Community Moderation and Notice-and-Action Policy

1. Our principles

We moderate to keep the community lawful, safe and useful. We act diligently, objectively and proportionately, with due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of everyone involved, including freedom of expression and information. We apply the same rules to everyone, use the least restrictive measure that works, and tell people what we decided and why.

2. Who moderates

• Our moderation team reviews notices, reports and appeals across the whole network and can take every measure in section 5.
• Community stewards (administrators and moderators of a group) can hide, restore, remove or warn about content in their own groups. They cannot suspend or close accounts.
• Everyone who moderates uses two-step sign-in and follows this policy. Appeals are decided by someone other than the person who took the decision.

3. How content comes to our attention

• Reports from members, with the Report button. Reports carry more weight as the reporter's trust level rises. One open report per member per item, and up to 10 reports an hour.
• Notices from anyone about illegal content, through our notice form (section 4).
• Our own review of content and of signals of abuse.
• Automated tools: when the weighted reports on an item reach a set threshold, the item is hidden until a person reviews it; suspected child sexual abuse material is hidden at once; disposable email addresses cannot register; rate limits and bot checks slow down spam. These tools only hide or prevent. A person makes every decision to remove content or restrict an account.

4. Notices about illegal content

Anyone, with or without an account, can tell us about content they believe is illegal by using our notice form. A notice should include:

1. a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why you believe the content is illegal;
2. the exact web address (URL) of the content, and any other detail that helps us find it;
3. your name and email address, except for notices about child sexual abuse material, which you may send anonymously;
4. a statement that you believe, in good faith, that the information and allegations in the notice are accurate and complete.

We send a confirmation of receipt by email. We review each notice in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective way. Notices are reviewed by a person and do not add automated weight, except notices about child sexual abuse material, which hide the content at once. We tell you what we decided and how you can contest our decision. For copyright notices you may also use the routes in our copyright policy.

5. What we can decide

When content is illegal, or breaks our Terms of Use or Acceptable Use Policy, we can:

• Hide content, so only its author and moderators can see it;
• Remove content (we can restore it if a decision is reversed);
• Restore content that was hidden or removed;
• Warn the author;
• Suspend an account, which cannot post until a set date;
• Close an account, which ends its sessions and prevents sign-in;
• Take no action, when the content is lawful and within our rules.

We consider how serious the breach is, its consequences, whether it was intentional and the account's history. Content that is illegal only in some countries may be restricted only where it is illegal.

6. Statement of reasons

When we restrict your content or account, we send you a clear and specific statement of reasons by email, at the latest when the restriction starts. It tells you:

• what we decided, its scope and, where relevant, its duration and territorial reach;
• the facts and circumstances we relied on, including whether we acted on a notice or on our own initiative;
• whether automated means were used to detect the content or to make the decision;
• the law the content breaches, or the rule of our terms it breaks, and why;
• how you can seek redress: our internal appeal, out-of-court dispute settlement and the courts.

We do not send a statement where we have no email address for you, where the content is high-volume deceptive commercial spam, or where an authority lawfully asks us not to.

7. Appeals

You can appeal a decision free of charge within six months, using the signed link in the statement of reasons or in the decision we sent about your notice. You do not need to be signed in, so you can appeal even if your account was closed. A person other than the one who took the decision reviews the appeal; it is never decided only by automated means. We decide without undue delay, tell you the outcome and the reasons, and, if we reverse the decision, restore the content and lift the restrictions.

If you live in the European Union, you may also turn to an out-of-court dispute settlement body approved by a Digital Services Coordinator under Article 21 of the Digital Services Act, and we will engage with it in good faith. You can always go to court.

8. Trusted flaggers and priority notices

We give priority to notices from trusted flaggers designated under Article 22 of the Digital Services Act, from recognized child protection hotlines and from competent authorities, and we decide on them without undue delay. Please identify yourself as such in the notice.

9. Misuse of our procedures

After a prior warning, we may suspend for a reasonable period accounts that frequently post manifestly illegal content, and stop processing notices, reports or appeals from people who frequently send manifestly unfounded ones. We decide case by case, considering the number and share of such items, how serious they are and the intention behind them. People who repeatedly infringe copyright lose their accounts.

10. Authorities and threats to safety

We act on valid orders from competent authorities to act against illegal content or to provide information, and we tell the people concerned unless the law or the order prevents it. If we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place, we promptly inform the competent law enforcement or judicial authorities. We report child sexual abuse material to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and to the police, as Canadian law requires, and preserve the related data.

11. Users in the United Kingdom

observatory.global is not intended for children and requires account holders to be at least 16. We assess the risk of illegal content on the community, use the measures in this policy to reduce it, and review that assessment when the service changes significantly. If you are in the United Kingdom, you can use the Report button, the notice form or contact@observatory.global to complain about illegal content, about content that should not be on the service, about action we took against your content or account, or about how we meet our duties. We acknowledge every complaint and handle it under the procedures above.

12. Transparency

We publish an anonymized moderation log of decisions, with the ground, the type of item, whether automated means were involved and whether the decision is still in force. At least once a year we publish a report with the number of notices and reports by ground, decisions by type, the share of automated measures, the median time to a decision and appeal outcomes.

13. Points of contact

Our single point of contact for members, other users, authorities of the EU member states, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services is contact@observatory.global. You can write to us in English or French. Our legal representative in the European Union under Article 13 of the Digital Services Act is [PLACEHOLDER: EU legal representative under DSA Article 13, name and contact].