Project Mushroom FAQ
What is Project Mushroom?
What is your mission?
Our mission is to create a place that promotes connection, mutual aid, and transformative action at a critical moment in history – centered in joy, justice and action. A place where harassment and bigotry cannot thrive.
When was Project Mushroom founded?
The idea for Project Mushroom began in late October 2022 when concerns about Twitter were being raised. Our team wanted to ensure that organizers and creators for the climate emergency still had a space to connect on the internet.
Who is on the Project Mushroom team?
Project Mushroom is a project of Currently, Inc., and organized by Eric Holthaus — a journalist and climate scientist who has spent his career focused on climate justice and equity. Our team is made up of climate organizers, meteorologists, journalists, and developers and we are expanding the team to meet the needs of the Project Mushroom community.
Is Project Mushroom only for climate content and work?
While our platform will be centered in climate justice & action, we also want it to be a place for people to express joy. We welcome and encourage you to come to the platform with the things that bring you joy since we are all collectively facing the climate crisis together.
What has been built so far?
- A user interface on Mastodon that makes it easy to get set up with a user guide here
- An onboarding tool so you can find the people you already follow on other social media platforms
- An invite tool so you can invite your friends and followers along without losing any momentum
Who do we work and advertise with?
Everything about Project Mushroom is focused on climate, and that includes how we make money. We only accept advertising from environmentally responsible, mission-aligned organizations and businesses. Our goal is to work with advertisers that our members will get value from. All sponsored content is clearly marked as sponsored. All our membership revenue goes back into expanding our services for the people, places, and organizations at the front lines of the climate emergency.
Interested in advertising with us? Fill out the form here.
Are you hiring?
We are filling roles as needs arise so feel free to send us your information and resume at info@tryprojectmushroom.com and we’ll let you know if anything becomes available.
About the Project Mushroom Server
Is Project Mushroom built on Mastodon?
Yes, Project Mushroom has been built on a Mastodon instance with added functionalities including our onboarding tool and invite tool that will help you transition from other platforms. Ultimately, Project Mushroom will also have a different look and feel from Mastodon as we are working on building a unique and an easy to use interface. Our expected timeline for this is early 2023.
What are your server guidelines?
1. We support justice and action, specifically on climate, with the intention of bringing a better world into being.
2. We are explicitly anti-racist.
3. We resist white supremacy.
4. We apply content warnings to traumatic conversations but content warnings are never used to silence conversations about justice.
5. We do not tolerate hate-speech. We allow swearing but we do not allow bigoted language of any kind.
6. We do not allow misogyny of any kind, particularly trans misogyny.
7. We do not perpetuate ableism in our actions or language, including refraining from use of ableist language.
8. We are safe for work (no nudity or pornographic images of any kind). At the same time, we support sex workers and recognize sex work is work.
9. We support LGBTQ+ rights.
10. We do not body shame.
11. We are trauma-informed and abolitionist. We believe in bringing people in and giving them space to be better instead of blocking or bans.
12. We do not allow unfounded conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and state-sponsored propaganda.
How will you be moderating conversation?
We currently have 4 trained moderators on our staff and will be growing that number in step with the total number of users. Our goal is to avoid ‘carceral’ bans on users but instead to offer learning resources to those who have missteps in our platform based on our guidelines. We believe in bringing people in and giving them space to be better instead of blocking or bans.
I’m not familiar with using Mastodon, do you have suggestions?
Yes, we have support information about how to use our servers on Mastodon linked here.
Why do I need to make another Mastodon account if I already have one?
We’re not federated at the moment, so every user has to have their own Project Mushroom account. That may change in the future but for now we want to grow safely. There are lots of things to consider and we will be working closely with our community on any decisions we make around federation. We will share more information when it becomes available.