What are the Nomads.com rules?

Written By @levelsio

Last updated About 2 months ago

We want to keep Nomads.com a positive, fun and spam-free community which should be welcoming for anybody wherever they're from and however they look like. You can help by following these terms of service (aka the TOS). We time out and sometimes ban people who do not. We have banned less than 1 out of 100 members, so if you do get banned, it's definitely you, not us. At the moment, we don't offer a formal appeals process. If your account was closed, you won't be able to sign up for Nomads.com again. These terms apply to our entire site and our meetups.

These terms are a legalese-free version, for the legal version go here.

Be nice
The most simple rule on this site. Just be nice and kind. Try to help people. Have patience.

Don't be mean
That also means:

Don't discuss any politics
We know in our times everyone’s obsessed with discussing politics. But it mostly just makes people fight each other on the internet.

Discussing and/or sympathizing with national socialism (and also racist, racial supremacist-type stuff) or communism (also neo-marxist ideologies) is especially not accepted. They were both responsible for millions of deaths in the last century, so go and find another site to do that, don't do it on here.

Also this is NOT the place for attacking people with your identity politics, or activism. This is a site about traveling and working remotely, not politics and not activism. This is not the right site for you. Go back to Twitter.

We have a zero-tolerance policy for politics and we will permanently suspend accounts for it.

"More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities." — Paul Graham on "Identity"

Don't discuss religion
Simple and similar reason as above. Bringing religion into the conversation usually only results in people getting triggered by it as they're either religious or not. Just avoid the topic.

Don't post other chat groups in our chat
Sometimes people like to post other Whatsapp or Telegram groups in Nomads.com's chat. For example, someone in the 🇨🇴 Colombia channel might make their own chat group for Medellin and some people move there. That sounds nice, but then the problem becomes that new people who join Nomads.com and are in Colombia now have less people to connect with because they left to a chat outside of Nomads.com. The reason Nomads.com works because it's a lot of people in one space online that are doing the same thing. Dispersing over lots of chat groups kinda kills that.

Of course, it's natural after you make friends on Nomads.com to disperse to private chat groups, but that happens automatically over DM or during meetups.

Speak English
We're an English-speaking community as that's the most accessible language in the world to communicate in. Our founder isn't native English, nor is our team as they're from around the world, so for us it's a second language and effort too. But we do it because it helps to include everyone. Not speaking English excludes people from conversations.

Don't make unwelcome advances or physical contact
Obviously the community (chat, forum, dating app, site) and meetups are to make friends and also people may find their partners through it. It's normal if you like someone, to see if they also like you, e.g. by flirting or asking them out. But if people state they are not interested and do not like your advances please end it right there.

If you're on the other side, and you feel unsafe, immediately tell the meetup host, participants, venue staff or if it's online our moderators so they can act upon it.

Don't talk excessively, whine, complain or ramble on incoherently
If you're dominating every channel with your messages, it's probably a good idea to tone it down a notch. Keep the chat on-topic based on the channel and don't go into vague, excessive and/or incoherent rambling. We're not your place to complain/whine/vent about your day. Find a boyfriend/girlfriend/dog/cat for that ;)

Don't let multiple people use one account
We only allow one person per account. If your partner or friend also wants to use Nomads.com, ask them to sign up themselves.

Don't share your phone or email in public
For your own safety, do not share your phone number or email in public in the chat or other parts of the site. People can contact you via DM and ask you there. There's tens of thousands of people who can see/scrape your contacts and spam you. Ignoring this will result in a ban.

This site is about digital nomads, NOT about expats
See Internations (not affiliated), if you want to talk about expat jobs and work permits. If you want to discuss your 9 to 5 desk job, that’s nice but this also probably isn’t the site for it (unless you’re trying to change towards remote/nomad in a considerable time).

Do not post job ads or recruit at meetups
This applies to all work, such as full-time roles to single gigs. There are other sites for that, like Remote OK which also auto-updates #__jobs-feed

Do not post "I'm looking for work"
This also applies to all work, such as full-time roles to single gigs. Before we'd get complaints about it, and we haven't seen it actually works to get people a job and it's practically spam. Instead, you can go create a profile on our sister site Remote OK's Workers and get matched to jobs that fit your skillset automatically.

Don’t self-promote / promote products / act like brand / spam
Nomads.com is a site for people not brands or companies. It's not a place for your marketing or growth strategy. See it like a cafe. Would you like people selling to you in a cafe? Nope. So not on Nomads.com either.

Don’t promote products/services/startups/web site/social media unless it’s absolutely relevant in the context of the discussion that you are actively engaging in. Artificially seeding conversation to promote falls under the same category. Affiliate links, referral, coupon codes, vouchers, discounts, competition links etc are considered promotional. Links are always nofollow on here, that means you won’t get your SEO juice posting it here at all. Links to competitions are promotional and therefore included.

Don’t use our community to find members for your community
It's nice you have a community but Nomads.com isn't the place to acquire new members for yours. Regardless where you're community is hosted on e.g. Whatsapp, Discord or Telegram or if it's non-profit, we don't allow contacting our members or promoting your community in channels.

Also, don’t register as a brand because we’ll disable your account. Please have a profile pic that shows your face. We don’t allow brands on here at any time.

We also do not allow any flooding. That means multiple messages in a short/regular timeframe or large posts to grab attention, posting the same content in multiple locations (cross posting) and/or tagging multiple people in messages.

Posting links/URLs is limited
To reduce spam, links posted by newly active members may be deleted automatically. Once you regularly participate in the chat, this restriction will be lifted. Any attempt at bypassing the moderation process can lead to account suspension.

Don’t ask or give people medical advice
If you’re sick, see a local doctor. If you’re depressed, find a local or remote therapist. Talkspace is nice (we’re not affiliated). Remember: strangers on the internet probably do not have the answer to your medical or mental condition.

Don’t ask people to do your survey, take part in your research project (even if it's a PhD), assist your product/service, or do any user research/recruitment (a la Lean Startup, “please help me build my x”)
As much as we do enjoy these posts, it’d get crowded with those very fast if we’d allow them, deteriorating the experience for users.

Don’t ask startup questions
This is not a startup site, this is a site about digital nomads and remote work, try Hacker News to talk about startups. On Telegram we have a Startups channel you can use though.

Don’t post affiliate links, coupon codes, vouchers
Don’t post affiliate links, coupon codes, vouchers anywhere Nomads.com including on chat, forum, and in your bio. They sound nice but they’re in fact masked promotions for the companies behind them.

Don’t post your room, apartment, house for rent/sale/swap; or post that you're looking for roommates
We're not a marketplace for housing, so it's not the right place to post this on Nomads.com. If we'd allow it, the location channels would be filled with housing advertisements. Also due to our smaller scale, you won't reach enough people who'd actually be interested in renting your place. Try Facebook housing groups for the city you're in instead.

Don’t post pets for adoption
We love pets like dogs and cats too, and sad about street dogs and cats in many places, but this isn't the place to post them up for adoption. Also please don't request information about moving pets in or out of a place, as it's often illegal to do so (in places like Bali), with the chance the animals will be euthanised, if caught.

Don’t ask people to help you if you’re out of money
If you’re out of money on the other side of the world, it’s your problem not ours. Be responsible and bring enough CASH money to survive and fly back home (e.g. a few thousand in US dollars). We delete posts/messages and ban you if you ask for people to transfer you money, for ex because your cards are blocked. This is a known scam, we can’t check if you’re lying about it so we assume it’s in bad faith and ban you.

Please do NOT discuss or mention

Making money is never an excuse to deceive people and do stuff that’s bad for the world. There’s enough fun work to do that pays and IS awesome and leaves the world better than you found it. Just stand for ethical values and not short-term profits.

Why this long list? The digital nomad scene has been littered for the last decade with scammy stuff like this. It’s not cool. It keeps a lot of people out because it makes the entire scene look like absolute idiots. So this is my little way of trying to raise the level. Do good.

Going against moderators/admins/owners/organizers on Nomads.com
Moderators have the final word on Nomads.com to moderate based on these rules. It’s not in anyone’s interest to discuss those. Any attempt at bypassing the moderation process can lead to bans.

Not following these rules results in getting timed out or permabanned
Not following these rules means you will get timed out for a certain amount of time (that means you can’t write on the site or chat anymore), and if you continue ignoring the rules, we’ll permaban you. Your IP, email and browser combo will be blocked. If you create another account, we’ll block that again. And again. And again. And again. Follow the rules and all is good! We have banned less than 1 out of 100 members, so if you do get banned, it's definitely you, not us. At the moment, we don't offer a formal appeals process. If your account was closed, you won't be able to sign up for Nomads.com again.