Community guidelines

How we moderate

These Guidelines exist so participation stays legible, accountable, and safe enough for public civic life. We may use human review, automated signals, and user reports. We also design for composable safety tools—such as labelers and user controls—where the protocol and product support them, so communities can add context on top of baseline rules we enforce.

We respect human rights and freedom of expression, and we follow applicable law in the jurisdictions where we operate. We try to use proportionate actions—warnings, limits, removal, or account suspension—based on severity, intent, and risk. We can get decisions wrong; when we offer an appeals path for a given surface, use it to explain why you believe we erred. Even with appeals, we retain discretion to make final calls about specific content or accounts on services we operate.

For how identity, moderation, verification, and privacy features are meant to work in the product, see Trust and safety and the documentation.

Our principles

• Safety first: No content that shows, promotes, or coordinates violence, exploitation, serious self-harm, or criminal harm to people or animals; protect privacy and minors.
• Respect others: No harassment, hate, or discrimination targeting people based on protected characteristics or civic participation.
• Be authentic: No scams, impersonation meant to mislead, coordinated inauthentic manipulation, or undisclosed paid persuasion presented as organic speech.
• Follow the rules: Obey applicable law, respect intellectual property, do not attack our systems, and do not evade enforcement.

1. Safety first

Public safety

Do not use PARA to coordinate, recruit for, or promote:

• Criminal enterprises, terrorism, human trafficking, or violent extremist activity.
• Step-by-step instructions intended to enable serious crimes or terrorist acts, or coordination of harmful real-world acts (including swatting or mob violence).

Do not share graphic violence to glorify harm, terrorize victims, or support criminal operations. Context matters: discussion of violence in news, art, fiction, games, or regulated sport is not banned solely because violence appears—what we restrict is real-world harm, glorification, or coordination of abuse.

Child safety

We apply strict rules to content and conduct involving minors:

• No sexualization or exploitation of minors or minor-aged characters (including synthetic, illustrated, or animated depictions when used for sexual gratification or grooming).
• No grooming, solicitation of intimate imagery from minors, or attempts to meet minors for abuse.
• No sharing identifying information, real-time location, or other sensitive details about minors that create safety risk.
• No unlawful advertising or promotion of gambling, controlled substances, alcohol, tobacco, or deceptive financial products to minors where such targeting is prohibited.

Adult content

Where the product allows adult material, it must be consensual, law-compliant, and labeled or restricted as the product requires. Do not post non-consensual intimate imagery (including synthetic or edited), threats to distribute such material, or sexual content that depicts realistic risk of death or serious injury. Do not use technology to facilitate sexual harassment or unwanted pursuit.

Mental health and wellbeing

Do not encourage self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, or dangerous substance abuse. Do not post instructions whose primary purpose is to help someone seriously injure themselves or others. Support and recovery content is welcome when it does not romanticize harm or provide methods.

Privacy protection

Do not publish others’ home addresses, non-public contact information, financial or medical records, identity documents, or similarly sensitive data without a strong public-interest justification. Do not share private communications you were not authorized to share. Do not post real-time location or other information that creates imminent safety risk.

Animal safety

No sexual content involving real animals or realistic synthetic depictions for that purpose. No content depicting torture, staged abuse, illegal fighting, or wildlife exploitation. Ordinary discussion of legal hunting, fishing, or husbandry is not banned by itself.

2. Respect others

Anti-discrimination

Do not attack people or groups based on protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, caste, disability, serious disease, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age (including minors), or immigration or asylum status. This includes slurs, dehumanization, supremacist material, and conspiracy narratives whose primary purpose is to incite hatred against protected groups.

Anti-harassment

Do not stalk, brigade, or persistently target someone to humiliate or degrade them. Do not misuse reporting, lists, labels, or moderation features to harass. Do not operate single-purpose accounts whose main function is abuse. Accounts that show a sustained pattern of extreme insults, bad-faith pile-ons, or disruption aimed at making participation unbearable may be limited or removed.

3. Be authentic

Trust and transparency

• No spam or repetitive posting intended to drown out conversation or degrade service quality.
• No phishing, financial scams, or fraudulent fundraising.
• No artificial manipulation of reach signals (including coordinated fake engagement) to mislead users or systems.
• Disclose paid or sponsored political content where the product or law requires disclosure, and do not disguise commercial persuasion as independent grassroots activity.

Account authenticity

Do not impersonate a person, organization, or public office in a way that is likely to mislead about identity or authority. Do not sell or transfer accounts, falsify verification, or evade age controls where they apply. Alternative identities are fine when they are not deceptive—clearly marked parody, satire, fan, or educational accounts are allowed with obvious labeling.

Information integrity

Do not coordinate inauthentic campaigns designed to suppress voting, impersonate election officials, or spread false statements about voting procedures, eligibility, times, or results when that information is likely to cause imminent interference with democratic participation. Do not spread false or manipulated claims that are likely to cause immediate serious harm (for example, fake emergency instructions).

4. Follow the rules

Regulated goods and services

Do not use PARA to unlawfully sell, advertise, or arrange transactions for controlled substances, prescription drugs outside lawful channels, weapons where prohibited, stolen goods, forged documents, or other illegal commerce.

Intellectual property

Respect copyright, trademark, and other IP rights. Do not remove required attribution, bypass technical protection in violation of law, or stream or redistribute content you are not authorized to share.

Site security

Do not probe, exploit, or disrupt PARA systems, APIs, rate limits, or security controls. Do not attempt to access data you are not permitted to access.

Enforcement evasion

Do not create new accounts or use technical tricks primarily to evade a suspension or ban, or help others do so.

5. Protected expression

We welcome legitimate speech that serves the public interest when framed responsibly, including:

• Journalism, research, education, and advocacy: factual reporting, scholarship, and civic debate about matters of public concern, including coverage of violence or harm when it is not glorifying or instructing abuse.
• Support and recovery: personal stories and community support that do not encourage self-harm methods, and verified crisis resources.
• Transparency: information lawfully drawn from public records, government proceedings, or clearly newsworthy scrutiny of public officials and institutions.