Sha.Law

By Justin Sha

Consumer Apps that allow users to interact with each other often have various user facing rules that tell folks what they can and cannot do when using the online service. These “Community Guidelines” set standards for user conduct, what content is permissible and prohibited on the platform, and the ways in which users are expected to interact (or not) with other users. The Community Guidelines also provide a basis for reporting, moderation, and enforcement.

Not every Consumer App needs a standalone Community Guidelines. For example, a social fitness app that allows you to track your workouts and comment on your friends’ workouts may not need one (an in-app report mechanism with report categories may suffice). But once a product allows users to create profiles, upload content, communicate with other users, or otherwise participate in a shared environment, a Consumer App company will increasingly need to think about what rules govern those user interactions.

As with the one on a Consumer App’s Terms of Service, this Sha.Law Practice Note will use a Social Dating App as its primary example. Dating apps make the purpose of Community Guidelines particularly intuitive because the entire point of the product is to introduce and connect people who don’t know each other to other users.

Community Guidelines: What Are They?

Community Guidelines (also called community standards, acceptable use policy, etc.) are the external or user-facing expressions of policy, with stated primary goals being user education and setting expectations.

For a Social Dating App, this covers a lot of ground. Examples where the answer to the question is probably, “NO”:

• Can I create a fake dating profile to “catfish” others?
• Can I send someone unsolicited sexual content?
• Can I ask another user for money to go on a date with me?

However, from the company’s perspective, in addition to creating an environment where users will want to return and continue using the platform, the Community Guidelines also provide a basis for removing prohibited content and suspending or banning repeat offenders; “bad” user conduct includes the range of behavior from things that make the experience of other users worse to conduct that may be illegal or result in regulatory consequences for the platform hosting the prohibited content (e.g., copyright issues). Often, Community Guidelines end up coming across as a list of what is NOT permitted on the platform and the consequences for violating those rules. Accordingly, these lists of prohibitions allow for content moderation, which is the process of evaluating user content against the platform’s policies. In providing users transparency about how the Social Dating App moderates, the company also reduces the incidence of disputes with users who are upset about an enforcement decision against them and allows users to dispute adverse moderation decisions that may have been wrong.

In general, the Community Guidelines:

• Set expectations (users know what is not permissible)
• Translate values into rules (Community norms like “Be respectful” become actual rules about harassment, threats, spam, etc.)
• Provide notice about consequences (violations of these rules result in consequences, such as content removal, warnings, restrictions, suspension, and termination)
• Create consistent moderation standards and make enforcement more predictable (users can understand why something was removed, while moderators have a rulebook to use versus relying only on individual judgment, and users can compare what the company actually does against the rules it publicly says it applies)

How the Social Dating Apps Describe It

Hinge describes itself as “the dating app designed to be deleted,” stating that it wants “every dater’s experience on Hinge to be positive, no matter where they are in their journey,” which is “why” they created their “Community Guidelines: to make it clear what kind of behavior [they] believe helps foster a respectful, safe, and welcoming environment.” Hinge’s Community Guidelines (Hinge – last updated April 22, 2026; accessed 10/19/2026) are located in its Help Center).

Bumble was founded after a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit by a Tinder cofounder and originally required women to send the first message in opposite-sex matches. Bumble describes itself as “a space to make kind connections in a safe, inclusive, and respectful way” and says that its Community Guidelines “make it clear what content and conduct is not acceptable (on our platform and off)” (Bumble – accessed 10/19/2026).

Tinder was founded in 2012 in West Hollywood, California. Tinder maintains an online reputation as the Social Dating App for casual hookups and conventional dating. Tinder describes its Community Guidelines as setting “expectations for everyone’s behavior, both on and off the app,” encouraging users to report to “stop harmful behavior and protect others” (Tinder – accessed 10/19/2026).

Grindr was founded in 2009 with its HQ in West Hollywood, California and is the hookup app for gay men. Grindr provides that it believes “in a world where all LGBTQ people can live and love with pride” and its Community Guidelines are written and enforced to support those values, including quick-read guidelines at the top about the platform being adults only, not allowing solicitation, and where consent is essential (Grindr – accessed 10/19/2026).

How Do Community Guidelines Work With the Terms of Service?

In a way, you can think of the Community Guidelines as an Addendum to the Terms of Service (i.e., the main contract).

The Terms of Service constitute the contract governing the legal relationship between the company and the consumer. For Social Dating Apps, they commonly incorporate the Community Guidelines, which set more detailed rules for user conduct, content, and interactions on the platform, requiring users to comply with them. There are several benefits to this structure.

Making Things Understandable For Users

Perhaps the most important reason is that the separation makes things more understandable for the users. The Terms can establish the company’s contractual authority to remove content, restrict features, suspend accounts, or terminate users, while the Community Guidelines explain in more ordinary language what conduct may lead to those consequences. For example, the Community Guidelines can explain that repeated attempts to contact someone after another user blocks them or unmatches them is not allowed and may result in account suspension or other enforcement.

Why Social Dating Apps All Have Community Guidelines

No Giant Laundry List of Prohibited Conduct in the Terms of Service

The Community Guidelines address conduct and content that the Social Dating App wants to keep off the platform. This includes areas where the company may have independent legal obligations based on the applicable jurisdiction. Child sexual exploitation, certain illegal transactions, nonconsensual intimate imagery, credible threats, fraud, and human trafficking are obvious examples.

Compliance with the Rules of the Major App Stores

For mobile apps, the app store adds another layer. The Apple App Store requires apps with User Generated Content to provide mechanisms for filtering objectionable material, reporting offensive content, responding to concerns, blocking abusive users, and allowing users to contact the developer; Apple places the responsibility on developers to remove content that violates its rules, the developer’s Terms, or the developer’s community standards (Apple’s App Review Guidelines – last updated 10/16/2026). Similarly, Google requires apps with User Generated Content to define and prohibit objectionable content and behavior in their Terms or user policies, require users to accept those rules before contributing content, and provide appropriate moderation, reporting, and blocking functionality (Google Play’s User Generated Content policy – accessed 10/19/2026).

Safeguarding a Minimum Level of Quality for User Interactions

People are using Social Dating Apps to meet other people. That makes authenticity, privacy, consent, harassment, unwanted contact, scams, and respectful treatment relevant not merely as abstract values, but as product concerns. If users consistently have terrible interactions with other users, they will stop using the product.

Not Becoming the Referee of Every Bad Date or Unpleasant Conversation

At the same time, the company needs to know how to draw the line between prohibited conduct and conduct that falls more on the side ordinary social friction (e.g., the risks and truths inherent to “dating”). Not everyone will like each other. Not every date will go well. Some people may say something “rude” (not illegal), and that’s just how things go. None of these things necessarily becomes a Community Guidelines violation merely because another user’s feelings were hurt. In fact, Tinder expressly tells users not to report someone merely because the person does not meet their personal criteria. while Hinge similarly tells users to respect another dater’s decision to unmatch rather than try to pursue that person elsewhere (contact them again or stalk them outside the app).

How to Draft Community Guidelines

Justin Sha recommends a process similar to the one for drafting the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy:

1. Understand the Product and the Likely User Interactions Possible. Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble have functional differences and different goals. So too are the differences between Grindr and Sniffies. All of these are Social Dating Apps, but understanding questions like how users are allowed to interact with each other, what messages they can send each other, etc. inform the kinds of likely user interactions and conduct that the Community Guidelines will want to address. After all, the differences and, accordingly, the kinds of user interactions possible between Hinge and Sniffies are worlds apart.
2. Build a Baseline Checklist. What are the common kinds of content NOT allowed on the platform and common conduct issues and exceptions.
3. Review comparator Community Guidelines. Issue spot by using major players in the space and seeing what problems they identified that you perhaps had not considered. But remember that their policies are checklists, not templates.
4. Gather the Facts and Decide How the Rules Will Work to Draft. Talk through the different situations that could play out and once you come up with the broad categories and then specifics for the major issues, start drafting.

What Should the Guidelines Actually Cover?

There is no universal table of contents, but the categories should follow what users can actually do through the product. Do this structurally.

For a Social Dating App, you’d probably do something like this:

• Who can use the app, and how are they going to represent themselves? Issues like minimum age of user, authenticity, impersonation, multiple accounts, account sharing, ban evasion, etc.
• How will users treat each other (in bad ways)? E.g., harassment, stalking, doxxing, blackmail, repeated unwanted contact.
• What content is not allowed? Users can use the platform to post photos, but some of that content is not allowed, e.g., nudity, sexual content, illegal activity, AI manipulated content.

Some of the hardest questions are not just what content is permitted or not permitted, but the line between the two. For example, a Social Dating App might prohibit sexually explicit material on a public profile, while permitted it in consensual private messages.

Reporting and Enforcement Need to Match the Rules

If the Community Guidelines tell users to report violations, the company needs a reporting mechanism. As noted, the goal should not be to invite the company to investigate every instance of rudeness, rejection, or interpersonal disappointment. Rather, the Social Dating App or other Consumer App should have specific categories that users may select (e.g., reporting a suspected underage user, impersonating someone else).

The same principle applies to enforcement. Not every violation necessarily deserves the same consequence. Hinge provides a useful current example. For certain minor harassment violations, a human moderator can issue a warning and require the user to complete an educational walkthrough before continuing to use the app. More serious violations can result in immediate account removal, while repeated violations can lead to a permanent ban.

Takeaway: Community Guidelines Work With the Other Policies

Importantly, don’t forget that these policies are written in conjunction with one another. For a Social Dating App, drafting a Privacy Policy requires understanding what happens to users’ information. Drafting the Terms of Service requires understanding the legal relationship between the company and its users. Meanwhile, drafting the Community Guidelines requires understanding what happens when those users begin interacting with one another. Each document has its own purpose, but they are all describing different parts of the same product. The Terms can make compliance with the Community Guidelines a condition of using the service, while the Community Guidelines provide the more detailed rules governing user conduct, content, and interactions. Make sure the documents, product features, and actual moderation practices work together.

Takeaway: “Community Standards” Help Shape the User Environment

The same drafting principles apply regardless of whether you’re drafting the Community Guidelines for a Social Dating App or another kind of community standards for something else. Social networks, messaging platforms, marketplaces, creator platforms, multiplayer games, and other products where users interact with one another all need some way to establish acceptable participation based on the product they offer. For example, Discord’s Community Guidelines address harassment, privacy, child safety, spam, scams, platform manipulation, and other issues specific to how people use Discord. Meanwhile, a marketplace or multiplayer game will have different issues as users will interact with those products and each other through that product differently.

At a high level, drafting any of these is just going through the same steps. Understand how people use the product together, identify the risks created by those interactions, and write the rules around the actual product features. Remember too that just because conduct is technically possible, or even legally permissible, does not mean the company has to permit it on its platform. Ultimately, it’s about what conduct and content you want on the platform, and what you don’t.