A home for open conversation — the principles we hold, and the charter that binds us to them.
Freedom of speech is protected. Freedom of reach is earned.
A birdhouse is built to welcome many birds — not just those that look, think, or sing alike.
Some sing beautifully. Some sing loudly. Some are unpopular. Some are controversial. Some are wrong.
The purpose of the birdhouse is not to choose which birds may enter. It is to give them a place to be heard.
We’re building a global town square in humanity’s service — a place that strengthens the connections and communities people rely on for a free, safe, and meaningful life.
Thirteen commitments that govern how the square is built and how it is run.
Everyone may take part in public conversation — under your real name or a pen name.
What matters is how you act, not what you believe. Speech is judged on conduct and legality, never ideology.
We protect expression. We don’t guarantee amplification.
Spam, manipulation, harassment, coordinated abuse, and deliberate misinformation can lose reach. You’re entitled to speak — not to an audience.
Speech is protected. Threats, targeted harassment, doxxing, stalking, and incitement are not.
You should be able to take part without fear.
Content that sexualizes children has no place here — not disguised, not drawn, not AI-generated, not ever.
We don’t wait to be told. We find it, remove it, preserve the evidence, and report it. The one rule we never soften.
Explicit content isn’t part of the open feed — never promoted, recommended, or paid to spread.
But “safe” doesn’t mean squeamish. We don’t police human bodies, sexual health, art, or who you love or are. The line is explicit imagery and unwanted advances — not honest conversation.
Every race, religion, nationality, belief, background, and identity is welcome.
Criticize ideas; don’t attack people for who they are. We encourage disagreement. We reject dehumanization.
Fame, wealth, office, and follower count buy no special treatment.
No one is above the rules. No one is beneath them.
Your data is yours. You get simple, honest control over your privacy.
Your clicks are never used against you, never sold to strangers, never turned into a trap.
We measure success by whether this is good for you — not by hours taken from your day.
We build to respect your time and attention, not to hijack them.
Communities can form, govern themselves, and set their own house rules — and we help their volunteer moderators uphold them.
The square is shared. The rooms are yours.
When we act, you learn why. Rules are visible, processes understandable, appeals available.
Progress comes from disagreement. The answer to a bad idea is usually a better one.
The Birdhouse belongs to its users.
Our job is to serve the community, not control it — with transparency, portability, privacy, and a voice in where we go.
We believe open conversation is one of humanity’s most powerful tools.
We believe people can disagree without becoming enemies.
We believe sunlight is better than censorship.
We believe your data is yours — and your time is precious.
We believe freedom of speech should be protected, and freedom of reach should be earned.
We believe the digital town square should belong to everyone.
Welcome back to the Birdhouse. 
The formal governing charter of the platform.
Preamble. The Birdhouse exists to enable the free exchange of ideas across borders, beliefs, and backgrounds — a global information and discussion platform in humanity’s service.
Our mission is to build and reinforce the connections and communities people rely upon for survival, freedom, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. We believe freedom of expression is essential to a healthy society, and that every user deserves to take part without harassment, threats, violence, or unlawful conduct. This Constitution guides how the platform is built, governed, and moderated.
Every user may express opinions, beliefs, ideas, criticism, humor, commentary, and political viewpoints — including under a pseudonym or anonymously — without fear of censorship based solely on disagreement.
The platform does not exist to determine what people should think. It exists to allow people to think, debate, persuade, challenge, and learn.
Users are free to speak. The platform is not obligated to amplify every message.
Content that is lawful but determined to be harmful, abusive, deceptive, manipulative, or disruptive may have its visibility reduced. Freedom of expression does not guarantee promotion, recommendation, monetization, or algorithmic amplification.
Every person deserves to take part in public conversation without targeted abuse. The following are prohibited:
Disagreement is not harassment. Criticism is not harassment. Threats and targeted abuse are harassment.
The platform welcomes users of every race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political belief, sexual orientation, and background. Users may criticize ideas, ideologies, governments, institutions, movements, and public figures. Users may not advocate violence, exclusion, or dehumanization of individuals or groups. The platform exists to promote conversation, not hatred.
The safety of children is an absolute limit, not a policy preference. Any sexual content involving minors — real, altered, illustrated, or wholly AI-generated — is categorically prohibited.
We detect proactively, using industry-standard tools including image hash-matching. Confirmed material is removed immediately, the account terminated, evidence preserved, and a report filed with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and relevant authorities, as the law requires. Grooming, enticement, and the sexualization of minors in any form are prohibited. Here, there is no reach to reduce — it is removed.
The Birdhouse is a public square, and the public square is safe by default: expression is protected; amplification is earned.
The platform is intended for adults (17+) and provides controls for users to further limit sensitive content.
Users have the right to understand moderation decisions. Whenever practical: users are told why action was taken; users may appeal; major enforcement actions are reviewed by humans; and rules are applied consistently regardless of status, influence, or politics.
No one is above the rules. No one is beneath them.
The platform strives to be transparent in how content is moderated and how algorithms operate. Users deserve to know why content is limited, why accounts are restricted, why trends appear, and how recommendations work. Trust requires transparency.
The platform is for people. Pseudonymous and anonymous individuals are welcome — what we prohibit is deception at scale: impersonation, bot manipulation, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and artificial amplification. Authentic participation is always valued over artificial influence.
Users own their voices and their data. We are fair, not creepy: users get straightforward, accessible control over their privacy settings, may export their content, access their data, and choose what they share.
A user’s own clicks are never used against them through unauthorized spam, intrusion, or sale to third parties. The platform is for users — not the owner of their identities.
The platform is built to serve users, not to exploit them. We design to respect attention and time rather than to maximize compulsive use, and we give users tools to understand and manage their time. Engagement is never pursued at the expense of user wellbeing.
Users may form their own communities and set their own rules for discussion and moderation within them. The platform supports volunteer moderators in upholding their communities’ rules, consistent with this Constitution. The square is shared; its communities govern themselves.
Progress comes from disagreement. The solution to bad ideas is not always silence — very often it is better ideas. The platform supports vigorous debate, challenging conversations, and peaceful disagreement. A healthy society requires tolerance for views we may not personally share.
The platform is intended to be the world’s digital town square. In a town square, people debate, laugh, organize, campaign, protest, celebrate, and disagree. Its role is not to decide which lawful viewpoints deserve to exist — it is to provide a fair, safe, and open forum in which those viewpoints may be heard.
Every user has the right to:
Community Guidelines — the everyday rules — arrive with the platform.