OPERATOR are
facts only the operator can supply: where reports go, who handles
child safety reports, and where the instance publishes what it has
done about them. Fill them in, and have a qualified lawyer read the
result, before presenting this document as binding.
The contact points in these documents are the project's own. If you run your own
instance, replace them with yours before you publish them.
Version: 1.0 ·
Template last revised: 2026-09-20 ·
Effective on this instance:
OPERATOR: the date this policy takes effect on this instance
1. What this page covers
It covers the handling of abuse reports, the enforcement that follows, the appeal route, and the duties that fall on the operator of an instance. It does not replace the acceptable use rules, which say what people may and may not do in the first place.
Where an instance has published its own rules, those rules add to this one. They may be stricter. They may not be weaker, and they may not provide for anything this page prohibits.
2. Reporting abuse
There are three ways to report, and all of them reach a person:
- In the app. A report filed in a community goes to that community's moderators. A report about a moderator, or about the operator, goes further up.
- Directly to the operator. the project's Discord, discord.gg/dSF7eqsJuP
- To a law enforcement authority. Where something is illegal, report it to the authority in the country where it happened. The operator may be the only party able to act on it, and telling the operator does not replace telling the authority.
Reports are not anonymous to the people who receive them: they include who filed them, because that is usually what is needed to act. What is done with a report, and how long it is kept, is covered by the Privacy Policy.
3. Child safety
The operator of an instance is responsible for the safety of the children on it, and for the law that applies where they are. The software provides the tools; it cannot carry the responsibility.
Child sexual abuse material is prohibited without exception
No instance may host child sexual abuse material, and no instance may be used to ask for it, offer it, trade it, or help somebody else to get it. There is no exception for a small community, for a private community, for a community with a rule against it, for material that is fictional, for material that has been altered or generated, or for material that is described rather than shown.
The prohibition covers every route into the instance: messages, direct messages, files and attachments, profile pictures, avatars, banners, community icons, link previews, uploads that nobody has opened yet, the output of a bot, the result of an extension or integration, and content arriving over federation from another instance. A route that is technically obscure is still a route.
Running an instance does not create an exception. An operator who knows such material is present and does not remove it, or who is told and does not act, is responsible for that failure under the law that applies to them. No operator, administrator, community owner, moderator or user can grant permission to break this rule, and no appeal overrides it.
When such material is reported or found, the operator removes it, removes the accounts and automated processes used to share it, and preserves what the law requires them to preserve. Where the law requires the material to be reported to an authority, the operator reports it, and does so without waiting for the person who reported it to supply anything else.
Reports of this kind are handled by a named person on this instance, and can be made to the project's Discord, discord.gg/dSF7eqsJuP. Treat them as urgent: the platform moderation team for official instances is told about every one of them.
Other content that harms children
Content that encourages a child to meet an adult alone, that asks a child to send images, or that pressures a child into sexual situations is prohibited under the acceptable use rules whether or not it meets the definition of abuse material, and it is handled the same way. Grooming, sextortion, and an adult contacting a child in a sexual way are all reportable here and are all actionable.
4. What the software enforces
- Permission checks on every request, not only in the interface.
- A role hierarchy, so a moderator cannot act on somebody who outranks them.
- Upload size and count limits, image-only checks on avatars and community icons, and a rule that a file the server cannot identify is served as a download rather than interpreted.
- Rate limits on registration and on messaging.
- An audit log of administrative and moderation actions, so a decision can be explained afterwards.
None of that is a moderation system. Software can enforce a boundary; it cannot judge a conversation, weigh an excuse, or decide whether a person is safe to let back in. That is why the rules that matter are enforced by people, and why section 7 exists.
5. Enforcement
An operator or a community moderator may take any of these actions, in roughly ascending order of severity:
- Explain the rule, or warn the person.
- Remove or edit content, and note why.
- Remove a message, a file, a community, or a bot.
- Time out an account for a stated period.
- Suspend an account.
- Terminate an account and erase its data, as described in the Privacy Policy.
The action should match the conduct, and the same conduct should get the same answer from the same people. A rule that is applied to some members and not to others is worse than no rule, because it teaches people that the rule is negotiable.
6. Record keeping
Every action is recorded with who took it, when, and against what, and a report is recorded with what it was about. These records are what make an appeal possible, and they are what an investigator would ask for. How long they are kept is OPERATOR: how long moderation and audit records are kept on this instance.
7. Appeals
Anyone actioned can ask for the decision to be looked at again, whether or not they can sign in. The route is the appeal form in the application, and the Support page describes what to send with it.
An appeal is read by a person who was not the person who made the original decision, wherever that is practical. The answer says what was decided and why. Where the action was taken because content was illegal, or because a law required it, there may be no appeal, and the operator may not be able to explain the decision in full.
8. Reports about another instance
A report about something that happened on a different instance cannot be handled here. Send it to the operator of that instance. Where the other instance is federated with this one and the material arrived by federation, tell this operator as well, so that the federated link can be cut. The Federation Policy describes how that is done.
9. What is expected of people who report
Report in good faith, and say what you actually saw: the account or community, roughly when it happened, and what was said or shared. Do not report somebody to settle a disagreement, and do not organise reports to put pressure on an instance. Both make a moderation system worse for the people living inside it, and both make real reports harder to take seriously.
Do not keep copies of illegal material you have been asked to delete, and do not pass it on to anyone else. Forwarding it makes you part of its distribution.
10. What this instance publishes
An instance that keeps reports and actions is better at this than one that does not, and an operator who can show what was done earns more trust than one who asks for it. OPERATOR: where this instance publishes its moderation statistics, or a statement that it does not publish them