Content Moderation Policy

Community Moderators

Users who create or are appointed to run a Community. They see reports about Content in their Community and apply both the Content Policy and their own Community rules. They are not our employees, and they act in their own capacity.

The Boznaw review team

Handles escalations, everything in the zero-tolerance categories, reports about Communities and Moderators, all account-level enforcement, and everything with a legal dimension.

The Grievance Officer

Handles formal grievances and appeals under Rule 3(2) of the IT Rules, 2021, and is the route to a decision independent of whoever made the original one. See Grievance Redressal.

• User reports. Any User can report a post, comment or profile from its menu. This is the main route, and the one to use.
• Moderator review. Moderators read their own Communities and act on what they find.
• Grievances. A complaint to the Grievance Officer, including from a person who does not hold an account.
• Legal direction. An order of a court, or a notification from an authorised government agency.
• Copyright complaints, handled under the Copyright Policy.
• Automated flags for volume, not meaning — rate limiting and duplicate detection, which queue Content for a person to look at.

We do not proactively read private direct messages. A message is reviewed only where a participant reports it, or where a lawful order requires it.

1. 1

   1. It is queued and prioritised

   Reports are triaged by category. Anything touching immediate physical safety, a minor, or non-consensual intimate imagery goes to the front regardless of when it arrived.

2. 2

   2. A reviewer reads the Content in context

   The reviewer looks at the Content itself, the thread around it, the Community's own rules, and the report note. Context is part of the assessment, not a formality.

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   3. A decision is recorded against the Content Policy

   Every decision records which provision was applied and what action was taken, so that decisions can be reviewed and compared.

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   4. The people affected are told

   The reporter is told the outcome. The author is told what was removed or restricted, which rule was applied, and how to appeal — unless telling them would defeat a legal order or create a risk to someone.

5. 5

   5. The record is kept

   Enforcement records are retained for the period set out in the Privacy Policy, so that repeat violations can be assessed fairly and appeals can be answered.

These are the periods the IT Rules, 2021, as amended in 2026, require of us. They are obligations, not targets.

Ordinary in-product reports that raise no statutory clock are reviewed as quickly as the queue allows. We do not publish a service-level figure for those, because we will not publish a number we cannot yet stand behind.

The action taken reflects four things: what the Content is, how much harm it does or risks, whether it appears deliberate, and what has happened on the account before.

5.1 Repeat violations

Strikes accumulate against an account. Their weight depends on severity, and they age out after 12 months without a further breach. An account that accumulates strikes faces escalating restrictions, and eventually termination. A single sufficiently serious breach can result in termination without any prior strike.

5.2 Emergencies

Where Content indicates a credible, imminent risk of death or serious physical injury, we act first and document afterwards. That may include immediate removal, immediate suspension, and disclosure to an emergency service or law-enforcement authority without waiting for an order — a disclosure the Privacy Policy expressly provides for.

Every enforcement decision can be appealed, and we would rather you appealed than left.

1. 1

   1. Appeal to us

   Reply to the notice you received, or write to the Grievance Officer with the account name, what was removed or restricted, and why you think the decision is wrong. There is no fee, and no form to obtain.

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   2. A different person reviews it

   An appeal is not reviewed by the person who made the original decision. Where a Community Moderator made the decision, the appeal goes to the Boznaw review team.

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   3. You are told the outcome with reasons

   If the decision is reversed, the Content is restored and the strike is removed. If it stands, you are told which provision was applied and why the appeal did not succeed.

4. 4

   4. If you are still not satisfied

   You may appeal to a Grievance Appellate Committee constituted under Rule 3A of the IT Rules, 2021, within 30 days of our decision. See Grievance Redressal. Your right to approach a court is unaffected.

A Community may set stricter rules than the Content Policy, and its Moderators may remove Content that breaks them. A Community may not permit what the Content Policy prohibits.

We may intervene in a Community where its rules conflict with ours, where its report queue is abandoned, where moderation tools are being used to harass members, or where the Community itself is organised around prohibited Content. Intervention may mean restricting the Community, replacing its Moderators, or closing it. A Community's Moderators are told what has happened and may appeal.

We publish what we can without making the rules easier to evade.

• We publish the rules, the categories of action available, the timelines above, and the appeal route.
• We tell affected Users what was removed or restricted, which provision applied, and how to challenge it.
• We do not publish the internal signals used to detect spam, ban evasion, vote manipulation and coordinated behaviour, or the thresholds at which they trigger.

For a report about specific Content, the Report control in that Content's menu is faster and more precise than an email, because it tells us exactly what you mean.