Safety and moderation

Introduction

Thank you for choosing to be part of the Gippea community. When we say “Gippea”, “we”, “us” or “our”, we mean Gippea Limited, company number 10739748, registered in England and Wales. Gippea is a global, map-based social media platform for videos, pictures, audio, posts, profiles, social connections and interactions.

This policy explains how you can report content or conduct, how we assess and moderate content, how we explain our decisions, and how complaints, appeals and regional rights work. It applies alongside the Terms of Service v1.002, Privacy Policy v1.001, Community Guidelines v1.001, Cookie Policy v1.001 and any feature-specific notice shown in the Services.

We designed this policy to support our obligations under the UK Online Safety Act 2023, where it applies. Duties vary by service, feature, user, location, age, company size and regulatory status. This policy does not replace mandatory law or create rights beyond those required by law or expressly stated here. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact the local emergency services. Gippea is not an emergency service.

1. Who and What This Policy Covers

In Short: This policy covers Gippea’s users, content, accounts and features, including map and location functions.

This policy applies to posts with video, pictures, audio or no media; captions; comments; reactions; messages; profiles; usernames; groups; social connections; links; searches; recommendations; advertisements; map pins; place pages; routes; location labels; geolocation; metadata; and other content or activity made available through the Services. It applies whether content is public, limited to a group, shared privately, live, archived or already deleted from ordinary view.

Users, non-users, people shown or named in content, rights holders, authorised representatives, trusted flaggers, regulators and public authorities may use the relevant reporting route. You do not need a Gippea account to email support@gippea.com.

2. Our Safety and Moderation Principles

In Short: We aim to act lawfully, proportionately, consistently, promptly and with respect for users’ rights.

• Safety and legality: We prioritise credible risks of physical, psychological, financial and digital harm and act against illegal content.
• Proportionality: We match action to severity, context, reach, recurrence and risk, using a less restrictive measure where it is effective.
• Fundamental rights: We consider freedom of expression and information, privacy, data protection, non-discrimination, child rights and access to remedy.
• Accuracy and fairness: We consider available evidence, give reasons where required and provide review routes for eligible decisions.
• Safety and privacy by design: We assess how recommendations, sharing, messaging, recording and location tools may be misused and apply proportionate safeguards.
• Accountability: We train relevant teams, keep records, test controls and review significant incidents and product changes.

3. How To Report Content or Conduct

In Short: Use the in-app Report option where available, or email support@gippea.com. Reporting is free.

You can report content, an account, profile, group, message, comment, map pin, place page, advertisement or other interaction that you reasonably believe is illegal, unsafe, harmful, abusive, fraudulent, rights-infringing or contrary to our Terms or Community Guidelines. Our electronic reporting route is designed to be easy to access and use. You may report anonymously where the available route permits, although contact details help us acknowledge and follow up on a report.

Where possible, include the content or account link or identifier; the reason for the report; why you believe the content is illegal or breaks our rules; the affected country if relevant; supporting information; and contact details. A legal citation is helpful but not required. For an urgent safety concern, explain the immediate risk and where it may occur. Do not put yourself at risk to gather evidence.

Where required, we will confirm receipt electronically and tell you our decision without undue delay. We prioritise reports by severity, imminence, child or vulnerable-person risk, precise-location exposure, scale and applicable legal deadlines. We do not normally identify a reporter to the reported person, but may disclose information where law requires it, fairness makes it necessary, or a serious risk must be addressed. Knowingly false, discriminatory, repetitive or coordinated misuse of reporting tools may lead to proportionate restrictions after assessment and warning where required.

4. Notices of Illegal Content and Rights Infringement

In Short: Give us enough precise information to find the material and understand the concern.

For suspected illegal content, identify the exact content and its location and explain why you believe it is illegal. State the affected country and legal basis if you know them. For copyright, trade mark, privacy, image, voice, likeness or personality-rights reports, identify the protected right or work, the allegedly infringing material, your authority to act and any supporting evidence. Confirm that you are acting in good faith and that the information you provide is accurate to the best of your knowledge.

We process sufficiently precise notices in a timely, diligent, objective and non-arbitrary way. We may ask for clarification or refer a report to a more suitable process. An affected user may submit a counter-notice or appeal with evidence of consent, ownership, licence, quotation, parody, public-interest use or another lawful basis. We may keep content restricted while a complex private dispute is resolved by the parties, a court or another competent body.

5. How We Assess Reports and Content

In Short: We assess the content, context, law, evidence and risk. We may use automated tools and trained reviewers.

We may consider the apparent illegality or rule breach; severity and likelihood of harm; whether children or vulnerable people are affected; location sensitivity; intent; audience and reach; recency; recurrence; public-interest, journalistic, documentary, educational, artistic, scientific or satirical context; consent and rights evidence; court or regulator orders; reliable technical signals; account history; coordinated behaviour; and attempts to evade enforcement.

We may assess legality under the law of the affected country and restrict content only in the relevant territory where that is lawful, effective and proportionate. We are not required to resolve complex factual or legal disputes without sufficient evidence. Nothing in this policy creates a general obligation to monitor all user activity, but we may use proportionate proactive measures to detect risks and enforce our rules.

6. Moderation Actions We May Take

In Short: We may take no action, ask for context, add a label, reduce distribution, restrict features, remove content, or suspend or terminate access.

• Take no action where we do not find a violation or lack enough information.
• Request context, consent, proof of rights, a location correction or another disclosure.
• Add a warning, label, age gate, interstitial or context panel.
• Reduce recommendation, search, sharing, geographic precision or distribution.
• Disable comments, reactions, messaging, recording, posting, sharing, location or monetisation features.
• Remove or block content, links, accounts or access in one or more regions.
• Issue a warning or strike, suspend or terminate an account, restrict a device or linked account, or prevent re-registration.
• Preserve evidence and report or refer a matter to a regulator, law-enforcement agency, safeguarding body, emergency service, rights holder or other competent organisation where lawful and appropriate.

We choose action by considering severity, likelihood of harm, reach, intent, recurrence, vulnerability, public-interest context, effectiveness of a less restrictive measure and prior enforcement. We may act immediately without prior notice where delay could increase harm, defeat an investigation, enable evasion or conflict with law. If we reverse a restriction, we will restore affected content, access or account standing where technically possible and appropriate.

7. Reasons, Notifications and Records

In Short: For a qualifying decision, we explain what we decided, why, and how to challenge it.

A decision notice will, where required, identify the affected content or account; the action and territorial scope; whether it concerns illegality, our Terms or Community Guidelines; the relevant legal or policy ground; the main facts and circumstances; whether automated means were used; the duration of a restriction; and the available internal complaint, appeal, out-of-court dispute-settlement or court routes.

We may delay, limit or withhold notice where permitted or required, including where notice could expose confidential information, identify a reporter or victim, prejudice an investigation, facilitate evasion, create a security risk, conflict with an order or increase a credible safety risk. We keep moderation records only as reasonably necessary for audit, safety, repeat-abuse prevention, legal compliance and disputes, subject to the Privacy Policy and applicable retention controls.

8. Complaints and Internal Appeals

In Short: You may challenge an eligible decision free of charge through the link in the notice, the support area or support@gippea.com.

You may complain about or appeal an eligible decision to remove, restrict, label or reduce content; suspend or terminate an account; restrict a feature or monetisation; issue a strike; reject a notice of illegal content; or apply an age-assurance or other safety decision where a review route is available. Identify the decision, explain why you believe it was wrong and provide relevant context, consent, legal basis or evidence.

We may verify identity or authority and request more information. A suitably trained reviewer with authority to change the outcome will assess the complaint diligently, objectively and without discrimination. A reviewer must disclose a material conflict and the case will be reassigned. We will not decide an appeal solely by automated means where applicable law requires human review.

Elsewhere, use the period stated in the notice. We aim to acknowledge complaints promptly and resolve them without undue delay; complex, urgent or legally sensitive cases may take longer. We will communicate the outcome and, where required, reasons and further remedies. We may uphold, vary or reverse the decision. Repeated submissions without material new information may be closed after notice.

9. Children, Age Assurance and Vulnerable Users

In Short: You must be at least 16 to use Gippea. We use age assurance and apply heightened safeguards for users aged 16 or 17 and for foreseeable attempts by younger children to access the Services.

We use the age-assurance process described in the Privacy Policy. For an account we know or reasonably believe belongs to a 16- or 17-year-old, we apply high-privacy defaults: the profile and content are not made broadly visible by default; precise location and live-location sharing are off or obscured by default; unsolicited contact and group additions are restricted; blocking, muting and reporting controls are available; and profiling-based advertising is not shown. We provide clear prompts before a younger user lowers a protective setting.

We design recommendations to reduce repeated exposure to harmful material and give greater weight to an under-18 user’s explicit choices than to inferred engagement where appropriate. We may disable or limit downloads, screenshots, autoplay, read receipts, streaks, push notifications, stranger messaging or location discovery where our risk assessments show this is proportionate and technically feasible. Child-friendly reporting information and support are available through the reporting and help routes.

If we reasonably determine that a user is under 16, we deactivate the account and take the steps described in the Terms and Privacy Policy. A user may challenge an age decision through the review route in Section 8. We may keep access restricted while a review is completed. We prioritise reports involving grooming, exploitation, trafficking, abuse, serious self-harm risk or exposure of a child’s school, routine or precise location.

10. Location, Recording and Map Safety

In Short: Location-linked content can create real-world risk, so we may limit precision, visibility or functionality even where the media itself remains available.

We act against stalking, doxxing, targeted surveillance, harmful route sharing, false emergency or event locations, trespass encouragement, manipulated coordinates or timestamps, fabricated evidence and publication of a person’s private or real-time location without a lawful basis. Measures may include removing a pin, obscuring or generalising coordinates, delaying publication, limiting map search or recommendation, disabling location amplification and preserving relevant metadata.

We use the minimum location precision reasonably needed for a feature and restrict access to precise metadata to authorised people and systems. We apply heightened safeguards around minors, private homes, schools, shelters, health facilities, places of worship, critical infrastructure, endangered wildlife and other sensitive places. Recording through Gippea does not give permission to enter property, record a person, capture a performance or publish protected material. Map data can be inaccurate or delayed and must not be used for emergency response, precise tracking or safety-critical navigation.

11. Automated Tools, Recommender Systems and Human Review

In Short: Automated systems help us detect and prioritise risk and rank content. They can make mistakes, so we test them and provide human review where appropriate or required.

We may use hash matching, classifiers, behavioural signals, location anomalies, spam and fraud detection, age-assurance outcomes and other automated systems. We maintain controls for purpose, data access, vendor oversight, accuracy, language and regional performance, bias, thresholds, human override, change management and incident response. Decision notices identify material automated involvement where law requires it.

Recommendations may consider content location, recency, popularity, content type, your follows, views, likes, hides, reports and other interactions, and settings or device context. Explicit choices such as following, hiding, muting or selecting topics generally carry more weight than passive signals. Where required, we provide controls to influence recommendations and clear information in the relevant feature. If a non-profiling option becomes legally required for Gippea, we will make it available. We do not use deceptive interface designs to impair a user’s free and informed choices.

12. Advertising and Commercial Content

In Short: Advertising and paid promotion must be identifiable, lawful and safe.

Where advertising is available, we label it as advertising or sponsored content, identify the advertiser or person on whose behalf it is shown, and provide meaningful information about the main parameters used to select the audience where required. We do not use special-category personal data for profiling-based advertising and do not present profiling-based advertising to users we know with reasonable certainty are minors. We apply advertiser verification, scam detection, reporting and record-keeping controls proportionate to the risks and legal duties that apply to Gippea.

Advertisers and creators must not conceal sponsorship, use deceptive claims, exploit a child’s limited commercial understanding, or promote illegal, fraudulent or prohibited goods or services. If Gippea introduces marketplace, trader or paid-boost features, we will provide any additional verification, traceability, consumer information and transparency controls required before those features are launched.

13. Repeat Misuse, Strikes and Evasion

In Short: Repeated, serious or evasive violations may lead to stronger restrictions or permanent removal.

Rights and authenticity violations are handled under the three-strike framework in Section 6 of the Terms of Service. A first or second strike normally remains active for 12 continuous months without another strike; a new strike restarts the period for all active strikes. A successfully appealed strike is removed and does not count. Serious, wilful, repeated, large-scale or evasive conduct may justify immediate restriction or termination without waiting for three strikes.

Before restricting a person for frequent manifest misuse, we consider the number, proportion and seriousness of unfounded notices, complaints or illegal submissions; any coordinated pattern; intent where reasonably identifiable; prior warnings; and surrounding circumstances. Good-faith mistakes are not enough. Any restriction will be proportionate, time-limited where appropriate and open to review.

14. Urgent Risks and Crisis Response

In Short: We prioritise credible imminent threats, child exploitation, trafficking, serious self-harm risk, coordinated violence and exposure of sensitive locations.

When a report indicates an imminent risk of death or serious physical harm, we may restrict access, preserve information, escalate to specialist or senior reviewers and contact emergency services or law enforcement where lawful and reasonably necessary. Suspected child sexual exploitation or abuse, grooming, trafficking or comparable exploitation may be removed or restricted and reported to the National Crime Agency or another competent body where required or appropriate.

For a serious event causing a significant increase in illegal content or content harmful to children, we may activate a crisis protocol. Measures may include dedicated incident leadership, faster triage, temporary sharing or recommendation limits, additional reviewer capacity, preservation, regulator or authority communication, user safety notices and a post-incident review. Contact support@gippea.com and put “URGENT SAFETY” in the subject line when the in-app route is unavailable; this does not replace contacting emergency services.

15. Law Enforcement, Regulators and Preservation

In Short: We respond to valid legal process, may challenge overbroad requests and preserve information when lawfully required.

We assess the issuing authority, jurisdiction, validity, scope, legal basis and deadlines of an order or request. We seek clarification or challenge a request that appears invalid, overbroad or inconsistent with users’ rights. We disclose only information reasonably necessary and legally permitted, use access and audit controls, preserve chain of custody where evidence is involved, and notify an affected user unless law, an order, safety or investigative integrity prevents notice.

We may preserve content, account, report, device, location and log information after ordinary deletion for a lawful legal hold, safety investigation, audit or dispute. Preservation does not necessarily mean disclosure. Privacy, transfer, retention and security protections in the Privacy Policy continue to apply.

16. UK Online Safety Act Safeguards

In Short: For UK users, we use proportionate systems and processes to assess and reduce illegal-content risks and, where children are likely to access the Services, risks from content harmful to children.

We complete and keep written illegal-content risk assessments and review them at least annually and before a significant service change. We complete the required children’s access assessment and repeat it within the legally required period. If children are likely to access a service or feature, we complete and maintain a children’s risk assessment and apply proportionate protections. We record the measures adopted under applicable Ofcom Codes of Practice or the reasons for using effective alternative measures.

UK users and affected people can easily report suspected illegal content and, where relevant, content harmful to children. Users may complain if they believe we acted inconsistently with our Terms, failed to respond appropriately to a report, or wrongly removed or restricted content or access. We have particular regard to freedom of expression and privacy when deciding and implementing safety measures. We cooperate with Ofcom and comply with lawful information, enforcement and reporting requirements.

17. Transparency, Governance and Policy Review

In Short: We assign ownership, keep evidence, test controls and publish transparency information required for our size, services and legal status.

Gippea’s Legal and Compliance lead oversees this policy, supported by named operational owners for moderation, safeguarding, privacy, security, product and engineering. We maintain escalation paths, role-appropriate training, vendor standards, risk and control records, significant-change reviews, incident reviews and regular reporting to senior management. We test reporting accessibility, moderation accuracy, language and regional performance, bias, appeals, restoration, emergency escalation and location controls.

We publish transparency reports at the intervals and in the formats required by law. Reports may cover authority orders, user and trusted-flagger notices, moderation actions, complaint outcomes, misuse suspensions, reviewer resources and languages, and meaningful information about automated moderation. We review this policy when law, regulatory guidance, risks, technology or the Services change and give notice of material changes where required.

18. Regional Rights and Other Remedies

In Short: Your rights depend on where you live and the laws that apply. This policy does not limit mandatory rights.

Nothing in this policy prevents you from contacting the police or another competent authority, seeking urgent relief, bringing a court claim, using an eligible consumer or small-claims process, exercising privacy rights under the Privacy Policy, or using another non-waivable remedy.

19. How To Contact Us

Safety reports, moderation complaints, appeals, recipient contact and legal notices: support@gippea.com Urgent safety reports when the in-app route is unavailable: support@gippea.com with “URGENT SAFETY” in the subject line Privacy and data-protection questions: privacy@gippea.com

Gippea Limited Attention: Legal and Compliance 78 York Street London W1H 1DP United Kingdom