Community rules

Draft for legal review — not legal advice, not published, not accepted. Prepared 27 September 2026; revised 28 September 2026; revised 29 September 2026 for a worldwide listing.

Revised under task pollinate-1m3kn9zj2nkfc against Apple's App Review Guideline 1.2 (user-generated content) and Google Play's User Generated Content policy, and for what the product now does. No lawyer has reviewed it (Rohit's no-lawyer decision, 28 September 2026). The UAE laws named below (the Cybercrime Law, the media content standards, the child digital safety law) are cited as our research summarised them; this revision did not re-read those texts. Changes and sources: docs/policies/2026-09-28-policy-revision-notes.md.

Worldwide revision (29 September 2026, issue #150). Rohit chose a worldwide store listing (19:30 UTC, "worldwide obviously"). The rules are now Pollinate's rules everywhere, plus anything illegal where the member or their audience is, with the categories most countries treat as priority illegal content named (UK Online Safety Act, EU Digital Services Act; the worldwide recheck). The UAE-specific bans (demonstrations, insulting religion, public morals and the like) moved to an "In the UAE" section: that is Claude's default in the recheck, and Rohit may choose to apply them everywhere instead [R22].

Region revision (17 October 2026, D-111). Rohit decided that moderation follows each region's own laws and cultural norms, researched per region, and then (D-112) that the UAE's rules apply in the UAE only and LGBTQ+ groups follow the research for each country. The "Protests and marches" and "In the UAE" sections are replaced by "Rules that depend on the place", which follows the region moderation policy. This answers R22 and replaces R24's "keep it off". The member-facing wording waits for the design owner's review.

Markers: R# open questions for Rohit, L# uncertain legal points, G# product gaps; all in README.md.

Pollinate is for real people finding their communities and meeting in person. Communities run themselves: they write their own guidelines and their members judge their admins. Pollinate keeps out of the way, except for a short list of things we must stop, whatever any community decides. These rules are that list, and how enforcement works.

These rules apply everywhere on Pollinate, in every country: posts, comments, photos, profiles, community pages, gatherings, chats and direct messages. Each community may add its own guidelines on top, which you accept when you join. A community's guidelines can be stricter than these rules, never looser. You agree to these rules before you first post or create anything. [G29]

Be real

• One person, you. Don't pretend to be someone else, a business you don't represent, or an official. Impersonation is a crime in many countries, including the UAE.
• No bots, fake accounts or accounts run for someone else. In Rohit's words: "No bots no fake accounts no finstas no nonsense."
• Be 18 or over, in every country.
• You may use a handle instead of your real name. That isn't a licence to break these rules.

Not allowed on Pollinate

Two things are never allowed, wherever you are:

1. Anything illegal where you are, or where the people who can see it are. Laws differ between countries. If something you post is against the law in the country you post from, or in the country of the community or gathering it's in, it breaks these rules.
2. Anything on the list below, even where it would be legal. These are Pollinate's own rules, the same in every country.

The most serious kinds, which we act on first and which most countries treat as priority illegal content:

• Anything that sexualises children. Child sexual abuse and exploitation material is removed and reported to the relevant hotline or authority immediately.
• Terrorism and violent extremism: supporting, praising, recruiting for or sharing material from terrorist groups.
• Threats and violence: threatening or encouraging harm to anyone.
• Intimate images shared without consent, or threats to share them, including fake or altered ones. We remove them as fast as we can once we know, and within 48 hours of a report at the latest (UK Online Safety Act s.10(3A); the US TAKE IT DOWN Act). [G42] The report screen has an intimate-image reason: a photo you report that way is hidden from everyone while we review it, and if you don't have an account you can use the form at pollinate.social/report/intimate-image. Copies aren't matched automatically yet.
• Encouraging suicide or self-harm. If someone may be at risk, report it and we'll respond. If anyone is in danger now, call your local emergency number.
• Selling or supplying drugs, weapons or people: illegal drugs, weapons and explosives, people smuggling and trafficking.
• Fraud and scams, extortion, and phishing for people's details.
• Extreme pornography, and any sexual content (below).

And the rest of Pollinate's rules:

• Hate: attacking people for who they are, including their religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or disability. [L18]
• Harassment, bullying and stalking, including piling on, shaming, or following someone around Pollinate or into real life.
• Nudity and sexual content. None, including "incidental" sexual content.
• Other people's private information: addresses, phone numbers, ID details, photos or recordings of people without their consent, or tracking someone's location. Invading someone's privacy can be a crime even when the information is true, as it is in the UAE. Nobody is ever doxxed on Pollinate: not by members, not by admins, not by Pollinate.
• Defamation: false statements that damage someone's reputation.
• False news and misleading claims that the law of the community's or gathering's country prohibits.
• Other illegal goods and services: gambling, money laundering, and unlicensed financial offers.
• Infringing other people's rights: posting work you don't have the right to share, such as someone else's photos, text or music. See "Reporting illegal content and copyright" in the terms.
• Encouraging dangerous activities: dares, challenges or anything that risks physical harm to you or others.
• Unlicensed fundraising or donation appeals.
• Advertising. Version 1.0 has no paid promotion, and a post shouldn't be a disguised ad. [L9]
• Spam: repeated posts, misleading links, and vote manipulation, including groups voting together to push posts up or people down.

Polls aren't built yet. [L11] Whether a poll inside a community could count as a survey needing a permit in the UAE is uncertain, so these rules say nothing about polls until it's answered.

Rules that depend on the place

Some things are allowed in one country and against the law in another. Every community and gathering is in a place, and Pollinate also applies the rules of that place's country to what's posted there: the community's or gathering's country, not where you live. Depending on the country, these may be hidden, or held until a person at Pollinate reviews them:

• Protests and marches: planning, organising, promoting or calling people to a demonstration, march or protest. Pollinate hides this in some countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, and a person reviews it in others. Where it's allowed, the organiser is responsible for any notice or permit the country requires; Pollinate doesn't check. Talking about protests and the news is fine everywhere.
• Insulting the state, its rulers, its royal family, its flag or its other national symbols.
• Insulting a religion, its prophets, its holy texts or its symbols.
• Denying the Holocaust or another genocide, or showing banned extremist symbols.
• Insulting another country, its leaders or its flag.
• Selling or arranging alcohol where the law restricts it.

Which of these apply in each country is listed at [G43: a public page listing each country's place rules, generated from region-rules.ts, before these rules are published].

Wherever a protest is organised, these are never allowed: calling for, planning or praising violence, rioting or damage; bringing or asking for weapons; attacking people, trapping them or stopping them leaving. A gathering started without a community can't be a demonstration, anywhere.

LGBTQ+ groups. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, where same-sex relationships are against the law, a person at Pollinate reviews any community or gathering for LGBTQ+ people, with its members' safety first. AI never hides one for that reason. Being LGBTQ+, or talking about it, never breaks Pollinate's rules, anywhere. Pollinate never asks for, guesses or keeps anyone's sexual orientation.

Profiles have no place, so a profile is checked against all of these rules except the one on LGBTQ+ groups, and anything found goes to a person. None of these rules hides or removes a profile on its own.

Meeting in person

Gatherings on Pollinate are free, informal social gatherings in public places in version 1.0.

• Meet in public places: cafés, parks, venues. Never in a private home for a gathering planned with people you don't know.
• Hosts follow the local laws, and get any permit their gathering needs, where they meet. Rules differ by country and city. For example, in Dubai, organised entertainment, sport, charity, religious or business events can need a permit from the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), whether or not they charge. The app asks what kind of gathering you're planning and won't publish those kinds unless you confirm you hold a permit. Pollinate doesn't check permits. Don't mislabel a gathering to get round it. [L10]
• Nothing that charges entry in version 1.0.
• A host is responsible for their gathering; a host who hands one over makes the new host responsible.
• Tell someone where you're going. If something goes wrong at or after a gathering, report it. If anyone is in danger, call the police first, on your local emergency number (999 in the UAE, 112 in the EU, 911 in the US and Canada).

How moderation works

There are three layers, and each has limits.

1. Your community

• Admins propose, the team decides. An admin proposes an action (hide or delete a post or comment, restrict a member, and others) in the community's moderation queue. The owner, co-founders and other admins vote within the community's consensus window (6, 12 or 24 hours). When the window closes, a majority of the votes cast decides; ties fail. Restrictions and bulk actions need at least three votes or 20% of the admin team, whichever is larger. Winning a vote unlocks the action.
• Trusted tools. An admin whose proposals of one kind are approved more than 75% of the time (after at least ten) can use that tool directly until their rate falls.
• Small teams. Where fewer than three people can vote, a hide takes effect on the owner's proposal; deletions and restrictions go to Pollinate.
• Members judge admins. Every admin action is meant to appear in the community's admin actions view, where members with at least 14 days' membership and Level 2 can vote on it; an admin whose approval stays below 40% for 30 days is removed from the team. [G6] The admin actions view and member verdicts aren't built yet.
• Crisis mode. If admins and members stay at odds for months, Pollinate may declare crisis mode, with a public notice and timeline; the owner can make amends, shut down or hand over to a steward chosen by member vote.

2. Automatic filtering, which never deletes

AI moderation checks what's written against these rules and each community's guidelines, and our photo checks look at every photo before anyone else sees it. They can hide something automatically or add it to a queue for people to decide. They never delete. Hidden means invisible to everyone except its author, who sees it marked as under review, and moderators. In Rohit's words: "AI auto-hides, or adds to admin queue, but never auto deletes." [G5] Text checking is built but not yet live: until a moderation provider is connected, posting is switched off outside local testing.

3. Pollinate, above everything

Pollinate removes unlawful content and acts on official orders within their deadlines, outside community votes and timers. A community vote can't undo a legal removal. Child sexual abuse material goes through a dedicated path and is reported immediately. See the legal-request process.

What can happen to your account

There are four kinds of restriction.

In an emergency, Pollinate can also suspend an account while it looks into something, freeze a community's actions, or remove a gathering.

We tell you why. When Pollinate removes or hides something you posted, or restricts, suspends or bans your account, you're told what was done, the facts, whether automated tools were involved, which rule or law it broke, and how to ask a person to review it (EU Digital Services Act, Art. 17). [G35] No one is suspended or banned by a machine alone.

Posts also fade as they lose approval. That's feedback, not a penalty, and a faded post can always be opened and read in full.

Asking for a person to review

There's no community appeals court: that was Rohit's choice. But:

• You can ask a person at Pollinate to review any automated decision about you, such as ability loss or an AI hide, from You → Restrictions in the app or by writing to support@pollinate.social. The UAE data law gives you this right (PDPL Art. 18(4)); so do the GDPR and UK GDPR (Art. 22(3), in the cases it covers), and Brazil's LGPD Art. 20 gives a right to a review. We give a person's review to everyone for every automated decision.
• You can also complain to us about a decision on a report you made, or on content of yours, by writing to support@pollinate.social. A person answers.
• If you're on notice, you can message the moderation team directly.
• Admin actions are reviewed by members once the admin actions view exists. [G6]
• [R15] Whether a ban can be reviewed on request is not decided.

Reporting

You can report any post, comment, chat message, direct message, person, community or gathering from the app. Choose what's wrong: harassment or bullying; hate; violence or threats; sexual content; a child's safety; self-harm or suicide; scam or fraud; spam; breaks the law; private information; pretending to be someone; or something else. If it breaks the law, say which country's law if you can. You can also write to support@pollinate.social [to be set up; R5], including if you don't have an account. [R17] For what an illegal-content or copyright notice needs, see "Reporting illegal content and copyright" in the terms.

Every report goes to Pollinate. For now Rohit, Pollinate's only team member, answers every one: safety reports within 24 hours, and others within 72 hours (provisional). [G18] The deadlines other than the 24-hour safety one are provisional until Rohit confirms them. You're told what we decided. In India, Rohit is also Pollinate's grievance officer: a complaint is acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 15 days, and a complaint asking us to remove content the Rules prohibit is acted on within 72 hours (IT Rules 2021, rule 3(2)). [L23]

You can also block and mute anyone. Blocking hides your posts, comments and profiles from each other and stops mentions. Gatherings hosted by someone on the other side of a block still show for now. [G3] A block never stops either person reporting what the other posted.

For community owners and admins

• Your community's guidelines must fit inside these rules.
• Use Pollinate's tools, not private channels, to take action, so members can see and judge it.
• Never ask for, share or publish a member's private details. You'll only ever see whether someone is verified.
• If you run a community, the law where you are may hold you responsible for unlawful content in it that you know about; UAE law, for example, may. Act on it with Pollinate's tools and report it to us. [L8]
• If your community or gathering is in a particular country, its members there must follow that country's law, and your guidelines must not ask them to break it.