The TOU are baroque, confused, and ambiguous. Many believe the propaganda and assume that "TOU" stands for "Terms of Use" but actually it stands for "Uhhh crap. I feel threatened by this. Do you? I've got a poopy stick in my bumbum and someone is going to hear about it, this I guarantee you."

There was a version of the agreement that made an allowance for "permission" but PM quoting is *always* still actionable, even if you post the permission. It was ultimately determined that permission / consent was a worthless clause and they dropped it.


Cutting through all the mooing one is destined to encounter on both sides of the fence (the official mooing is a recording):


If someone reports you and the tribe.net-employed human being on the other end of the wire sees that you have a point - any kind of point, weak / strong, good / bad - your post or whatever will be deleted. It's simply that with only two employees (I don't think either of them is a fancy four-named lawyer, namsayin) they just have to assume "there's a chance we can be sued", and any chance of that, no matter how small, is actionable.

---->You can't sue them for post-deletion, but you might be able to sue them for the mental anguish and personal damages that could result from private information being made public.

Imagine, for instance, that you're insane. You're involved in a hot PM thing with Sqweegle, bit it's poly, and in a PM you tell Sqweegle that you want to get it on with Panda. Sqweegle says "Tee Hee; ooh baby you iz wild. If I wasn't so good and nice and nice and good, I'd be tellin' everbuddy dat." Whereupon you, being insane, tell Sqweegle "I wish you would, bisch" and then Sqweegle posts your PM. Sunday night, your poor mother manages to get the phenohalitol or the thorazine or the librium or whatever it is into your Jack Daniels and you become slightly more sane the next day, only to discover that you've told the entire PolyAlts'n'Yiffers tribe (many of whom are in Conservative Economics, Cognitive Science, and Lawyers Against Hope) you want to break the law with an endangered species.

A) you can have the post removed. No problem. They will do it (if they have the time (donuts eh)).
B) Sqweegle might get censured (for fuck's sake don't hurt the pixie!!! thank goodness this is just fiction).
C) THEY ONLY CARE IF YOU CARE. If you don't draw attention to it, it's a noharmnofoul situation. Believe me when I tell you the 1 or 2 employees that might be saddled with that particular job most likely are not interested *at all*. "Oh look: another fucking fantasy-themed alt that fucks androgynous anthropomorphized dolphinweasels forgot his/her medication. How.... amazing and .... SIGH KILL ME."
D) The way I see it, we have at least these two primary categories of "messaage" to send to one another:
___D1) the Forum Post
___D2) the PRIVATE message
___D3) see what I did there?
E) that said, I often tell people "quote me" or "feel free" - the idea there is that if I gave you permission, then I don't care about it and if TOU Guy deletes, fine. I'm a weird guy with my own set of funky problems but I have a suspicion that you and I'll survive fine if TOU Guy doesn't like it when you post my PM about "neh neh neh, so&so is a big dumb poo" or "jesus fucking christ I'/m so fucking married buy that girl in the dolphinweasel furry suit is turning me ON" and such like.


So it's privacy. In some ways, despite it's weird clunkiness and legally ambiguous nature., the way the TOU are arbitrated nowadays is somewhat more ideal than the nonhuman / bureaucratic method of before. If a *human being* looks at your quoted shit and decides "hey, if it were me I wouldn't want people to know I'm a yiffer because, damn, that's nasty" s/he'll remove it.

P stands for Private.



They should pay me. Don't you think?