Safety & Privacy

The FAWM community is welcoming, open and inclusive. Other fawmers are your peers, and we ask that you treat them accordingly, with respect and politeness.

This page summarizes various safety and privacy features of the fawm.org website to help ensure that you and the community remain focused on creativity and community.

Reporting abuse

If you see behavior in a song, comment, or forum post that is abusive or violates the FAWM terms of service, you can report it using the Report this item under the [] menu to the right of most elements on the website.

Reports go into a queue for the moderators to discuss and decide what action to take.

Privacy settings

You are in control of how visible your profile and songs are.

Note

While fawmers can make their profiles and songs public to the outside world (i.e., anonymous visitors to fawm.org), forum topic discussions are always restricted to logged-in fawmers.

Profile privacy

There are three levels of profile privacy (visibility):

• Public - Anyone can view your profile, including bots and visitors to fawm.org
  • However, only logged-in fawmers may leave messages on your profile
• Restricted - Only logged-in fawmers can view your full profile (the default)
• Private - Only you can access your own profile

The default privacy level is Restricted, but this can be updated in the Settings item from the drop-down menu in the upper-right (with your profile avatar image).

Your profile privacy setting is also the default privacy setting for new songs (see below).

Why is "Restricted" the default?

Starting in the early 2020s, it became clear that most new fawmers actually assumed their songs and profiles were "for the community's eyes only." The rise of generative AI and ubiquitous web-scraping also raised copyright concerns around FAWM lyrics and songs being used for AI training.

So we decided to make Restricted access the default, with worldwide public access "opt-in."

Note

Because the FAWM website is wiped clean each year, you may risk losing your songs if you don't archive them. Restricted profiles and songs cannot be cached by archive.org, for example.

Song privacy

Songs have the same three privacy levels as profiles:

• Public - Anyone can view or listen to your song, including bots and visitors to fawm.org
  • However, only logged-in fawmers may leave comments on your song
• Restricted - Only logged-in fawmers can view or listen to your song
• Private - Only you can access your own song

When you post a new song, this setting defaults to the same level as your profile at the time you created song. However, you can change a song's privacy to be different that your profile at any time, even after posting it.

Tip

Private songs still count toward your 14-song goal, but are not viewable by other fawmers and do not appear on the Songs page, or in the Random Song buttons, song search, or tag results.

There can be several uses of the Private song setting, including:

• Songs you do not want feedback on
• Inflammatory or controversial songs, which may be inappropriate to share on FAWM
• Temporarily private "in progress" songs (e.g., the Comments First Challenge)
• Last-minute temporary placeholders (e.g., a Skirmish just before song-posting closes March 1)

Limiting interactions

FAWM is a challenge for humans, and humans can be difficult sometimes.

You may wish to set boundaries by limiting what songs and activities appear in your home feeds, or how your songs and activities can be viewed by others.

This is what the Mute and Block features are for (new in 2025). These can be accessed in a drop-down menu to the right of the Follow button on each fawmer's profile page.

Mute

I don't want to be notified of this person's activity, but if I happen across it, that's OK.

Muting a fawmer has the following effects:

• You Unfollow them
• Their posts, comments, etc. will not appear on the Home feeds (for you)
• Their songs will not appear in the Songs page (for you)
  • Also true for Random buttons, song search, and tag results (for you)

This does not inhibit their use of the website in any way.

Note

If you mute a fawmer and they @mention you in a forum post, comment on your song, or leave you a profile message, these will not appear in your home feed tabs.

However, you will still be able to see them when viewing the corresponding profile, song, or forum topic.

Block

I want to mute this person AND pretend we don't exist to each other.

Blocking a fawmer has all the effects of muting (above), plus:

• They automatically Unfollow you, and cannot re-follow you as long as they are blocked
• Your profile appears Private to them, and you can no longer view their full profile
• Your songs will not appear on the Songs page (for them)
  • Also true for Random buttons, song search, and tag results (for them)
• You can no longer @mention each other in posts, comments, or messages
• Your song comments, profile messages, and forum posts will be rendered to each other as though from a Deleted user (see below)

This has the effect of mutually "masking" your activity from each other. Your activities are still viewable by anyone you are not blocking, and who is not blocking you.

A note about moderator accounts

While you can mute moderator accounts, it only has the effect of removing their songs from your song search and discovery features. If a moderator @mentions you or comments on your profile, it will still appear in your home feeds.

Regular fawmers cannot block moderators, and vice versa.