How OerSocial works: accounts, posts, and public pages

OerSocial is easier to use if you know which screens are public. This guide is the map we wish reviewers and new members saw first.

Creating an account

Sign up at /auth/sign-up. You choose a username, a display name, an email, and a password. You must confirm you are at least 13 and that you accept the Terms and Privacy Policy. Those checkboxes are required. After you confirm email, you can sign in at /auth/login.

Usernames are how people link to you. Display names can change. Do not impersonate a person or a brand. If you need help with an account you cannot access, email support@oersocial.com from the address on the account.

Public surfaces

These URLs are meant to be readable without special access:

• Home, once there is public conversation to show
• Explore
• Profiles
• Individual public posts
• Guides and blog articles
• About, Contact, Policies, Cookies, Terms, and Community Guidelines

A public post can be opened from a profile URL. Replies hang off the original post. Hashtags and @mentions in post text are clickable so people can move through the site without guessing search syntax.

Private surfaces

Messages, notifications, bookmarks, settings, invitations, and admin are for signed-in people. We do not put Google ads on those pages. We also do not want crawlers treating an empty inbox as a content page. robots.txt disallows several of those paths for that reason.

Posting

The composer asks what is happening, on purpose. A post can be text only, or text plus one media file (image, video, or audio). You are responsible for the file. If you do not have the right to share it, do not upload it.

Replies are posts that point at another post. Use a reply when you are answering someone. Starting a new thread to repeat the same promotional sentence is spam.

You can like, repost, bookmark, and share a post. Share uses the device share sheet when the browser supports it, and a copyable link when it does not. We do not pay people to inflate those counts.

Following

Follow is a relationship, not a ranking hack. Follow accounts you want in your Following feed. Unfollow when you are done. We do not run follow-back contests. Artificial engagement can get an account restricted.

Where editorial fits

Guides are not user posts. They are written by OerSocial so the product has a public library. If the feed is quiet on a given day, the guides are still here. That is intentional. A publisher should not disappear just because nobody posted in the last hour.

If something breaks

Use Report on a post, or email support@oersocial.com with the URL. Privacy requests go to privacy@oersocial.com. Advertising questions go to ads@oersocial.com.

The product is a social network with a publisher layer. Use the social layer to talk. Use the publisher layer to understand the rules.