Community Guidelines

The short version

Unspace exists so people can build a space that looks like them and say what they actually think. That only works if the place stays safe enough to be honest in. These rules apply everywhere in the app — profiles, posts, the Diary, walls, comments, spaces and direct messages.

Unspace is for everyone. Whoever you are and wherever you are writing from, someone unlike you will read it. Write like you know that.

Who Unspace is for

Unspace is rated 13+ on the App Store and is intended for users aged 13 and over. We ask for your date of birth at sign-up and refuse accounts below that age. If we learn that a younger person has created an account, we remove it and the data with it. See our child safety standards.

Because people here are as young as 13, the rules below are stricter than they would be on an adults-only app, and they are enforced that way.

Not allowed

• Anything involving minors sexually. Zero tolerance, no exceptions, no warnings — the account goes and the matter is reported where the law requires it. See our child safety standards.
• Harassment and bullying. Targeting someone, organising or joining a pile-on, mocking screenshots of another person, or repeatedly contacting someone who has blocked you or asked you to stop.
• Hate speech. Slurs, or attacking people over race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation.
• Threats and violence. Threatening, glorifying or organising violence against anyone. Graphic real-world gore.
• Promoting self-harm. Encouraging suicide, self-harm or disordered eating, or sharing methods. Talking about your own struggles is allowed and welcome.
• Sexually explicit content. Pornographic material is not permitted on Unspace, in posts, profiles or messages. Intimate images of another person are never allowed, with or without their consent.
• Doxxing. Publishing someone’s private information — address, phone number, workplace, documents — without their consent.
• Impersonation. Pretending to be another person, brand or organisation in a way that misleads people.
• Spam and scams. Mass unsolicited messaging, engagement farming, phishing, fake giveaways, malware links.
• Illegal content. Selling drugs or weapons, sharing stolen data, extortion, fraud, or anything else that breaks the law.
• Ban evasion. Coming back with a new account after we have removed you.

The judgement calls

Most reports are not about the list above. They are about the grey area, and these are the things we actually weigh:

• Dark humour needs context. A joke that reads as a threat or a slur to someone scrolling past will be treated as one. If the context is not in the post, it does not exist.
• Check before you share. Passing on something false because it was convincing still does damage. Screenshots without a source are not evidence.
• Other people’s photos are theirs. Ask before posting a picture of someone else, and take it down if they ask you to.
• Disagreeing is fine, following someone around is not. The line is not how strongly you argue, it is whether you are still doing it after they have walked away.
• Being wrong is fine. Asking, correcting yourself and apologising are all normal here. Nobody is banned for a clumsy sentence.

What happens when rules are broken

What we do depends on how serious it was and whether it has happened before. In roughly increasing order:

• The content comes down, and you are told why.
• The account is limited — slower posting, or some features switched off.
• The account is suspended. You cannot sign in until the suspension is lifted; it does not expire on its own, so an appeal is how it ends.
• The account is permanently banned, and for repeat or severe cases the network address is blocked as well.
• We report the matter to the police or another authority where the law requires it.

Anything involving minors sexually, or a credible threat to someone’s life, skips straight to the bottom of that list.

Every moderation decision is recorded — who acted, on what, and when — so decisions can be reviewed later rather than taken on trust.

Reporting and blocking

Every user has these tools, and using them is the fastest way to get something looked at:

• Report — on profiles, posts, comments and messages. Reports reach our moderators, who can see the reported content itself.
• Block — on any profile. A blocked account cannot message you, comment on your posts, or write on your wall.

You can also write to unspaceapp@gmail.com, and you should, if the matter is urgent or involves someone’s safety.

Reporting someone in bad faith — to silence an argument, or as a group — is itself a rule break.

If you think we made a mistake

Moderation decisions can be appealed for 30 days after they are made. Write to unspaceapp@gmail.com from the email address on the account, say what was removed and why you disagree, and a person — not an automated system — will review it.

If the appeal succeeds, the account and the content are restored.

Community-run spaces

Unspace users also run their own servers, chats and sites — a Discord community and its rules pages among them. Those places are made and moderated by users, not by us. We do not operate them, we do not write their rules, and we are not responsible for what happens in them.

Only this page, and the other pages linked at the top of it, are the official rules of the Unspace app. Where a community's own rules differ, these ones govern the app. If something in a user-run space needs our attention, report it in the app or write to unspaceapp@gmail.com.