Community Guidelines

1. Who these standards protect

Both users and experts are participants protected by these rules. Payment, expert status, popularity, or a private conversation does not create an exception. The same standards apply to names, photos, messages, live media, recordings, advertisements, reports, and connected off-platform conduct that threatens participant safety.

Hearside offers topic-based conversations, not paid intimacy, therapy, emergency response, or professional medical, legal, or financial advice. Ordinary non-graphic discussions of difficult experiences or requests for help are not prohibited merely because they concern abuse, health, or relationships; exploitation, explicit intimate content, and dangerous professional claims remain prohibited.

2. Respect consent and personal boundaries

Stop when another person declines, shows discomfort, leaves, or blocks you. Do not pressure anyone to continue, turn on their camera, reveal their location, share documents, exchange contact details, send intimate material, or move to another service. Do not create replacement accounts to reach a person who blocked you.

Do not harass, bully, stalk, threaten, discriminate, use hateful slurs, humiliate, or repeatedly target another person. Disagreement and criticism must not become threats, abuse, or targeted harassment. Do not threaten self-harm or disclosure of private information to force someone to stay or pay.

3. No intimate services or explicit content

Intimate services here means offering or requesting explicit acts, nudity, pornographic material, or erotic performances, including paid requests. Do not offer, request, sell, purchase, advertise, or facilitate these services, explicit intimate conversation, or explicit performances. This applies to audio-only calls, video, chat, names and avatars, and payment-linked requests. Describing it as consensual, a joke, roleplay, or a private paid session does not make it permitted.

Cyberflashing, non-consensual intimate material, coercion involving intimate acts or content, blackmail involving intimate content, trafficking, and sharing or threatening to share intimate recordings are prohibited. Do not manufacture explicit intimate images or voice/video impersonations of another person.

4. Protect children and report suspected minors

People under 18 must not register as a user or expert, join calls, or use chat. Do not encourage underage access or help anyone bypass eligibility checks. If someone states they are a minor or credible information suggests underage use, end the interaction and report the concern.

Explicit abuse material involving children, grooming, solicitation for intimate acts or explicit material, portraying children in intimate or explicit contexts, exploitation, trafficking, blackmail involving intimate content, and attempts to arrange or obtain such material are strictly prohibited across visual, audio, text, manipulated, and synthetic formats. Do not download, forward, request, or circulate suspected abuse material as evidence.

Good-faith non-graphic reports and requests for protection are permitted. A child’s disclosure should be handled safely, without interrogating the child, broadcasting their identity, or conducting your own investigation. Contact emergency services or appropriate child-protection authorities when immediate danger exists.

5. Protect privacy and identity

Do not disclose another person’s private contact details, location, identity documents, messages, images, or recordings without a lawful basis. Do not covertly record, screenshot, capture, distribute, or commercialise conversations. Participation in a call is not a licence to publish the other person’s voice or image.

Do not impersonate a participant, Hearside Support, a company, or a public figure. Do not use deceptive edited or synthetic media to misrepresent identity or deceive, exploit, or harm someone. Do not falsely claim verified identity, qualifications, professional status, or guaranteed anonymity.

6. No scams, manipulation, or unlawful activity

Do not solicit unauthorised payments, gifts, loans, investments, gambling, prohibited goods, or financial schemes. Do not share payment handles or external contact details to evade Hearside’s rules or charging arrangements. Do not trick people into spending coins through fabricated emergencies, fake intimacy, misleading availability, or false promises.

Fake sessions, self-dealing, collusion, scripted engagement, false reports, chargeback abuse, account sharing, bots, spam, scraping, malware, and attempts to bypass security or moderation are prohibited. Do not infringe copyright or other rights, distribute stolen material, incite violence, or facilitate unlawful conduct.

Do not encourage suicide, self-harm, or dangerous acts. Supportive conversation is welcome; instructions, encouragement, threats, or exploitation of vulnerability are not. Hearside cannot provide emergency intervention.

7. Additional expectations for experts

Experts must respect participant autonomy, maintain confidentiality, accurately describe their availability and role, and refuse prohibited requests. Payment does not oblige an expert to endure abuse or supply explicit intimate content. Experts may end unsafe interactions and report them.

Do not claim to be a therapist or other regulated professional through an ordinary expert profile, offer diagnoses or guaranteed outcomes, collect unnecessary identity information, request off-platform payment, manipulate conversation duration, or imply guaranteed romance or income. Do not share account access or allow another person to perform sessions under your identity.

Experts must cooperate with proportionate complaint review and follow their accepted commercial terms. An expert must not preserve or redistribute abuse material independently; use the designated reporting route.

8. Reporting, review, and urgent concerns

Use the relevant report or block control where available, and contact hearsidesupport@gmail.com. Include the account or conversation identifier, approximate date and time with timezone, the type of interaction, and a concise description. Blocking can protect you but does not itself establish that a complaint was received or reviewed.

Do not send passwords, OTPs, unnecessary identity documents, or suspected explicit abuse material involving children. For non-consensual intimate material, identify the location or account rather than redistributing it. Good-faith reports must not lead to retaliation. Knowingly fabricated reports or malicious attempts to silence another person may be reviewed.

Review may use available content, metadata, reports, relevant account history, and lawful evidence. Not every call is recorded, and automated filters do not detect every violation.

Applicable legal complaint deadlines and reporting duties take priority. Ordinary complaints, expedited removal complaints, victim intimate-content or impersonation complaints, and valid authority orders may require different handling. Hearside is not an emergency response service.

9. Enforcement and appeals

Action may include warnings, content restriction or removal, ending sessions, messaging/calling limits, loss of expert privileges, suspension, termination, fraud review, lawful evidence preservation, and required authority reporting. Serious risk may require immediate action; lesser violations should be assessed proportionately. A report is not proof of guilt.

An affected participant may seek review at hearsidesupport@gmail.com, identifying the account, action, and relevant context. Where lawful, the review should explain the reason and correct errors. Information may be withheld when needed to protect a reporter, a child, an investigation, or another person’s privacy. Statutory complaint and appeal rights remain available.

Account enforcement does not automatically erase refund rights or legitimate expert earnings. Financial adjustments or holds must have a justified, documented basis, and affected participants may request review.

10. Indian complaint timelines and preservation

Where the Indian intermediary requirements apply, complaints must be acknowledged within 24 hours and ordinarily resolved within 7 days. Specified content-removal complaints have a 36-hour resolution requirement; the rule contains category exceptions, including ownership and intellectual-property complaints. Qualifying victim or representative complaints concerning intimate content or electronic impersonation require reasonable and practicable removal/disablement measures within 2 hours.

Actual knowledge through a qualifying court order or authorised government intimation has a separate 3-hour takedown requirement. These category-specific deadlines do not mean every complaint is automatically substantiated or that every conversation is monitored. Working receipt, escalation and review processes are needed to meet the applicable duties.

Applicable rules require preservation of certain removed information and associated records for 180 days and registration information for 180 days after cancellation or withdrawal, subject to longer lawful requirements. These obligations do not require routine recording of every call. Statutory Grievance Appellate Committee appeals, where applicable, may be made within the prescribed 30-day period; these rights are not replaced by an internal-only appeal.