II. SAFETY

Suicide and self-injury

In an effort to promote a safe environment on Soctrip, we remove content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including direct depictions that might lead others to engage in similar behaviour. Suicide is defined as the act of a person who intentionally causes his own death. Self-injury is defined as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-injury and eating disorders. We want Soctrip to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues and support each other to overcome difficulties, which is why we allow people to discuss suicide and self-injury. We encourage everyone to help each other when facing these difficulties.We work with organisations around the world to provide assistance for people in distress. We also talk to experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement. For example, we have been advised by experts that we should not remove live videos of self-injury while there is an opportunity for loved ones and authorities to provide help or resources. We remove any content that identifies and negatively targets victims or survivors of self-injury or suicide seriously, humorously or rhetorically. However, people can share information about self-injury and suicide to draw attention to this issue, and are allowed to discuss as long as they do not support or encourage self-injurious or suicidal behaviour.

Dangerous acts

We care deeply about the health and well-being of the individuals that make up our community. We do not allow content that depicts, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies risky actions or other dangerous behavior conducted in a non-professional context or without the necessary skills and safety precautions that may lead to serious injury or death.

However, we do support members of our community in sharing their personal experiences with these issues in a safe way to raise awareness and find community support.

Child Nudity and Sexual Exploitation of Children

We do not allow content that sexually exploits or endangers children. When we become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with applicable law. We know that sometimes people share nude images of their own children with good intentions; however, we generally remove these images because of the potential for abuse by others and to help avoid the possibility of other people reusing or misappropriating the images. We also work with external experts, including the Soctrip Safety Advisory Board, to discuss and improve our policies and enforcement around online safety issues, especially with regard to children.

Sexual Exploitation of Adults

We recognize that Soctrip is an important place to discuss and draw attention to sexual exploitation and violence. We believe this is an important part of building community and common understanding. In an effort to create space for this conversation while promoting a safe environment, we remove content that depicts, threatens or promotes sexual violence, sexual assault, or sexual exploitation, while also allowing space for victims to share their experiences. We remove content that displays, advocates for, or coordinates sexual acts with non-consenting parties or commercial sexual services. We do this to avoid facilitating transactions that may involve trafficking, coercion, and non-consensual sexual acts. “Sexual services” include prostitution, escort services, sexual massages, and filmed sexual activity. To protect victims and survivors, we also remove images that depict incidents of sexual violence and intimate images shared without permission from the people pictured. For more information about these efforts, please visit Using technology to protect intimate images and help build a safe community, as well as a guide to reporting and removing intimate images shared without your consent.

Read more

Human Exploitation

We are consolidating several existing exploitation policies that were previously housed in different sections of the Community Standards into one dedicated section that focuses on human exploitation and captures a broad range of harmful activities that may manifest on our platform. Experts think and talk about these issues under one umbrella — human exploitation.

In an effort to disrupt and prevent harm, we remove content that facilitates or coordinates the exploitation of humans, including human trafficking. We define human trafficking as the business of depriving someone of liberty for profit. It is the exploitation of humans in order to force them to engagein commercial sex, labor, or other activities against their will. It relies on deception, force and coercion, and degrades humans by depriving them of their freedom while economically or materially benefiting others.

Human trafficking is multi-faceted and global; it can affect anyone regardless of age, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, gender, or location. It takes many forms, and any given trafficking situation can involve various stages of development. By the coercive nature of this abuse, victims cannot consent.

While we need to be careful not to conflate human trafficking and smuggling, the two can be related and exhibit overlap. The United Nations defines human smuggling as the procurement or facilitation of illegal entry into a state across international borders. Without necessity for coercion or force, it may still result in the exploitation of vulnerable individuals who are trying to leave their country of origin, often in pursuit of a better life. Human smuggling is a crime against a state, relying on movement, and human trafficking is a crime against a person, relying on exploitation.

Bullying

Bullying happens in many places and comes in many different forms, from making statements that degrade someone's character, to posting inappropriate images to threaten someone. We do not tolerate bullying on Soctrip because we want the members of our community to feel safe and respected. We will remove content that purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them. We recognise that bullying can be especially harmful to minors, which is why our policies provide heightened protection for minors because they are more vulnerable and susceptible to online bullying. In certain instances, we require the individual who is the target of bullying to report content to us before removing it. Our Bullying Policies do not apply to public figures because we want to allow discourse, which often includes critical discussion of people who are featured in the news or who have a large public audience. Discussion of public figures nonetheless must comply with our Community Standards, and we will remove content about public figures that breaches other policies, including hate speech or credible threats. Our Bullying Prevention Hub is a resource for teens, parents, and educators seeking support for issues related to bullying and other conflicts. It offers step-by-step guidance, including on how to start important conversations for people being bullied, parents who have a child being bullied or accused of bullying, and educators who have students involved with bullying.

Read more

Harassment

We do not tolerate harassment on Soctrip. We want people to feel safe to engage and connect with their community. Our harassment policy applies to both public and private individuals because we want to prevent unwanted or malicious contact on the platform. Context and intent matter, and we allow people to share and re-share posts if it is clear that something was shared in order to condemn or draw attention to harassment. In addition to reporting such behaviour and content, we encourage people to use tools available on Soctrip to help protect against it.

Read more

Privacy Violations and Image Privacy Rights

Privacy and the protection of personal information are fundamentally important values for Soctrip. We work hard to keep your account secure and safeguard your personal information in order to protect you from potential physical or financial harm. You should not post personal or confidential information about others without first getting their consent. We also provide people ways to report imagery that they believe to be in violation of their privacy rights.

Read more