Use Restrictions | Publishing Policy

Publishing Policy exists so that organizations and individuals can transparently define their publishing standards. We built this platform in good faith for people acting in good faith. We trust our users to use the Service responsibly, and the vast majority do.

That said, there are boundaries. This policy describes what is not allowed on Publishing Policy. If you violate these restrictions, we may suspend or terminate your account.

These restrictions are in addition to our Terms of Service.

Impersonation

You may not create a publishing policy for an organization, domain, or URL that you do not own or are not authorized to represent. This is the most serious violation on our platform because it undermines the trust that the entire system is built on.

Because any URL can be looked up on the Service — and the absence of a registered policy is itself publicly visible (“no known policy”) — impersonation is particularly harmful. Creating a false policy for an organization that has not registered creates a misleading public record. This applies whether the target organization has an account on the platform or not.

If you discover that someone has created a policy impersonating your organization, contact us immediately at team@publishingpolicy.org. We will investigate and take action.

Report abuse and score manipulation

As the Service introduces community features — including violation reporting, feedback, and reputation scoring — the following are prohibited:

False or misleading reports. Filing violation reports that you know to be false, fabricated, or materially misleading. Reports should reflect genuine observations of potential policy violations.
Coordinated manipulation. Organizing or participating in campaigns to artificially inflate or deflate an organization's reputation score through coordinated reporting, voting, or feedback — whether through multiple accounts, external coordination, or automated tools.
Retaliatory reporting. Filing reports against an organization in retaliation for that organization reporting violations against you, or for any reason unrelated to genuine policy compliance concerns.
Self-dealing. Creating multiple accounts to provide positive feedback or reports on your own organization's policy, or to suppress legitimate reports from others.

Community features exist to surface genuine accountability signals. Gaming these systems undermines the platform's purpose for everyone. We may use automated and manual methods to detect and prevent manipulation.

Prohibited content

Publishing policies created on the Service must not contain:

Hate speech or discrimination. Content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or any other protected characteristic.
Threats or harassment. Content that threatens, intimidates, or harasses any person or organization.
Illegal content. Content that promotes or facilitates illegal activity under applicable law.
Spam or commercial deception. Policies created solely for advertising, link spam, SEO manipulation, or other purposes unrelated to genuine publishing standards.
Malicious code. Content that contains or links to viruses, malware, tracking scripts, or other harmful code.

The good faith requirement

Publishing Policy is a platform for organizations that want to be transparent about their publishing standards. Policies must represent good-faith commitments — real standards that the organization intends to follow, even if imperfectly.

What good faith looks like

We recognize that different publishers have different standards, and that is the point. A tabloid and an academic journal serve different purposes and have different commitments. Both can have legitimate, honest policies. Some examples:

A blog that says “We do not fact-check our opinion pieces” — that is an honest, transparent statement. It is allowed and even encouraged. Readers deserve to know.
A news outlet that says “We rely on single-source reporting” — that is a legitimate editorial choice, openly stated. Allowed.
A platform that says “We do not moderate user-generated content” — that is a real policy choice. Allowed.

What bad faith looks like

Creating a policy you know to be false — stating commitments you have no intention of following, solely to appear credible.
Creating a policy for an organization you do not represent, to make that organization look bad or to mislead the public.
Creating a policy as a joke, parody, or satire without clearly labeling it as such.
Using the platform to harass, defame, or target a specific person or organization.

The distinction is straightforward: transparency is always welcome, even when the standards are low. Deception is not.

Technical abuse

You may not:

Collect or extract data from accounts that do not belong to you.
Circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with security features of the Service.
Place an unreasonable burden on the Service's infrastructure, including through automated requests, scraping, or denial-of-service attacks.
Upload or transmit viruses, malware, or any code designed to interfere with the Service's operation.
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, other users' accounts, or related systems.

How we enforce these restrictions

When we become aware of a potential violation, we follow this general approach:

Investigate. We review the situation to understand what happened. We do not take action based on a single report without investigation.
Contact you. In most cases, we will reach out to you before taking action. We believe most issues arise from misunderstanding, not malice.
Take proportionate action. Depending on the severity, this may range from a warning to content removal to account suspension to permanent termination.

We reserve the right to act immediately and without notice in cases involving impersonation, illegal content, security threats, or abuse directed at our team.

Reporting a violation

If you encounter content or behavior that you believe violates these restrictions, please report it to us:

Email: team@publishingpolicy.org

Please include as much detail as possible: the URL of the policy in question, a description of the issue, and any supporting evidence (screenshots, links, etc.).

We will keep the identity of the reporter confidential to the extent possible.

This policy is adapted from Basecamp's open-source policies, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.