I took a few days off. When I came back, people greeted me with [this](http://www.nowpublic.com/skype_and_the_freedom_of_speech) [thing](http://radio-utopie.de/index.php?themenID=391) about how Skype restricts freedom of speech about political topics on Skypecasts.

Conspiracy theories are cool, but as it often happens, this one is simply not true. We don't filter out political content in Skypecasts. On the contrary, they're a great global platform to discuss the world's current topics with anyone in English and other languages and we encourage this in every way.

The gory truth of why people may not have been able to register a Skypecast is that they may have hit a technical system bug that may have prevented some people from starting a Skypecast. Sorry about that. We get these from time to time and yes, it's unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with moderation. I suggest that you bookmark the [Heartbeat site](http://heartbeat.skype.com/) for future reference -- if we have major trouble in any part of our systems, we'll post updates there.

As for Skypecasts guidelines, please take a look at our [Community Guidelines for Skypecasts](https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/guide/community_guidelines_popup.html) and [Skype Etiquette](http://www.skype.com/company/legal/terms/etiquette.html), that define the guidelines for how we view and define things. Among other things, it says:

> Skype reserves the right to ban temporarily or permanently users who breach these guidelines.

We have found that it makes sense to develop these guidelines and policies together with our community, rather than trying to come up with a definitive list of fixed keywords or something like that. We rely on you as the community to report things that you find objectionable -- you have a "Report as inappropriate" button for each Skypecast. Please use it if you find objectionable content. And yes, I know we have taken down Skypecasts as a result of these reports, but instead of politics, they have been about grossly abusive or illegal content or images.