Community Standards
Every day, people use Social Standard Powered Platforms to share their experiences, connect with new friends and neighbors, and build communities. We are a service for the whole world to freely express themselves across countries and cultures and in dozens of languages.
We recognize how important it is for this platform to be a place where people feel empowered to communicate, and we take seriously our role in keeping abuse off our services and platforms. That’s why we’ve developed a set of Community Standards that outline what is and is not allowed on our platforms. Our policies are based on feedback from our community and the advice of experts in fields such as technology, public safety and human rights. To ensure that everyone’s voice is valued, we take great care to craft policies that are inclusive of different views and beliefs, in particular those of people and communities that might otherwise be overlooked or marginalized.
REITERATING OUR COMMITMENT TO VOICE
The goal of our Community Standards has always been to create a place where there are no society restraints or social classes that sets persons apart, only character and integrity of every individual in The Social Standard community. This has not and will not change. Building community and bringing the world closer together depends on people’s ability to share diverse views, experiences, ideas and information. We want people to be able to talk openly about the issues that matter to them, even if some may disagree or find them objectionable. In some cases, we allow content which would otherwise go against our Community Standards – if it is democratically voted proper. We do this only after weighing the public interest value against the risk of harm and we look to international human rights standards to make these judgments.
Our commitment to expression is paramount, but we recognize the internet creates new and increased opportunities for abuse. For these reasons, when we limit expression, we do it in service of one or more the following values:
Authenticity: We want to make sure the content people are seeing on our platforms are authentic. We believe that authenticity creates a better environment for sharing, and that’s why we don’t want people using these platforms to misrepresent who they are or what they’re doing.
Safety: We are committed to making the Social Standard Universe a safe place. Expression that threatens people has the potential to intimidate, exclude or silence others and isn’t allowed on any of our associated platforms.
Privacy: We are committed to protecting personal privacy and information. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves, and to choose how and when to share on each platform and to connect more easily.
Dignity: We believe that all people are equal in dignity and rights. We expect that people will respect the dignity of others and not harass or degrade others.
Our Community Standards apply to everyone, all around the world, and to all types of content. They’re designed to be comprehensive – for example, content that might not be considered hateful may still be removed for violating a different policy. We recognize that words mean different things or affect people differently depending on their local community, language, or background. We work hard to account for these nuances while also applying our policies consistently and fairly to people and their expression. In the case of certain policies, we require more information and/or context to enforce in line with our Community Standards.
People can report potentially violating content, including Pages, Groups, Profiles, individual content, and comments. We also give people control over their own experience by allowing them to block, unfollow or hide people and posts.
The consequences for violating our Community Standards vary depending on the severity of the violation and the person's history on the platform. For instance, we may warn someone for a first violation, but if they continue to violate our policies, we may restrict their ability to post on on certain features in certain platforms or disable their profile fully. We also may notify law enforcement when we believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or a direct threat to public safety.
Our Community Standards are a guide for what is and isn’t allowed on these platforms. It is in this spirit that we ask members of the Social Standard community to follow these guidelines.
Violence and Criminal Behavior
1. Violence and Incitement
We aim to prevent potential offline harm that may be related to content on our platforms. While we understand that people commonly express disdain or disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in non-serious ways, we remove language that incites or facilitates serious violence. We remove content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety. We also try to consider the language and context in order to distinguish casual statements from content that constitutes a credible threat to public or personal safety. In determining whether a threat is credible, we may also consider additional information like a person's public visibility and the risks to their physical safety.
In some cases, we see aspirational or conditional threats directed at terrorists and other violent actors (e.g. Terrorists deserve to be killed), and we deem those non credible absent specific evidence to the contrary.
2. Dangerous Individuals and Organizations
In an effort to prevent and disrupt real-world harm, we do not allow any organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms. This includes organizations or individuals involved in the following:
Terrorist activity
Organized hate
Mass murder (including attempts) or multiple murder
Human trafficking
Organized violence or criminal activity
We also remove content that expresses support or praise for groups, leaders, or individuals involved in these activities.
3. Coordinating Harm and Publicizing Crime
In an effort to prevent and disrupt offline harm and copycat behavior, we prohibit people from facilitating, organizing, promoting, or admitting to certain criminal or harmful activities targeted at people, businesses, property or animals. We allow people to debate and advocate for the legality of criminal and harmful activities, as well as draw attention to harmful or criminal activity that they may witness or experience as long as they do not advocate for or coordinate harm.
4. Regulated Goods
To encourage safety and compliance with common legal restrictions, we prohibit attempts by individuals, manufacturers, and retailers to purchase, sell, or trade non-medical drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, and marijuana. We also prohibit the purchase, sale, gifting, exchange, and transfer of firearms, including firearm parts or ammunition, between private individuals on our platforms. Some of these items are not regulated everywhere; however, because of the borderless nature of our community, we try to enforce our policies as consistently as possible. Firearm stores and online retailers may promote items available for sale off of our services as long as those retailers comply with all applicable laws and regulations. We allow discussions about sales of firearms and firearm parts in stores or by online retailers and advocating for changes to firearm regulation.
5. Fraud and Deception
In an effort to prevent and disrupt harmful or fraudulent activity, we remove content aimed at deliberately deceiving people to gain an unfair advantage or deprive another of money, property, or legal right. However, we allow people to raise awareness and educate others as well as condemn these activities using our platform.
Safety
6. Suicide and Self-Injury
In an effort to promote a safe environment on our SS Powered Platforms, we remove content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including certain graphic imagery and real-time depictions that experts tell us might lead others to engage in similar behavior. Self-injury is defined as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. We want the Social Standard Universe with all of its associated platforms to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another, which is why we allow people to discuss suicide and self-injury.
We work with organizations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress. We also talk to experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement. For example, we have been advised by experts that we should not remove live videos of self-injury while there is an opportunity for loved ones and authorities to provide help or resources.
In contrast, we remove any content that identifies and negatively targets victims or survivors of self-injury or suicide seriously, humorously, or rhetorically.
7. Child Nudity and Sexual Exploitation of Children
We do not allow content that sexually exploits or endangers children. When we become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with applicable law. We know that sometimes people share nude images of their own children with good intentions; however, we generally remove these images because of the potential for abuse by others and to help avoid the possibility of other people reusing or misappropriating the images.
8. Sexual Exploitation of Adults
We recognize the importance of our platforms as a place to discuss and draw attention to sexual violence and exploitation. We believe this is an important part of building common understanding and community. In an effort to create space for this conversation while promoting a safe environment, we remove content that depicts, threatens or promotes sexual violence, sexual assault, or sexual exploitation, while also allowing space for victims to share their experiences. We remove content that displays, advocates for, or coordinates sexual acts with non-consenting parties or commercial sexual services, such as prostitution and escort services. We do this to avoid facilitating transactions that may involve trafficking, coercion, and non-consensual sexual acts.
To protect victims and survivors, we also remove images that depict incidents of sexual violence and intimate images shared without permission from the people pictured.
9. Bullying and Harassment
Bullying and harassment happen in many places and come in many different forms, from making threats to releasing personally identifiable information, to sending threatening messages, and making unwanted malicious contact. We do not tolerate this kind of behavior because it prevents people from feeling safe and respected on SS Powered Platforms.
We distinguish between public figures and private individuals because we want to allow discussion, which often includes critical commentary of people who are featured in the news or who have a large public audience. For public figures, we remove attacks that are severe as well as certain attacks where the public figure is directly tagged in the post or comment. For private individuals, our protection goes further: we remove content that's meant to degrade or shame, including, for example, claims about someone's sexual activity. We recognize that bullying and harassment can have more of an emotional impact on minors, which is why our policies provide heightened protection for users between the ages of 13 and 18.
Context and intent matter, and we allow people to share and re-share posts if it is clear that something was shared in order to condemn or draw attention to bullying and harassment. In certain instances, we require self-reporting because it helps us understand that the person targeted feels bullied or harassed.
10. Human Exploitation
After consulting with outside experts from around the world, we are consolidating several existing exploitation policies that were previously housed in different sections of the Community Standards into one dedicated section that focuses on human exploitation and captures a broad range of harmful activities that may manifest on our platform. Experts think and talk about these issues under one umbrella — human exploitation.
In an effort to disrupt and prevent harm, we remove content that facilitates or coordinates the exploitation of humans, including human trafficking. We define human trafficking as the business of depriving someone of liberty for profit. It is the exploitation of humans in order to force them to engagein commercial sex, labor, or other activities against their will. It relies on deception, force and coercion, and degrades humans by depriving them of their freedom while economically or materially benefiting others.
Human trafficking is multi-faceted and global; it can affect anyone regardless of age, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, gender, or location. It takes many forms, and any given trafficking situation can involve various stages of development. By the coercive nature of this abuse, victims cannot consent.
While we need to be careful not to conflate human trafficking and smuggling, the two can be related and exhibit overlap. The United Nations defines human smuggling as the procurement or facilitation of illegal entry into a state across international borders. Without necessity for coercion or force, it may still result in the exploitation of vulnerable individuals who are trying to leave their country of origin, often in pursuit of a better life. Human smuggling is a crime against a state, relying on movement, and human trafficking is a crime against a person, relying on exploitation.
11. Privacy Violations and Image Privacy Rights
Privacy and the protection of personal information are fundamentally important values for the Social Standard. We work hard to keep your account secure and safeguard your personal information in order to protect you from potential physical or financial harm. You should not post personal or confidential information about others without first getting their consent. We also provide people ways to report imagery that they believe to be in violation of their privacy rights.
Objectionable Content
12. Hate Speech
We do not allow hate speech on Social Standard Powered Platforms because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence.
We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We protect against attacks on the basis of age when age is paired with another protected characteristic, and also provide certain protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.
Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others. In some cases, words or terms that might otherwise violate our standards are used self-referentially or in an empowering way. People sometimes express contempt in the context of a romantic break-up. Other times, they use gender-exclusive language to control membership in a health or positive support group, such as a breastfeeding group for women only. In all of these cases, we allow the content but expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it. Where the intention is unclear, we may remove the content.
We allow humor and social commentary related to these topics. In addition, we believe that people are more responsible when they share this kind of commentary using their authentic identity.
Integrity and Authenticity
17. Misrepresentation
Authenticity is the cornerstone of our community. We believe that people are more accountable for their statements and actions when they use their authentic identities. That's why we require people to connect on Social Standard's Universal account using the name they go by in everyday life. Our authenticity policies are intended to create a safe environment where people can trust and hold one another accountable.
18. Spam
We work hard to limit the spread of spam because we do not want to allow content that is designed to deceive, or that attempts to mislead users to increase viewership. This content creates a negative user experience and detracts from people's ability to engage authentically in online communities. We also aim to prevent people from abusing our platform, products, or features to artificially increase viewership or distribute content en masse for commercial gain.
19. Cybersecurity
We recognize that the safety of our users extends to the security of their personal information. Attempts to gather sensitive personal information by deceptive or invasive methods are harmful to the authentic, open, and safe atmosphere that we want to foster. Therefore, we do not allow attempts to gather sensitive user information through the abuse of our platform and products.
20. Inauthentic Behavior
In line with our commitment to authenticity, we don't allow people to misrepresent themselves on SS Powered Platforms, use fake accounts, artificially boost the popularity of content, or engage in behaviors designed to enable other violations under our Community Standards. This policy is intended to create a space where people can trust the people and communities they interact with.
21. False News
Reducing the spread of false news on SS Powered Platforms is a responsibility that we take seriously. We also recognize that this is a challenging and sensitive issue. We want to help people stay informed without stifling productive public discourse. There is also a fine line between false news and satire or opinion. For these reasons, we don't remove false news from the platforms' feeds but instead, significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in the News Feed.
22. Manipulated Media
Media, including image, audio, or video, can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, like a filter effect on a photo. In other cases, the manipulation isn’t apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We aim to remove this category of manipulated media when the criteria laid out below have been met.
In addition, we will continue to invest in partnerships (including with journalists, academics and independent fact-checkers) to help us reduce the distribution of false news and misinformation, as well as to better inform people about the content they encounter online.
23. Memorialization
When someone passes away, friends and family can request that we memoralize the Social Standard Universal account. Once memorialized, the word "Remembering" appears above the name on the person's profile to help make it that the account is now a memorial site and protects against attempted logins and fraudulent activity. To respect the choices someone made while alive, we aim to preserve their account after they pass away.
Respecting Intellectual Property
24. Intellectual Property
Social Standard takes intellectual property rights seriously and believes they are important to promoting expression, creativity, and innovation in our community. You own all of the content and information you post on Social Standard associated platforms, and you control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. However, before sharing content on Social Standard Powered Platforms, please be sure you have the right to do so. We ask that you respect other people’s copyrights, trademarks, and other legal rights. We are committed to helping people and organizations promote and protect their intellectual property rights. Social Standard’s Terms of Service do not allow people to post content that violates someone else’s intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark.
Content-Related Requests
25. User Requests
We comply with:
User requests for removal of their own account
Requests for removal of a deceased user’s account from a verified immediate family member or executor
Requests for removal of an incapacitated user’s account from an authorized representative
26. Additional Protection of Minors
We comply with:
Requests for removal of an underage account
Government requests for removal of child abuse imagery depicting, for example, beating by an adult or strangling or suffocating by an adult
Legal guardian requests for removal of attacks on unintentionally famous minors