Community guidelines are a platform's own rules about what users may post, and breaking them is the most common ground on which platforms remove content.
Every major platform publishes rules alongside its terms of service, typically prohibiting harassment and bullying, hate speech, threats, impersonation, sharing private information, non-consensual intimate imagery, spam and fake engagement. Review sites have equivalent content guidelines covering fake, off-topic and conflict-of-interest reviews.
Platforms enforce these rules through user reports, automated detection and human review, and can remove or restrict content, or issue strikes and suspensions to accounts. Alongside the public report button, most large platforms run separate forms for legal requests, privacy complaints and impersonation, handled by different teams.
In practice
A policy report succeeds when it matches the content to a specific rule and gives the reviewer what they need to see it quickly: the exact URL, the rule that applies and, where relevant, proof of identity or ownership. Reports rejected as 'no violation found' are often reviewed at speed; a detailed appeal, a legal or privacy request, or, in the EU, a Digital Services Act notice can lead to a different result.
Related removals
- Facebook post — $1,700 per post, pay on success
- TikTok video — $3,700 per video, pay on success
- Fake accounts — $7,700 per account, pay on success
Related terms
- Abuse report — An abuse report is a complaint to a hosting provider, domain registrar, CDN or email provider that its service is being used for phishing, fraud, malware or other illegal activity.
- Digital Services Act (DSA) — The Digital Services Act is the EU regulation on how platforms and hosts handle illegal content, including a duty to act on notices and to explain decisions, refusals included.
- Impersonation — Online impersonation is pretending to be a real person or organisation — through a fake profile, website, email or ad — in a way that misleads people about who is behind it.
- Fake review — A fake review is a review that misrepresents who wrote it or their experience — for example one written by someone who was never a customer, or by a business about itself.
- YouTube copyright strike — A YouTube copyright strike is a penalty placed on a channel when YouTube removes one of its videos in response to a valid copyright removal request.