Child Safety Standards

1. The standard

We have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE). There's no warning stage, no strike system and no appeal. An account involved in it's closed permanently, the material is removed, the record is preserved, and the matter is referred to the appropriate authorities.

This page is part of the terms of service and sits above the community guidelines. Where anything else on this site could be read as softening what's written here, this page wins.

2. The age requirement

You must be 18 or older to use this service. That's a floor, not a reference to the local age of majority. Where the age of majority where you're is higher than 18, that higher number applies to you.

Nobody under 18 may use the service, register an account, appear on camera, or be within view of a camera that's connected to it. This includes children who are simply in the room. If a child comes into the room, end the call.

3. What's prohibited

All of the following result in immediate permanent removal:

• Any sexual content involving a person under 18, in any form: live, recorded, drawn, generated, or described.
• Sexualising a minor in conversation, in a profile, in a display name, or anywhere else on the service.
• Attempting to contact, befriend, groom, or arrange to meet a minor.
• Soliciting images or video from a minor, or offering money, coins or gifts for them.
• Sharing, requesting, linking to, or advertising child sexual abuse material.
• Knowingly allowing a minor to use your account or appear on your camera.
• Claiming to be under 18 in order to attract this kind of contact.

4. Reporting it

If you see any of the above, or you believe the person you're matched with is a minor, report it. You do not need to be certain, and you will not be penalised for a report made in good faith that turns out to be wrong.

• In the product: use the report control in the call or on the profile. It carries the room and timing information automatically, which is what makes a report actionable.
• By email: write to [email protected] with CHILD SAFETY in the subject line. Say what you saw and roughly when. That subject line is how it gets pulled out of the ordinary queue.

Do not attach images or video of suspected abuse material to your report. Possessing and forwarding it's itself an offence in most countries, including when the intention is to help. Describe it and tell us where to look. If you believe a child is in immediate danger, contact your local police first. They can act in minutes, and we cannot.

5. What we do

On a report in this category:

• The account is suspended while it's looked at, rather than after.
• The content is removed from the service.
• Confirmed cases result in a permanent ban of the account and of the sessions and devices associated with it.
• The record (what was reported, what was found, and the identifiers and timestamps around it) is preserved, not deleted with the account, so that it's still there if an investigator asks for it later.
• The matter is referred to the appropriate authorities where the law requires it or where the circumstances warrant it.

Deleting an account does not undo any of this, and a ban in this category is not lifted on appeal.

6. Working with authorities

We respond to valid legal requests from law enforcement and child protection agencies, and we will preserve records on request while a legal process is underway.

Where there's a credible indication that a child is at risk, we do not wait to be asked before passing information to the authorities who can act on it. Nothing in the privacy policy is intended to prevent that, and section 6 of that page says so.

7. What we do to prevent it

Being straight about this is more useful than a list of impressive-sounding measures, so:

• The service is stated as 18+ at the point of entry and throughout, and the age requirement is a term of use rather than a suggestion.
• Reporting is available inside every call, not buried in a settings menu, because a report that takes four taps does not get made.
• The service samples still frames from cameras during matching and calls and runs face detection on them. What this does and does not do is written out honestly in section 3 of the privacy policy: it establishes whether a live person is in frame. It's not an age verification system and we do not present it as one.
• Bans are enforced against the session and device, not only the account, so that closing an account and opening another is not a way back in.
• Moderation records outlive the accounts they belong to, for the same reason.

What that adds up to is a service that depends heavily on users reporting what they see. If you see something, report it.

8. Point of contact

Reports, law enforcement requests and preservation requests in this category go to [email protected] with CHILD SAFETY in the subject line. Requests from law enforcement should identify the agency and the legal basis, and we will respond to the address they come from.