Open networks still need human boundaries.

Where these guidelines apply

These Guidelines apply to your use of the Ratspeak app and official Ratspeak services. They also describe the standard we use when evaluating reports and deciding whether infrastructure should appear in an official Ratspeak directory.

Ratspeak is intended for adults age 18 and older.

Treat people as people

Communicate without coercion, targeted abuse, or deception. Respect another person’s privacy, boundaries, identity, and decision to disengage. A decentralized network does not make harmful conduct consequence-free.

Content and conduct we do not allow

• Violence and targeted harm: credible threats, coordination of violence, stalking, or encouragement of self-harm.
• Harassment and hateful conduct: sustained abuse, intimidation, or attacks directed at a person or protected group.
• Abuse and exploitation: coercion, predatory behavior, exploitation, or conduct that endangers another person. Content or conduct that abuses, exploits, or endangers a child is prohibited.
• Privacy and consent violations: doxxing, credential theft, intimate material shared without consent, or exposing information that creates a safety risk.
• Fraud and deception: impersonation, scams, phishing, or falsely presenting an independent service as official Ratspeak infrastructure.
• Technical and network abuse: malware, spam, denial of service, resource exhaustion, or attempts to bypass safety and access controls.
• Illegal material: content or conduct that violates applicable law or infringes another person’s rights.

Be a good network participant

Reticulum can operate over scarce, shared, and community-managed links. Do not flood interfaces, exhaust storage, abuse discovery, forge official Ratspeak status, or deliberately degrade service for others. Follow operator policies and the radio and communications rules that apply where you are.

Public channels and independent hubs

A channel hub can read the channel messages it relays. Join only hubs you trust. A listing or discovery result is not an endorsement, and an independent hub may apply different rules or no meaningful moderation at all.

Official Ratspeak hubs, when available, will be clearly labeled and will follow these Guidelines. We may remove an independent hub from an official directory or warn users when credible reports show severe abuse, deception, or safety risk. That does not remove the underlying hub from the decentralized network.

Block, leave, and report

• Block: use the person view to stop displaying that participant’s channel activity locally. Network blackholing may also be available for known identities.
• Leave: disconnect from a channel or hub if it is unsafe, unwanted, or not what it claimed to be.
• Report: use the report action to prepare an email, review what will be shared, add context, and send it to mail@ratspeak.org.

Preserve relevant identifiers, dates, hub and channel names, and a short description. Do not forward illegal imagery or expose more personal information than necessary. Reports are not sent automatically.

How Ratspeak responds

For official services, Ratspeak may investigate, warn, restrict access, remove content or listings, preserve evidence where legally required, and refer credible imminent threats or illegal material to appropriate authorities. We prioritize imminent danger, exploitation, non-consensual intimate material, serious privacy violations, and severe or repeated targeted abuse.

For an independent hub, we may provide safety guidance, contact its operator when known, suppress it from an official directory, or act on other official Ratspeak services. We cannot promise removal from infrastructure we do not operate. We do not guarantee an individual outcome, but we will review good-faith reports as promptly as reasonably possible.

Immediate danger and support

Ratspeak is not an emergency service and cannot locate a peer from a nickname alone. If someone is in immediate danger, contact the emergency service or a trusted local organization appropriate to your location.