rules, your account might be banned or limited, and you agree to this happening.
For the purposes of ensuring safety of the service, its users and any instances with which federation occurs, you understand and agree that pursuant to Article 6 subparagraph 1, clause (b) of the General Data Protection Regulation, any and all data related to your account may be irrevocably destroyed upon breach of the ToS and AUP listed on this website.
If you break the rules and your account is limited, you agree that anything you did that broke the rules can be deleted, and limitations can be made to, including but not limited to, stop your account posting anything without a content warning, or stop your account from showing up to people who don't follow you.
Upon infringement/breach of the ToS and/or AUP where account termination is not necessary, a warning message will be issued to the account holder, and any content stored which violates any legal statutes will be irrevocably destroyed, pursuant to Article 6 subparagraph 1, clause (c) of the GDPR. Depending on the severity/circumstances of the infraction, other limitations may be imposed temporarily or permanently, including but not limited to automatic marking of all media or posts as sensitive content, or blocking posts from being shown to any other account who is not explicitly following the infringing account.
If you break the rules and get banned, you agree and understand that you will have 30 days to dispute the ban, download a copy of your account's data, or delete your account. You also agree that if you ask for a copy of your accounts data, that copy will be stored for up to one week from the first time you download it, or up to one month from when you asked for it, which-ever happens first.
Where account termination has been deemed necessary, the infringing account will be suspended, initiating a 30-day counter during which time the account holder may log in and dispute the suspension, generate an export of any and all data held on the service, and request early termination of the account.
Once generated, an export of account data is held for a maximum of one week after being downloaded, or one month after being generated, whichever comes first.
After the 30 days, you acknowledge and understand that all information related to your account will be deleted, and cannot be restored or disputed.
Upon termination of an account being requested, or upon expiration of this 30-day counter, the account is permanently closed, and all data related to the account is irrevocably erased, pursuant to Article 6, subparagraph 1, clause (f) - legitimate interest of the data controller, for the purposes of reducing active storage space and for reducing the amount of data held.
Upon termination of an account, no data subject to the conditions of the GDPR is retained.
I hope this document has made it clear that queer.party wishes to collect, retain and process as little information as possible in order to provide service.