No Advertising in Our Discord

Actual has grown a lot over the past few years, and our community has grown right alongside it. That growth is something we are proud of. But it has also brought a problem we did not have before. So we are introducing a new rule for our Discord server: no advertising.

Why We're Doing This

Actual is built by volunteers. People give their time, their knowledge, and their care to make this software better, and they do it for free. Lately we have seen some bad actors try to use all of that hard work to make a quick buck off the community. In some cases it goes further than that, with attempts to collect the personal data of our users.

We do not want this. Actual has been privacy-oriented since day one, and that is not going to change.

Our Policy

From now on, advertising is not allowed in the Actual Discord. This applies to paid products, closed-source apps, and services built on top of Actual, regardless of who is doing the promoting.

The reasoning is simple. We cannot verify what these products do with your data, so we are not going to let them be promoted in a space the community trusts.

We Still Love Community Projects

To be clear, this is not about shutting down the people building things around Actual. We love seeing community projects. Building something useful for free and out in the open is the same spirit that created Actual in the first place, and we want to support it.

The problem is the projects built behind closed doors. Some people use our community spaces to advertise their products (there are more than a few mobile apps in this category) without ever sharing the source. When a project is closed, we have no way to see what it does with your data. We cannot verify it, and we are not going to let our Discord be the place where users get pointed toward something we cannot vouch for.

If a project is open source, anyone can read the code and judge it on its own merits. That is the kind of project worth sharing, and those are always welcome.

Keeping the Community Safe

This rule exists for one reason: to protect the privacy and safety of the people who use Actual. Our Discord has always been a friendly place to ask questions, share ideas, and help each other out. We want to keep it that way.

Thank you for helping us keep the community open, honest, and safe.