We expect all members of the #Open community to play NICE.
You agree that you will only use #Open for purposes expressly permitted and contemplated by our Terms of Service, these Community Guidelines, or our other policies. Do not do, attempt to do, or assist or permit others in doing, any of the acts described herein. Do not use #Open for any other purposes without our express prior written consent. Do not use #Open in any way that is violative of any applicable law, regulation, or treaty of any governmental body.
Violating our Community Guidelines or our other policies will be considered a breach of our Terms of Service and may result in temporary suspension or permanent termination of your account and access to #Open or the platform, without refund and without notice, in our sole discretion. We may pursue any legal remedies or other appropriate actions against you if you violate our policies, including civil, criminal, or injunctive relief, and cancellation of your account.
If you believe any user has violated our policies, please let us know directly in the app by messaging Support from your New Connections or by emailing support@hashtagopen.com. Please provide as much detail as possible, including a link to and description of the objectionable content or activity, the username of the individual engaging in suspicious activities, the date and time of identification, the reason we should remove the objectionable content or investigate the activities, and a statement certifying the accuracy of the information you provided to us. We strive to timely respond to all reports either by a message directly from a member of our team, or from an on-call expert in working with trauma survivors.
These Community Guidelines and the policies they represent will always be a work in progress. They have been informed by our team’s collective experience with similar apps, by our experience running #Open, and through consulting with numerous experts. In particular, we’d like to thank Jaclyn Friedman for her contributions.
1. Be N.I.C.E.
#Open is designed to be a comfortable, welcoming, and inclusive space where people can explore without being judged. Please help us keep it that way by being conscientious, courteous, and kind.
Negotiate
Communicate your intentions, expectations, and desires with clarity and honesty.
Include
Treat yourself and your fellow members with respect. Be welcoming and accepting of others.
Consent
Always practice affirmative, enthusiastic consent when you share or do anything with another person. Do not send unsolicited explicit pictures to others or display them publicly on your profile.
Experience
Allow yourself and others to explore and experience new things without shame or judgment. N.I.C.E. is our guiding philosophy, but sometimes you need a bit more.
2. No Minors
#Open is a service for adults only. Every user on the platform must affirm that they are at least 18 years old. Please immediately report any user that you suspect is a minor who has misrepresented their age.
While we understand that children can be a big part of your life, we do not allow content depicting anyone under the age of 18 on #Open. Feel free to tell people about your family in your profile!
Do not post content depicting any person without inspecting and maintaining written documentation sufficient to confirm that all individuals depicted in your content are at least 18. Do not promote or advertise any content as depicting any person under 18 years old, regardless of the actual age of the persons depicted.
If you seek any form of child sexual abuse material, leave #Open immediately. We do not provide or promote underage materials, and we do not tolerate those who seek underage materials. In order to further our zero-tolerance policy, you agree to report any suspected underage materials, whether real, simulated, or implied.
3. No Sexual Harassment
Do not sexually objectify any other person without consent, including by sending sexually explicit content to others without their consent.
Do not share sexually explicit content in public portions of your profile. Displaying explicit content in public is indecent exposure in real life, and it is indecent exposure online.
Spend time getting to know someone before bringing up subjects that are private, intimate, or sexual in nature. If someone tells you that you’ve gone over the line or made them uncomfortable, apologize and back off.
Do not create an account or otherwise access or use #Open if you are, or are required to be, a registered sex offender in any jurisdiction.
4. No Non-Consensual Content
Do not post non-consensual content, including any content containing any individual who has not consented to being depicted in the content, or who has not consented to the content being shared on #Open. By publishing content depicting third parties on #Open, you affirm that you have obtained signed, written consent documents from each such third party stating that they agree to the recording and publication of the content on #Open.
5. No Malicious Reporting
We do not dictate how people identify on #Open—just because someone doesn’t conform to your expectations for how people of a particular gender identity “should” look doesn’t mean that they don’t genuinely identify that way.
Reporting other users because of their gender identity or orientation rather than because of anything they did is a pernicious form of harassment that we do not tolerate. Reporting others in this fashion will result in action being taken against your account.
6. No Hate Speech or Activities
#Open is deeply rooted in the principle of inclusivity. We have zero tolerance for hate speech and hateful activities, including:
any content shared or activity engaged in with the intent to vilify, humiliate, dehumanize, exclude, segregate, intimidate, harass, threaten, make inferior, harm, or incite hatred, fear, or violence against any individual or group based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, caste, religion, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, sexual interests, relationship style or status, age, disability, serious disease, or veteran status.
Hateful activities include but are not limited to:
● Using slurs, coded language, or dog whistles
● Reproducing symbols, signs, or codes associated with hate groups
● Endorsing hate groups, their activities, or their ideologies
7. No Commerce and Solicitation
#Open is a platform for forming personal connections with other people. It’s not for purchasing or selling goods or services. Profiles that were clearly intended for the purpose of selling something (whether it’s photos, videos, or other content, premium chats, or anything else), driving traffic to a website, or deriving any other kind of monetary value will be permanently banned.
Do not provide your financial information (Paypal, Venmo, Zelle, bank account information, and so on) to others. Do not share any information for the purpose of sending or receiving money or gifts. Do not request that others send you their financial information.
Do not commercially exploit or make available the services or materials on #Open to third
parties, including any action or “frame” or “mirror” the app.
Simply put, do not use #Open as a platform for conducting business of any kind. 8. No Prostitution and Trafficking
Do not use #Open in any way that promotes or facilitates trafficking or prostitution. The solicitation, promotion, and facilitation of prostitution and sex trafficking are strictly prohibited. If you engage in any activity which creates the appearance of the solicitation, promotion, or facilitation of prostitution or sex trafficking, whether on #Open or by sharing links to external websites, we may delete your account without refund and take any other appropriate action.
9. No Doxxing, Extortion, or Impersonation
Do not share any content that violates any data protection laws. Do not share content containing contact information or other personal data of any other person without their consent. This includes but is not limited to names, images, telephone numbers, social media accounts, personal websites, email addresses, street addresses, geographic locations, and work places. We do not allow any form of doxxing on #Open, whether the target is a member of our community or not. Those who use our platform to abuse others will quickly find themselves removed from it.
Do not share content with the intent to extort money or other benefit from a third party in exchange for removal of the content.
Do not impersonate another individual or entity, whether actual or fictitious. Do not falsely claim an affiliation with any individual or entity. Do not perform any other similar fraudulent activity.
10. Public Content and Profile Information
Do not post the following content in public areas such as your profile:
● Memes or stock images
● Contact information (phone number, email address, physical address, etc.), however you may share your social media handles in the designated area of your profile. Get to know people before you give them your contact information, please!
● Nudity or not-safe-for-work images including:
o Exposed “female-presenting” nipples. We here at #Open are all for nipple equality. But we are beholden to Apple’s content policies if we want #Open to continue to be available on Apple devices.
o Genitals and crotch shots (whether exposed or covered in something so tight that we know exactly what they look like even though the skin is hidden.)
o Sex acts (including groping), whether we can see anything or not.
11. General Content Guidelines
Being able to express yourself by sharing content is a big part of #Open, but we have some ground rules.
Do not share any content that is obscene, lewd, defamatory, libelous, harmful, inaccurate, threatening, abusive, vulgar, violent, indecent, harassing, menacing, scandalous, inflammatory, likely to cause annoyance, intimidation, alarm, embarrassment, distress, discomfort, or inconvenience, or is otherwise objectionable or inappropriate. Do not share content that violates trade secrets, privacy, or publicity rights or violates any confidentiality agreement.
While #Open desires to be a kink-positive community and respects consensual roleplay, we must comply with Apple’s content policies and laws such as FOSTA/SESTA. As such, do not share any content that depicts, advertises, promotes, encourages, facilitates, or solicits (real, simulated, or implied):
● Financial-oriented content including sugar baby and findom kinks
● Prostitution or sex trafficking
● Employment ads or content that violates anti-discrimination laws
● Scenarios involving lack of consent, including rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, torture, hypnosis, intoxication, excessive or non-consensual violence, sadomasochistic abuse, hardcore bondage, weapons, or asphyxiation
● Age-play or adult baby/diaper lover themes
● Incest
● Bestiality, including monstrous humanoids or animal-themed sex toys
● Necrophilia
● Bodily fluids including scat, urine, lactation, vomit, and blood, but excluding semen, female ejaculation, and saliva
● Illegal or illicit drugs
● Suicide, self-harm, or extreme pain, whether inflicted by yourself or a third party, including oversized toys, genital mutilation, or extreme fisting
● Any illegal or obscene behavior
We at #Open strongly oppose FOSTA/SESTA and support sex workers’ rights. We look forward to re-evaluating our financial and employment restrictions as soon as it is repealed or invalidated.
12. Hashtags, Slang, and Coded Language
While we generally permit a wide range of hashtags to help #Open members find each other based on their interests, preferences, and boundaries, we do reserve the right to remove hashtags and/or block hashtags that violate these Community Guidelines. Do not use slang, acronyms, abbreviations, emojis, GIFs, or other content to communicate any activity that violates these Community Guidelines or our Terms of Service.
13. Copyrights and Trademarks
Do not use #Open in any way that violates any intellectual property rights, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, or trade secrets. Do not share content that you do not have the rights to
reproduce. Do not share or access pirated content, delete intellectual property right indications and notices, or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of your content. We remove copyrighted content at the request of rights holders according to our DMCA Policy. We may also remove content that is clearly not yours (photos of celebrities, stock photos, memes, and so on), or content that is blank or otherwise too generic.
Do not link to #Open on any third-party website in any way that is illegal, unfair, or which damages or takes advantage of our reputation, including any link which establishes or suggests a form of association, approval, or endorsement by us where none exists.
14. No Platform Manipulation
Do not engage in antisocial, disruptive, or destructive behavior, including “bombing,” “flaming,” “spamming,” “flooding,” “trolling,” and “griefing” as those terms are commonly understood and used on the Internet, or engage in any other behavior that serves no purpose other than to harass, annoy, or offend users.
Do not circumvent, disable, damage, or otherwise interfere with the operations of #Open, any user’s enjoyment of #Open, or our security-related features or features that prevent, limit, or restrict the use or copying of the materials on #Open, by any means, including posting, linking to, uploading, or otherwise disseminating viruses, adware, spyware, malware, logic bombs, trojan horses, worms, harmful components, corrupted data, or other malicious code, file, or program designed to interrupt, destroy, limit, or monitor the functionality of any computer software or hardware or any telecommunications equipment.
Do not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise discover the source code of #Open or any part of it, except and only if that activity is expressly permitted by applicable law despite this limitation.
Do not access or use any automated process (such as a robot, spider, scraper, or similar) to access #Open in violation of our robot exclusion headers or to scrape #Open (other than in connection with bona fide search engine indexing or as we may otherwise expressly permit).
Dop not modify, adapt, translate, or create derivative works based on the materials on #Open, except and only if applicable law expressly permits that activity despite this limitation.
Do not take any action that imposes or may impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our technology infrastructure or otherwise make excessive demands on it.
15. Offline and Off-Platform Behavior
We take reports of unacceptable offline and off-platform behavior seriously. If another user has engaged in harassment, assault, theft, violence, or any other abusive, alarming, or dangerous behavior offline or on another platform, we may take action against any user on #Open who we come to find out has engaged in such behavior.
