How We Enforce Our Rules

• Proportionate. The response fits the harm. A first, minor mistake is treated differently from a deliberate, serious, or repeated one.
• Consistent. The same rules apply to everyone, whatever their following.
• Explained. When we act on your content or account, we tell you why and how to appeal.
• Accountable. Every action is recorded with who took it and why, and can be reviewed.

Most violations come to us through reports from people on Wavely. The rest we find ourselves, when our moderators review public content. Uploaded media is also compared with lists of known illegal imagery, and a match goes to a moderator.

Decisions to remove content or restrict accounts are made by people on our moderation team, not by automated systems on their own.

Moderators see what was reported and the context needed to judge it. Direct messages reach a moderator only when someone in the conversation reports one, and then only the reported message and the least surrounding context needed. The few other times our team can see private content are set out in the Privacy Policy.

• Severity: how much harm the content could cause, and to whom.
• Context: whether it is news, art, education, commentary, or criticism, and whether the people involved are in on it.
• Targeting: whether it is aimed at a specific person, and whether that person reported it.
• Intent and scale: whether it looks deliberate, coordinated, or automated.
• History: whether the account has broken the rules before. A new violation from an account with past violations weighs more heavily than a first one, and usually leads to a stronger action.
• Age: whether a minor is involved, which always weighs heavily.

• Collapsing a comment. A comment or reply that may break the rules can be moved into a hidden section under the post, which anyone can choose to open. It still counts towards the post’s comment count.
• Removing content. Posts, comments, ratings, profile details, folders, communities, and messages that break the rules are removed. A post removed from a community by its admins is removed from that community only.
• Recalculating ratings. Manipulated ratings are removed and the average is recalculated without them.

We do not use ranking as a substitute for moderation. If content breaks the rules, we remove it rather than quietly showing it to fewer people. Separately, Explore and recommendations to people who do not follow you are meant to show the best of Wavely, so content that is allowed, but is low quality, repetitive, or borderline, may not be recommended there. It remains on your profile and in your followers’ feeds.

Some violations lead to immediate removal without a warning first: child sexual exploitation, credible threats of violence, sharing intimate images without consent, promoting terrorism or violent extremism, and operating accounts to evade a previous removal. Copyright infringement is handled through strikes, under the Copyright Policy.

When we act on your content or account, we tell you:

• What we did, and which content or part of your account it affected.
• Which rule it broke.
• How long a limit or suspension lasts.
• How to appeal.

We do not tell you who reported you. We may not notify you if doing so would break the law, or put someone at risk, for example during an investigation into child exploitation.

Community admins can remove posts and members within their own community, following the Community Admin Guidelines. Their actions are recorded the same way ours are. Wavely’s moderators enforce the Community Guidelines everywhere, and can act on a community and its admins as a whole.

If you think we got it wrong, appeal. Someone who did not make the original decision will review it. How to appeal explains the process.