Community Guidelines

What this place is for

This is a network built around one idea: that the internet can leave you feeling better than it found you.

That doesn't mean everyone here is happy. It means that when you show up — proud, struggling, curious, tired, celebrating — the people around you respond with something worth having. Encouragement. Perspective. A hand.

These guidelines describe what that looks like in practice.

The short version

Bring something worth having. Share your wins, your work, your questions, your hard days. Show up for other people's.

Be the kind of response you'd want. You don't have to agree with someone to treat them well.

Sad is welcome. Cruel is not. There's a difference, and we take it seriously.

You don't have to be okay to be here

This is the part most platforms get wrong, so we want to be direct about it.

A "positive" community is not one where everyone pretends to be fine. If it were, it would be useless on the days you need it most. Grief, failure, anxiety, loneliness, frustration, doubt — all of it belongs here. Some of the most valuable things anyone posts on this platform will be honest about how hard something is.

What we care about is what happens around those posts. When someone opens up here, the community shows up. That's the whole point.

So: post the hard stuff. And when you see someone else post it, don't scroll past.

What we ask of you

Respond like you'd want to be responded to. If you're about to reply to a stranger in a way you wouldn't reply to a friend, don't send it.

Disagree without tearing down. Different opinions are fine and often useful. Contempt isn't. You can say "I see it differently" without saying "you're an idiot."

Don't make someone else's post about you. Especially on hard posts. Sometimes the right reply is short.

Credit people's work. If you're sharing something someone else made, say who made it.

Be a real person. One account, actually you. Don't impersonate anyone.

Keep it appropriate. No sexual content, no graphic violence, no gore. This is a platform people open in front of their kids.

What isn't allowed

These are the lines. Cross them and content gets removed; do it repeatedly or badly enough and you lose your account.

Harassment. Targeting someone, pile-ons, unwanted contact after being asked to stop, mocking someone for what they shared.

Hate. Attacks on people based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or veteran status. Slurs and hate symbols included.

Threats and violence. Threatening anyone, celebrating violence, or encouraging harm toward a person or group.

Content that encourages self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating. This includes "inspiration" content that glamorizes any of them. See the next section for what we do instead.

Sexual content. Nudity, sexual imagery, sexually explicit text. Zero tolerance for anything involving minors — that gets reported to law enforcement, not just removed.

Graphic violence and gore.

Doxxing. Posting someone's private information — address, phone number, workplace, documents — without their consent.

Illegal content. Drugs, weapons sales, stolen goods, fraud, that whole category.

Spam and manipulation. Bulk unsolicited posting, engagement farming, bot networks, fake accounts, or coordinated efforts to game what people see.

Scams. Fake fundraisers, fake giveaways, phishing, financial cons. We take these especially seriously, because a community built on trusting strangers is exactly where they work best.

Deceptive health or crisis claims. Miracle cures, dangerous "wellness" advice, fake charity drives after a disaster.

If you're going through something serious

If you're thinking about hurting yourself, please talk to someone who can actually help. In the US, you can call or text 988 any time to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Outside the US, findahelpline.com will point you to a service where you are.

We are not a crisis service and we can't be one. But you're not going to get punished for being honest here. If you post something that suggests you're in danger, we may show you those resources — that's not a warning and it's not a strike. It's just us making sure you have the number.

If you're worried about someone else on the platform, use the report option and choose the "concerned about this person" reason. That routes to a human, not to an automated system.

How moderation works here

We want to be straight with you about this, because most platforms aren't.

Some content is automatically reviewed. When you post, an automated system checks images and text against the rules above. Clearly harmful content gets held before anyone sees it. Everything else publishes normally.

Tone is not moderated. Tone affects reach. We don't remove posts for being sad, negative, angry, or critical. What our systems do affect is what gets surfaced in Discover — posts that lift people up travel further here. That's a ranking decision, not a censorship one, and your followers see what you post regardless.

Automated systems never suspend accounts. Software can hide a post. Only a person can act against an account.

You can appeal. Every removal comes with a reason and a way to contest it. Appeals go to a different reviewer than the one who made the original call.

Reporting is weighted. Reports from people who report accurately count for more. Mass-reporting someone you disagree with doesn't work here and may cost you your own reporting privileges.

What happens when you break the rules

We'd rather correct than punish, and most issues end at the first step.

1. Content removed, with an explanation. For most first-time, lower-severity stuff.
2. A warning on your account. Removal plus a formal strike.
3. Temporary suspension. For repeated issues or a serious single incident.
4. Permanent removal. For severe violations, or a pattern that isn't changing.

Strikes fade over time. A mistake from two years ago doesn't follow you forever.

Some things skip straight to step four: content sexualizing minors, credible threats of violence, and coordinated harassment campaigns.

Reporting something

Every post, comment, and profile has a report option. Reasons are:

• Harmful — harassment, hate, threats, or anything in the not-allowed list
• Spam or scam
• Not in the spirit of this place — mean-spirited, contemptuous, or corrosive without breaking a hard rule
• Concerned about this person — you think someone may be in danger
• Something else — tell us in your own words

That third option matters. It won't usually get a post removed, and it isn't supposed to. It tells us where the edges of this community actually are, and it feeds how we rank things.

A note on the "not in the spirit" line

We know it's fuzzy. That's deliberate.

We could write a rule for every specific behavior we don't want, and people would find the gap between the rules. Instead we're telling you what we're trying to build and trusting you to recognize when something is working against it.

If you're ever genuinely unsure whether something belongs here, a decent test is: does this make the person reading it more able to face their day, or less?

That's it. That's the whole platform.

Changes

These guidelines will change as the community grows and as we learn what actually happens here rather than what we predicted. When we change something significant, we'll say so publicly and explain why — every change is listed at what has changed, and why, newest first, with the reason for it.

Questions, disagreements, or something we got wrong: contact us. You don't need an account to write in, and you don't need to be signed in — which matters if the reason you're writing is that you can't get into yours.

Last updated: 2026-08-30