Community guidelines
Last updated 3 September 2026
Ocala Go is for people who live in Ocala and Marion County. It is meant to be the place you find out what is on this weekend, who to call about a well pump, and which farrier your neighbor actually uses. It is not a place to argue with strangers about national politics.
The one rule
Post like you will run into this person at Publix. Because in a county this size, you will. Every rule below is a specific case of that one.
What belongs here
- Questions about living here, and answers to them.
- Real local events, with a real date and a real place.
- Recommendations for people and businesses you have actually used.
- Lost pets, road closures, storm updates, and the ordinary business of a neighborhood.
- Welcoming people who just moved here. A lot of them have nobody to ask.
What gets removed
- Attacks on a person. Insults, name-calling, pile-ons, or posting to humiliate someone.
- Hate. Anything that attacks people over race, colour, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability. This one ends in a ban, not a warning.
- Threats, intimidation, or encouraging harm to anyone, including yourself.
- Someone else's private information. Addresses, phone numbers, workplaces, licence plates or photographs of a person's home posted without their say-so.
- Scams and deception. Fake listings, fake events, pretending to be a business or a neighbor you are not, and anything designed to get money or details out of people.
- Spam. The same post over and over, unrelated promotion, or affiliate links.
- Sexual content, and anything involving a child in that context. The second is reported to the authorities, not just removed.
- Illegal activity, including selling anything that requires a licence you do not have.
- Photographs of people who did not agree to be posted, when they are identifiable and the post is about them.
Politics and the national argument
Local government is local news: a county commission vote, a school board decision, a road bond, a zoning hearing. That is fair game and it belongs here.
The national shouting match is not. Ocala Go does not have a city-wide feed on purpose, and we will remove content whose point is to fight about national politics rather than to tell your neighbors something useful.
Businesses and the directory
Businesses in the directory pay to be listed. Two things follow from that, and they are deliberate:
- There are no star ratings and no review counts, anywhere, ever. We are not going to sell a business a listing and also sell the number next to its name. If you want to recommend someone, post about it and say why — that is worth more than a star.
- Paying does not buy a ranking. There is no "top of your category", because no such ranking exists.
If a listing has a wrong phone number, is out of business, or is not who it says it is, report it. If a business treats you badly, that is between you and them — but a pattern of it will cost them the listing.
Questions you send a business through the app are private, not public. They are relayed by a person at Ocala Go, and the Privacy Policy explains exactly what that means.
Events
Anyone can submit an event, and a person reviews it before it appears. Submit events that are real, open to the public or clear about who they are for, and happening in or near Marion County. Put the actual date, time and place in. If your event is cancelled, say so — people plan around these.
Photos
One photo per post. Ocala Go removes the location data from your photos before they are uploaded, so posting a picture of your barn does not publish your address. Do not post photos of other people's children, and do not post a photo of someone's house or vehicle to point a finger at them.
Reporting something
Every post, comment, event, listing, profile and business answer has a ••• menu with Report, Hide and Block.
- Hide removes it from your view only. Nobody is told.
- Block means you stop seeing that person and they stop seeing you. They are not told.
- Report sends it to us.
We aim to look at every report within 24 hours. Ocala Go is a very small operation, and moderators are neighbors, not a call centre. When a report is about something that could put someone in danger, it goes first.
Reporting is not a voting system. Ten reports on something that breaks no rule will not remove it, and one report on something serious is enough.
What happens when a rule is broken
What we do depends on what happened and whether it keeps happening:
- The content is removed.
- You may get a warning explaining which rule it was.
- Repeating it can mean being muted for a while, then suspended.
- Threats, hate, sexual content involving children, and scams targeting your neighbors mean the account is gone the first time.
We keep a record of moderation decisions so that the same behaviour is treated the same way, whoever is looking at it.
If we get it wrong
We will sometimes remove something we should not have. Email support@ocalago.com, tell us what was removed, and a person will look at it again. Saying "a moderator made a mistake" is allowed and is not itself a rule violation.