Social Media Terms of Use : ScienceAlert

ScienceAlert hosts a large and diverse audience on its social media accounts, and while we love offering up this space for lively debate and discussion on the latest science news, it's our responsibility to ensure that it remains a safe and respectful environment.

For this reason, ScienceAlert retains editorial control over all content posted to our social media pages.

In Australia, publishers can be held liable for defamatory comments posted on their social media pages. To protect ourselves from legal action, ScienceAlert will broadly exercise our right to turn off the commenting feature on any of our social media posts without warning, at any time, at our discretion.

Additionally, comments will be removed at our discretion if they are deemed to be:

defamatory, or otherwise unlawful, content that violates laws regarding harassment, discrimination, privacy or contempt
intentionally false or misleading
abusive, offensive, insulting, or aggressive. Name-calling, sexism and racial vilification will not be tolerated under any circumstances
off-topic, wilfully ignorant or repetitious to the point where a single commenter is deliberately dominating the conversation
compromising the privacy of oneself, other contributors, or of ScienceAlert staff, or containing inappropriate personal information
an infringement of copyright or other intellectual property rights
seeking to endorse commercial products or activities or to solicit business
deliberate provocation of other community members

Any violation of the above can result in accounts being banned immediately.

Please familiarize yourself with these Terms of Use before commenting to help us ensure that ScienceAlert's social media accounts remain a place for intelligent, courteous and respectful discussion.