Given policies taken by many major tech companies recently, we thought it was worthwhile to clarify our position and role when it comes to content generated on a Crowdstack.

Cut to the chase... we won't ever censor content or allow content reach to be manipulated.

Just last week, Mailchimp become the latest tech company to legitimize censorship. Here is the email that they sent their customers:

While Mailchimp has every right to enforce any rules they like, and they are certainly not the first to do so, we make clear in our policies that the only reason that we will ever interfere (and remove) content from a Crowdstack is if we are compelled by an official government/legal order.  We will never take content down simply because we disagree with it.

We are a communication platform and we serve our customers, each of whom can set their own content guidelines, but our job is to provide the infrastructure and not take any kind of editorial position.

To be clear, each of our customers sets its own content rules and we have no control over the rules it makes for its own community.  In other words, a customer running a Crowdstack may choose to censor content --  that's its prerogative -- but not something we do ourselves.

We want to be the home for online communities of all types. Unless your community is doing something illegal or against our overall guidelines, we welcome everyone and respect free speech.

100% Organic Reach

Another trend in social media is manipulation of content reach - choosing winners and losers in the way that content is accessed. Oftentimes, content networks suppress content that they disagree with in ways that can be subtle or quite profound. That will never happen in Crowdstack.

First off, we have no management authority over the content posted on a Crowdstack. Even if you disregard that fact, we will never review the content to make any kind of editorial opinion or impact what is promoted or suppressed.

We have no tools for Crowdstack admins to throttle content reach, either, though we do have tools for promoting content (like "featuring").

To summarize, we consider ourselves a neutral processor and platform.  We have one job to do and that is to give our customers the best engagement tools for their audiences. We don't choose winners or losers amongst our customers or the end users participating in a Crowdstack. Our customers are the ones who set the rules for each Crowdstack they run, not us, and we respect that boundary.

UPDATE JANUARY 2021: We've made this a formal policy on our site here: https://www.crowdstack.com/policies/censorship.php