Privacy, Safety, and Policy Hub
Community Guidelines

Harassment and Bullying

Community Guidelines Explainer Series

Updated: January 2023

Overview

Bullying and harassment have no place on Snapchat. These kinds of harms can take many forms, so we’ve combined our policy approach with product safeguards and resources with users to address these risks in a dynamic and multifaceted way.

As a baseline, our policies protect all members of our community from demeaning, defamatory or discriminatory content and advances. Sharing private information or Snaps of people without their knowledge or consent is also prohibited.

In addition to enforcing these policies consistently, we use our product design to help limit harmful behaviour that may violate these rules. This includes default settings that require both friends to accept a connection before they can message each other, and providing notice to users when screenshots of private Snaps, messages and profiles are taken.

Through our Here for You features, we help ensure users have access to in-app resources and information to help recognise and address bullying and harassment. We also provide tools to ensure that any violating behaviour on Snapchat can be easily reported.

  • We prohibit bullying or harassment of any kind. This prohibition extends to all forms of sexual harassment, including sending sexually explicit or nude images to other users. If someone blocks you, you may not contact them from another account.

  • Sharing another person’s private information and Snaps of people in private spaces – like a bathroom, bedroom, locker room or a medical facility – without their knowledge and consent is not allowed.

  • If someone is depicted in your Snap and asks you to remove it, please do! Respect the privacy rights of others.

What you should expect

Violations of our harassment and bullying policies include any unwanted behaviour that could cause an ordinary person to experience emotional distress. This includes verbal abuse, threatening or shaming other users, and really any behaviour intended to embarrass or humiliate the target.

These rules also prohibit all forms of sexual harassment. This may include making unwanted advances, sharing graphic and unsolicited content, or sending obscene requests or invitations to other users. We have zero tolerance for sharing non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) – including sexual photos or videos taken or shared without permission, as well as “revenge porn” or behaviour that threatens to share, exploit or expose individuals’ intimate images or videos without their consent.

These rules also require users to respect each other’s personal privacy. To help avoid violations of these policies, users should not take photos or video of people without their permission, and should avoid sharing private information about other people, like their home address, birthdate, phone numbers, etc. If someone asks you to remove an image or information about them, please do!

We encourage users to report when they experience or observe violations of these rules. Our moderation teams aim to ensure that each user feels safe and comfortable using Snapchat, and by reporting bad behaviour, users can help us advance that goal.

Takeaway

Our goal is to foster a safe community where Snapchatters can express themselves, and we do not tolerate harassment and bullying of any kind. Bullying and harassment come in many forms, and our approach is to be conscientious of how our users feel while using our platform.

Please be considerate of people’s dignity and privacy – if they express discomfort, respect their boundaries; if they ask you to remove content about them, please do; and generally refrain from sharing images of people or information about them without their permission. If you ever feel uncomfortable, do not hesitate to send us a report and block the other user – these features are provided for your safety.

We are committed to constantly calibrating the operation of our policies to improve our ability to address harmful content or behaviour. While user reports help to inform our approach, we are committed to working with diverse leaders from across the safety community to ensure we are advancing these objectives responsibly. For more information about our safety efforts, please visit values.snap.com/news.