Under our Rules, TIC may suspend or limit the distribution of controversial or extreme content at its discretion, including potentially harmful misinformation and intentionally deceptive disinformation. For all reported content, we take into account factors like newsworthiness, the context and nature of the posted information, reasonable likelihood, breadth, and intensity of foreseeable social harm, and applicable laws.
Risk Analysis
In evaluating controversial and extreme content under our rules, we apply a risk analysis which includes, at minimum, the following questions:
- What are the foreseeable negative consequences of the information being propagated by our network, and shared on other social media networks?
- How severe might the potential impact be?
- What is the likelihood of the negative consequence occurring?
- Who will likely be affected as a result?
- Is there information from nationally and internationally recognized institutions, (such as the CDC, WHO, and other official bodies) to help us determine if content presents an elevated risk and potentially violates our rules?
Guidelines
As a result, the following are some examples of content areas with elevated risk, which are therefore more likely to be suspended or subject to reduced distribution under our rules:
- Pseudo-scientific claims related to asserting the superiority or inferiority of a particular group (on bases including race, ethnicity or gender).
- Health claims or advice which, if acted on, are likely to have detrimental health effects on persons or public safety.
- Conspiracy theories which have an associated history of harassing, hateful, or violent incidents among its adherents OR theories which may foreseeably incite or cause harassment, physical harm, or reputational harm.
- Intentional distortions and especially systematic false claims about historic events and facts.
- Pseudo-scientific claims or disinformation related to climate change.
About the No Duplicate Content rule
TIC does not allow posting duplicate content on the platform, whether from a single account or across multiple accounts, either publicly or as an unlisted post.
This applies to duplicate content on TIC only. You can still have your content on your personal blog, or any other websites.
This includes the following:
- Taking a published post to unlisted, then re-publishing the same content into a new post
- Republishing a duplicate version of an existing TIC story on TIC
- Cross-posting posts in other accounts. If your post is already included on TIC, you may not publish another instance of the same story for inclusion in another publication
TIC’s distribution system is designed to effectively and efficiently deliver your posts to the Worldwideweb. The existence of duplicate content from a single source disrupts this system, and ultimately results in a bad experience for your audience.
We understand every author has workflows and motivations, and that republishing content to TIC is often a large part of that. New audiences, iterative improvements, and missed opportunities are all reasons we are aware of, and to which we are sensitive.
The issue we are encountering is that these actions are sometimes at odds with our current system of distribution.
Our concern is that when your followers, any potential readers of your posts via our existing distribution systems, or our curators are repeatedly presented with duplicate content, it ultimately results in a bad experience and disrupts our designed system.
This can potentially impact your success in a variety of ways – you risk losing followers, and the topics or posts into which you are distributed could also see a loss of audience. So while the short-term gains might seem beneficial, the long-term effects are detrimental to not only all TIC readers but you as a writer.
Please note that writers can still self-publish translated versions of their own posts on their TIC account, and that would not violate the no duplicate content rule.