Illegal or Regulated Activities
Community Guidelines Explainer Series
Updated: February 2025
Overview
Our prohibition against illegal and regulated activities reflects our stalwart commitment to safety across Snapchat. Upholding these rules not only helps ensure our platform is not misused for unlawful purposes, but also helps protect Snapchatters from risks of serious harm. To help advance these aims, we partner extensively with safety stakeholders, NGOs, and law enforcement organizations to provide our community with educational resources and to generally promote public safety.
While laws and regulations differ in jurisdictions throughout the world––and Snapchat is a global community––our policies generally prohibit any activity that undermines public safety or violates human rights, the laws of the United States, or the laws of the country in which the user is located.
In all cases, prohibited illegal activities include promotion of criminal activity; facilitation or participation in cybercrime; and buying, selling, or facilitating sales of illegal or regulated drugs, contraband, weapons, or counterfeit goods or documents.
What you should expect
Our rules prohibit the following:
Using Snapchat for any illegal activity. This includes promoting, facilitating, or participating in criminal activity, such as buying, selling, exchanging, or facilitating sales of illegal or regulated drugs, contraband (such as child sexual abuse or exploitation imagery), endangered animals, weapons, or counterfeit goods or documents. It also includes promoting or facilitating any form of exploitation, including human trafficking or sex trafficking.
The illegal promotion of regulated goods or industries. Examples of regulated activities that require prior approval from Snap include facilitating online gambling activities; selling alcoholic beverages; tobacco, or vape products; and promoting THC businesses. Businesses are encouraged to consult this resource for guidance regarding appropriate commerce and advertising activities on Snapchat.
We are committed to ensuring that Snapchatters have as much information as possible regarding the types of online behavior and activities that may violate the law and present serious risk to their safety. Through partnerships with nonprofit organizations and collaboration with diverse safety stakeholders, we aim to raise awareness about high-risk activities and ways that Snapchatters can stay safe. This includes in-app resources, like Here for You and Heads Up, as well as collaborations with safety stakeholders. We also cooperate with law enforcement agencies in response to valid legal processes concerning activities on Snapchat that may provide evidence of a crime.
Takeaway
Doing our part to promote public safety and protect Snapchatters from potentially harmful or illegal activities is a responsibility we take very seriously.
As we continue these efforts, we are committed to providing transparent insights into the effectiveness of our approach. Through our Transparency Reports, we provide country-level information related to our enforcements against illegal or regulated activities. To provide additional detail, we’ve broken out our reporting and enforcement data for illicit drug- and weapons-related violations in our Transparency Report, and we plan to provide more detailed breakdowns of these violations in our future reports.
We encourage users to report instances of illegal activity to help keep Snapchat safe and healthy. We are always looking for opportunities to improve our ability to address potentially harmful content or behavior, and we are committed to working with diverse leaders from across the safety community to help ensure we are advancing these objectives responsibly. For more information about our efforts, please visit our Privacy, Safety, & Policy Hub.
Harmful False or Deceptive Practices