Diretrizes
Preliminary note
The following guidelines are not a legal text. They are intended to help you understand the principles guiding the team at Steady that evaluates complaints about publications' content.
Principle
The audience decides which publications deserve financial support, not Steady. We are not a publishing house or editorial office and Steady does not follow any editorial guidelines. We do not interfere with publishers' content.
Freedom of expression is important to us. Therefore, we do not necessarily sanction the publication of content that we find displeasing, even when that's hard to stomach. We intervene as little as possible in the freedom of the publishers that use Steady. This includes the freedom to offer paid content that not everyone agrees to, including the Steady team.
But we do have some limits. These guidelines describe where we draw the line.
Respect
Do not use Steady to distribute or market any content that promotes or approves of hate and violence against persons or groups or that discriminates against people because of their ethnicity, religion, level of ability, gender, age, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity. For us this includes, for example, anti-Semitism, racism, inciting hate or violence towards segments of the population and Holocaust denial.
Honesty
Do not spread conspiracy theories or misleading information - even if you relativize or clarify such content behind a paywall.
By "conspiracy theories" we mean content that refers to the idea that a small group of people are supposedly gathering secretly to orchestrate large-scale crises in an illegal or malicious way and where the content is written in a way that makes it impossible to verify whether it is true or not.
Of course you are allowed to document or parody content of this kind.
Don't create fake projects on Steady and don't collect money for activities you don't really plan to carry out. For example, don't sell content that you didn't create yourself or for which you didn't acquire the rights of use. Don't solicit funding for not doing something, for playing pranks or simply doing nothing.
Health issues
Publish content on health issues with great care - especially when there is no broad scientific consensus. Only make statements that could be verified in principle.
Protection of children
and minors
Do not publish pornographic content on Steady. We do not tolerate the glorification of rape and other sexual violence. Child abuse will be reported to the police.
Violence
Publish violent content only if it provides information or has artistic value. It must not be primarily about the shock effect. Editorialize violent content with details and the context of its creation so that users can classify it correctly. Do not encourage users, especially children, to take actions that could harm them or others.
Illegal activities
Do not collect money from Steady for publications that promote or glorify illegal activities. This applies, for example, to instructions for making weapons or drugs, copyright infringement, money laundering, commercial spamming or gambling.
Spam
Do not use Steady to spread spam. We don't support the spreading of large amounts of unsolicited, undirected or repetitive content.
Excluded persons
We may exclude individuals from using Steady if they are or have been associated with fraud, violence or incitement to violence, threats, stalking, harassment, insult, intimidation, invasion of privacy, disclosure of other people's personal information, political extremism, terrorism or other illegal activities. This also applies if a person belongs or has belonged to groups that are involved in such activities.
Application and validity
Steady does not systematically check the contents of publications. We apply these guidelines when a user complains about a publication. All persons - including Steady employees - can submit complaints. Our guideline committee then investigates these complaints.
These guidelines also apply to content that you published before using Steady. And they also apply to content posted by third parties in your publication, such as user comments, if you do not take prompt action against problematic content published there.
Consequences
If our guideline committee finds a problem, we may issue warnings, temporarily or permanently suspend your account, temporarily disable paywalls or other features, temporarily disable your ability to sell new memberships and more.
Complaints
If you feel that a Steady publication violates these guidelines, please report it to our guideline committee.This committee consists of three rotating staff members at Steady.
Please understand that not everything you personally disagree with may result in consequences.
Further conditions
These guidelines supplement the general terms and conditions, the license and distribution agreements entered into with Steady publishers and the general terms of use.These
guidelines, version number 1.2, are valid from 2 October 2020.