Community Guidelines

Hedgehog powers comments, reactions, and live conversation on sites and apps across the web. These Community Guidelines describe what is and isn’t acceptable when you take part, so that conversations stay useful and people feel safe joining in.

These Guidelines apply to everyone who comments or reacts through Hedgehog. They work alongside the rules set by each organization whose site or app embeds Hedgehog — an organization may set stricter standards for its own community, but never looser ones than these Guidelines.

Moderation on Hedgehog is shared between the organizations that embed it and Hedgehog itself. Each organization is responsible for moderating the conversations on its own properties and may set its own house rules, appoint moderators, and remove content that breaks them.

Hedgehog supports that work with automated review that flags potentially harmful content and human review of reports and escalations. We may remove content, limit features, or suspend accounts that violate these Guidelines, our Terms of Service, or applicable law.

You help keep conversations healthy. If you see content that breaks these Guidelines, use the reporting tools to flag it for the organization’s moderators and for Hedgehog. You can also block accounts you’d rather not interact with.

Report in good faith. Misusing the reporting system — for example, to silence disagreement or gain an advantage — is itself a violation of these Guidelines (see Be Authentic below).

The following rules apply everywhere Hedgehog is used. They exist to protect people, not particular opinions, and they apply regardless of who you are or what you are discussing.

1. No Illegal Activity

Don’t use Hedgehog to facilitate, organize, or promote unlawful conduct, to trade in illegal goods or services, to defraud or exploit others, or to infringe intellectual property rights.

Prohibited Criminal Behavior

• Facilitating, organizing, promoting, or admitting to criminal or harmful activity targeting people, businesses, property, or animals
• Offering, buying, selling, raffling, gifting, transferring, or trading illegal goods or services
• Promoting the use, purchase, sale, or trade of items that are illegal in the United States
• Deceiving, misrepresenting, defrauding, or financially exploiting others

Prohibited Intellectual Property Violations

• Violating others’ intellectual property rights, trademarks, or content rights

2. Be Civil

Engage in good faith and treat others with respect. Disagreement is welcome; harassment and demeaning conduct are not.

Prohibited Harassing Content

• Repeatedly contacting or messaging someone who does not want to hear from you
• Personal attacks on community members or staff, including comments about appearance
• Mocking or trivializing someone’s tragedy, injury, or loss
• Posting private or manipulated images obtained unlawfully or shared without consent

Prohibited Obscene Content

• Slurs and stereotyping language
• Profanity used to harass, attack, or derail a conversation
• Derogatory terms based on protected characteristics such as race, sexual orientation, religion, gender, or disability
• Hate speech or the promotion of hate groups
• Content that substantively supports Nazism, white supremacy, or similar ideologies

3. No Violence

Don’t threaten people’s safety, endanger minors, or promote violent acts or organizations. We coordinate directly with law enforcement when there is a genuine risk of harm.

Prohibited Violence Incitement

• Using the platform to organize or elicit offline violence
• Threatening or advocating violence against individuals, groups, public figures, or locations

Prohibited Violence Glorification

• Celebrating or glorifying human suffering, mass-casualty events, or disasters
• Sharing video or imagery of human or animal gore
• Glorifying or honoring the perpetrators of violent events

Prohibited Promotion of Dangerous Organizations and Individuals

• Promoting organizations or individuals with violent missions or histories
• Promoting terrorist organizations or individuals designated by the U.S. government
• Promoting groups engaged in or planning imminent real-world violence

Prohibited Self-Harm Content

• Celebrating or promoting suicide or self-injury
• Promoting eating disorders or self-mutilation
• Encouraging others to harm themselves

Prohibited Human Exploitation and Abuse Content

• Content depicting or advocating the exploitation or abuse of children, including the sexualization of children or child nudity
• Mocking or denouncing victims of child abuse
• Promoting or orchestrating human trafficking, forced labor or marriage, or other forms of exploitation

4. No Sexual Activity

Keep sexual behavior and explicit content off the platform. Non-pornographic artistic nudity, such as art and sculpture, is allowed.

Prohibited Sexual Content

• Nudity or pornography in imagery or text, including realistic genitalia in illustrations
• Imagery of bare breasts, except in the context of breastfeeding or for medical or educational purposes
• Promoting sexual violence, assault, or exploitation, on or off the platform
• Attempting to arrange off-platform dating or sexual meetups

5. Respect Privacy

Protect people’s privacy, including your own. Don’t breach, infringe, or threaten anyone’s privacy.

Prohibited Privacy Infringement

• Sharing, offering, or soliciting personally identifiable information about yourself or others
• Sharing, offering, or soliciting sensitive data, such as financial or medical information, that risks physical or financial harm
• Revealing or threatening to reveal personal information with malicious intent (doxxing)

6. Be Authentic

Be genuine. Use real accounts and truthful content. Minority viewpoints are protected, but that protection does not extend to demonstrably false claims, and coordinated inauthentic behavior is not allowed.

Prohibited Inauthentic Behavior

• Using multiple accounts to coordinate discussion or reactions (sock puppeting)
• Posting content to simulate organic or widespread opinion (astroturfing)
• Leveraging the reporting system for personal or political advantage
• Automating engagement with code
• Creating multiple accounts, whether manually or automatically

Prohibited Misleading Behavior

• Spreading unverifiable rumors that risk real-world violence or targeting
• Spreading demonstrably false information
• Purposefully spreading deceptive information, regardless of who created it
• Spreading manipulated media, unless it is clearly satire or shared to raise awareness
• Purposefully spreading health advice that contradicts official guidance

7. No Platform Interference

Use Hedgehog as intended. Don’t alter, manipulate, or exploit the platform beyond its intended use.

Prohibited Spamming

• Posting identical, nonsensical, or off-topic content at high frequency
• Selling, buying, or exchanging accounts, privileges, or engagement
• Clickbait scams
• Circumventing link-vetting systems or posting unapproved external links

Prohibited Security Infringement

• Attempting to access accounts without authorization
• Using the platform to obtain sensitive information
• Disclosing security vulnerabilities that are not already public
• Sharing malicious viruses or dangerous code

Prohibited Advertising

• Advertising or promoting products in comments unless invited to
• Phishing or directing users to scams such as work-from-home schemes