Matt S.To promote transparency, we would like to detail our internal policies, including how we make decisions on whether or not to allow content on our services. As a reminder, our Terms of Service officially details the specific rules you must follow when using our services. If you're looking for specific information on what is/isn't allowed, check there instead.
How we handle locating abuse
A wild abuse report appeared!
We rely on various report channels to supplement our monitoring procedures. When somebody writes in with information detailing alleged abuse of our services, our team immediately investigates their report. For example, if a media company comes to us alleging you're hosting an illegal copy of a film, we must immediately check their claims to validate them. A common misconception is that we immediately take down all DMCA-reported content. This is not the case.
Before ever taking any enforcement action, we always check for the supposed violation first. In the case of repeat reports, we investigate each report individually using the specified information. This means that if we receive a vague report and can't find a violation at first, we may still take action on a second report that contains more information and allows us to locate the abuse.
Automation
We utilize automation to identify accounts that require manual review. In most cases, automation will not take any action against your account without human validation. If your account is utilizing an excessive amount of resources, it may be temporarily limited. However, we guarantee that we will never suspend your account without first verifying that your usage is malicious. We also randomly check accounts to ensure their use falls within our terms of service, but these random reviews can't catch everything which is why we sometimes must rely on automation.
Resolving the issue fairly
If you're using our services in a way that is against our terms of service and we feel it may be accidental, we can issue warnings before taking further action. We will continue to monitor any action taken after these warnings, and if no further action is taken, we may continue to suspend/terminate your account. We do not issue warnings for illegal, harmful, hateful, or otherwise blatantly abusive content. There are also situations where we don't have direct contact with the offender, in which case we may reach out through a third party (for example; a reseller) to notify the user of their abuse.
The details of this resolution process vary on a case-by-case basis, and we may opt to skip this process at our discretion.
How we handle appeals
Reviewing the details
When you submit an appeal to our team, we review all of the information you provide us. If you're submitting an appeal, it never hurts to include as much information as possible. This allows our team to make an accurate and timely decision without asking for clarification. We only allow a user to appeal once, so if we receive multiple appeals with similar information, we may not process them. Additionally, some categories are not eligible for appeal, like illegal, harmful, hateful, or otherwise blatantly abusive content.
Protecting ourselves first
Unfortunately, it's not always possible to please everybody. There are many cases where content may not be inherently illegal, or someone feels it's not abusive, but we still need to protect ourselves by taking action. In these cases, the information we get provided usually won't change our decision. After all, our rules exist for a reason. While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions, we must prioritize the safety and well-being of our users and our service.
Unsuspending users with less serious offenses
We understand that even if we find content that violates our rules, people can still make mistakes. Therefore, in some cases, we may accept requests to unsuspend a user who has been suspended previously for violating our rules. However, we will make this decision on a case-by-case basis and carefully evaluate whether allowing the user to use our services again would pose an increased risk of continued abuse.
Transparency is our goal
We know that navigating abuse is a complicated topic, but we will try to provide insight where possible. If you have any questions at all about an action taken on your services, we are always available to help work through your concerns. Although we can't always give you the news you want to hear, we want to at least explain our processes and why we take the actions we do.