Welcome to Topico. 

We thought it important to disclose our posting policy and guidelines to better inform our members of our intentions, aspirations and goals.

Topico’s guidelines for posting articles are strictly here to create an environment for strictly sharing news and information and in no way suggests that the sources, services or applications that we do not allow have no merit, or value. They are simply created for consuming other types of content beyond news and information.

For this reason we will not provide examples of sources, services and applications we do not allow so as not to single out, or present a negative image towards any of these sources, services and applications, many of which the team at Topico use in our own personal lives because they provide entertainment in their own format.

Additionally there are sources we want to include that may not be available at this time. There are many local news outlets, and publishers that we are working to include, and we welcome your recommendation on any sources for the purposes of posting articles on Topico.

And last, we are still in the learning stage. We are aware that occasionally you’ll find sources that have an issue posting into Topico. We appreciate your patience as we integrate the vast, and ever-evolving sources of news and information we want to share with the community.

We are constantly updating our system and ask for both your support and understanding in this matter as we take our first steps to building an experience that’s conducive for all of us to effectively share news and information.

We Are Not the Arbiter of Truth

Topico is not looking to become the gatekeeper of what is considered “news and information”, and it’s important to us that our members understand that we are simply trying to create an environment that’s focused on sourced news and information. Meaning, a known url with validated authorship.

For this reason we have set forth specific guidelines so that we are not judging based on the ideologies/viewpoints of validated sources, and instead evaluating based on a set of parameters that we can follow to determine whether a source is presenting the platform with news and information.

GUIDELINES

Sources, services and applications that allow users to instantly publish content in various forms (text, images and video) without editorial oversight, or quality control.

This is not to say these sources, services and applications are lesser, or that they have no merit, instead it is simply that the content they create has value in a different format/environment outside of Topico.

These sources do not validate the identity of the authors of their generated content, and the content itself can go viral without an attributable, and traceable source. Example: Tripout666 posts a photoshopped image, or creates a personal rant around an issue, or event that does not have a traceable source (url) to determine its origin.

Other forms of shared content from these sources, services and applications can include memes and personal comments that can contain misinformation without attribution.

No 3rd Party Applications

These are services and applications that require the user to have another application installed on their device to gain access for viewing purposes. This can cause issues for members on different operating systems that do not have access to some of these services and applications therefore to remove the barrier of access we have made the decision to not allow these services and applications as a source of posted articles.

As stated, this is not a judgment on these services, or applications. Many have great value and we encourage everyone to use them.

No inappropriate Content

Topico will not accept, or tolerate content from any source that falls into the category of inappropriate content.

• Bullying. Harassment. Hate Speech. Targeting groups. Marginalizing person(s).
• Abuse by inappropriately tagging articles, usernames or Newsroom titles.
• Promotes, depicts, or incites violence. Articles using violence as shock value.
• Sexually explicit content. Articles that contain nudity, and/or sexual content of a graphic nature.
• Spam / Promotion. These are advertisements for products/services without any inherent informational value.
• Terrorism / Hate speech. These are posts designed to purposefully inflict harm on others.

We need your help and support.

These are our first steps and we understand that there will be disagreements in some of our decisions.

Our stance is that a person(s), government or company (including ourselves) should not be the arbiter of truth, and that while only allowing certain publications for posting would have been an easier route to take in providing a place for people to share news and information, we also knew it would then alienate a multitude of valid sources. 

So our decision was to create a set of guidelines and update Topico to create an environment that encouraged the sharing of sourced news and information, while systematically blocking sources that frequently and intentionally break our guidelines, focusing on those sources, services and applications that are built mostly around sharing user-generated content.

We want this to be a collaborative process with our community, and we encourage your feedback to help us create the environment that you, (our members) want in order for us all to return to sharing news and information for a better informed, and more civil society.

We believe we do that by unbundling news and information from the noise and friction on social media.

Topico’s mission is lofty, but attainable with your participation.

Thank you,

The entire team at Topico greatly appreciates your support.