Skysta Community Guidelines

1. What Skysta is for

Photographs of the sky, taken by you, while the light is happening. That is the whole idea.

Four things in the app hold it there, and they are worth knowing because most apps do not work like this.

• The shutter only opens while the light is real. There is no camera at noon. It opens for the window around sunrise and sunset, and the rest of the day it turns the tap down where you stand.
• Nothing comes in from your camera roll. A sky you share has to be taken inside Skysta. There is no import button, so a photograph you did not take cannot reach the feed unless you go out of your way to photograph a screen. Please do not.
• There are no likes and no followers. Nothing counts your skies and nothing ranks you. There is no score to chase, so there is nothing to be won by posting anything other than the sky you actually stood under.
• One sky per capture window. Photograph as many as you like and keep every one of them in your Journal. The limit is on publishing, not on photographing.

A photograph that has nothing to do with the sky can come down even when it breaks no other rule. That is what “Not a sky” means in the report list.

2. What does not belong

Every line here is a reason in the report list, so when you see one you can flag it in two taps. The reason is named at the end of each line.

• Nothing sexual. No nudity and no sexual content of any kind. Nothing sexual involving a child, ever, in any form. That one has no edge cases. (“Sexual content”)
• No violence or gore. No injury, no cruelty, nothing that glorifies self-harm. (“Violence or gore”)
• No hate and no harassment. Do not go after people for who they are. No threats, no pile-ons, no following somebody around the app. (“Hate or harassment”)
• Nothing illegal or dangerous. Do not post a crime and do not talk anybody into one. (“Illegal or dangerous”)
• No spam. No adverts, no scams, nothing posted over and over to be seen. (“Spam”, and “Spam or a fake account” when you are reporting the person rather than the picture)
• Be who you are. Your name and your profile picture should be yours. Do not put up somebody else’s face or trade on their name. (“Pretending to be someone else”, on the list for a person)

This is not a complete list of every bad idea. “Something else” is the last reason on both report lists and it is there for the things this page did not think of. Use it.

3. Other people

A sky is a sky. The moment somebody else is in it, or under it, a second person has a say.

• Do not post a photograph that identifies somebody who has not agreed to it.
• Do not post where a person lives or works, where they are right now, or anything else about them they did not publish themselves.
• Do not use Skysta to find, follow, or frighten anyone.
• The photograph should be yours. Not a screenshot, not a repost, not somebody else’s picture with your name under it.

Two of these have no reason of their own in the report list, and we would rather tell you that than invent one. If a sky shows you, or your home, or a picture you took, report it and choose “Something else”. The report form is a reason and a send, with nowhere to type, so if you can, write to hello@skystaapp.com as well and say what we are looking at.

Your own place is looked after by the app rather than by a rule. “Show on the map” starts off on every photograph, and a sky you keep in your Journal publishes nothing at all about where it was taken. The spot tag is the one thing that starts on when you are near a trusted spot, and one tap on its ✕ takes it off. Terms §7 is the full account of both.

4. Where you stand

Getting the shot never comes before the place, or the person who owns it.

• Check that the place is open to the public and that you are allowed to be there at that hour. Dawn and dusk are the two hardest hours to be somewhere unfamiliar.
• Do not trespass. Do not climb what you should not climb. Do not park where you should not park.
• Trusted spots are picked for the view. We check their coordinates and their public access as carefully as we can. We do not inspect them for safety and we do not control them. Gates close, land changes hands, and roads wash out.
• Tell somebody where you are going. Do not use Skysta while driving.

This is the one section with no report button behind it. It is a rule about you rather than about a photograph, and the app has no idea whether you were standing somewhere you were allowed to be. It is here because it is the rule most likely to get somebody hurt.

5. How to report something

• A sky. Open it, tap ⋯, choose Report this sky. Pick a reason and send. That is the whole form.
• A person, their name, or their profile picture. Tap their name to open their page, then ⋯ and Report this person. If they have never shared a sky, no screen in the app can reach them. Write to hello@skystaapp.com instead and a person will look.
• Reports are private. The person you report is never told who reported them, and nobody using Skysta can read the queue.
• Reporting the same thing twice does not count for more. One report per person per subject is all the app keeps, so the queue cannot be used to pile onto somebody.

6. Blocking

Block sits in the same two menus, next to Report.

• Blocking takes that person’s skies out of your Moments feed and out of the trusted spot galleries, on every device you sign in to.
• It works one way. Their skies leave Skysta for you. You do not disappear for them, and they are not told.
• Settings → Blocked lists everyone you have blocked, and undoes it.

Blocking is for you. Reporting is for the rule. If something breaks a rule, report it as well, because a block only moves it out of your own feed and leaves it up for everybody else.

7. What happens when somebody breaks a rule

One check runs before any of this. When you share a sky, your own phone runs Apple’s sensitive content check on the photograph first. It runs on the device, the picture is never uploaded to be judged, and nobody sees it. If it flags the image, Skysta refuses to publish it and says so, and the photograph stays in your Journal. The check only runs when Sensitive Content Warning is switched on in your iOS Settings, so treat it as a first filter and never the only one.

Then a person reads the report. Not a team, and not a model. That is the whole system, and for an app this size that is the honest description of it.

There is a clock on it. The Terms commit to acting on reports of objectionable content within 24 hours. Acting means taking the content down, and, where the content or the behaviour deserves it, suspending or permanently ending the account behind it.

If we act on something of yours, we tell you. An email to the address on the account saying what came down, which rule it broke, and how to argue with it. Reply to it and a person answers. If we got it wrong we say so and put it right while we still can.

8. Who “we” is

Skysta is made and run by one person in Utah. There is no trust and safety department standing behind that word. These are house rules for a small place, written by the person who reads the reports, and they will change as the app does.

Write to hello@skystaapp.com. It is the same person.

The Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy are the long documents. This one is the short one, and it is the one that says what we expect of each other.