Reports

General Principles 

Hate speech laws vary by country. The definition of hate speech is typically ambiguous and can be employed by states to censor and silence their citizens. BitTube does not recognize the concept of hate speech at face value. Nevertheless, posts may be removed (or geo-blocked, if such a feature is available) when ordered by a court of law with jurisdiction. If authors take precaution, unpublished posts remain available for peer-to-peer sharing through WebTorrent outside of the BitTube interface using AirShare or instant.io.

1. Child abuse. Content containing, threatening, inciting or promoting the abuse, sexualization, and/or exploitation of minors.
2. Terrorism content that is produced by and/or promoting a designated terrorist organization.
3. The explicit unlicensed sale of illegal drugs, chemicals or firearms.
   1. Instruction, education and depiction of the use of these items is protected as free speech.
4. Credible threats of violence and/or incitement to violence, including the promotion of terrorism.
5. Piracy (illegitimately obtained copyright infringing content) is forbidden and sharing pirated software is considered malicious use (see “Copyrighted content”, rule 5).

1. Posting porn is prohibited.
2. Displaying explicit sex acts with the sole intent to arouse, regardless of nudity, is prohibited.
3. Linking to porn/cam/escort sites is prohibited. This is considered spam/suspicious.
4. Full nudity (showing genitalia) is prohibited. These private parts should be pixelated/censored, unless exceptions under rule 9 apply.
5. Partial nudity (topless, soft erotica) is allowed and must be labeled NSFW.
6. Sexually suggestive content must be labeled NSFW, regardless of nudity.
7. Sexually suggestive content involving minors (persons under the age of 18), or persons indistinguishable from minors, will be removed immediately, regardless of nudity. Such content is considered illegal/harmful. Posting such content can result in account ban under the assumption of bad intent.
8. The same rules apply to CGI/animated content.
9. Exceptions to prohibited content when the NSFW label is sufficient:
   1. Within a legitimate instructional, educational or medical context.
   2. Without an explicit intent to arouse the viewer.
   3. If scenes with (full) nudity are brief and/or not the focal point of the production, e.g. as part of a sketch, music video or television series.
   4. All exceptions are judged on a case by case basis.
10. Content which contains moderate violence, blood/gore or is otherwise disturbing should be labeled NSFL.
11. Content containing extreme violence (such as killings, massacres, terrorism), is considered harmful and will be removed.
12. Failing to label one or more posts as NSFW/NSFL appropriately may result in a warning. After a second warning, your profile will be labeled NSFW. This treats all present and future posts as NSFW, regardless of their individual NSFW label.
13. Violating rule 1 (porn) or rule 11 (extreme violence) will result in immediate profile NSFW status and a warning.
14. Violating rule 1 or rule 11 with two prior NSFW warnings may result in account ban, regardless of actual profile NSFW status.
15. Violating rule 1 as your first post after account registration may result in an immediate account ban under the assumption of spam. 

1. Audio uploads or live streams comprised wholly of copyrighted content (such as music) may be removed reactively after an official DMCA takedown request.
2. Unauthorized and/or uncredited audio uploads of entire albums, collections, podcasts or audio books may be removed proactively under the assumption of piracy and copyright infringement.
3. Audio or video uploads or live streams comprised wholly of copyrighted content may be removed proactively under the assumption of piracy and copyright infringement, or otherwise after an official DMCA takedown request. Such content includes:
   1. Full movies, documentaries, television series (that are not in the public domain).
   2. Licensed television and sports broadcasts (any sport, including martial arts).
      1. Commentaries, summaries, highlights, etc are allowed. Keep in mind that those could still be subject to official DMCA takedown requests.
   3. Re-uploads of unoriginal content without authorization from, and/or credit given to the original author, also known as “freebooting”.
      1. Take note of Creative Commons licensing, which allows you to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon another’s work, even commercially, as long as you credit them for the original creation.
      2. We advise embedding external content where possible such that people’s views and engagement are counted on the platform of the author’s choice.
4. Content partially containing copyrighted material may be judged reactively after an official DMCA takedown request, accounting for both the US Fair Use doctrine and exceptions in the EU Copyright framework to protect against unfair or malicious takedown requests.
5. Publicly sharing, promoting or linking to pirated software is considered illegal and malicious use (see “Spam and malicious use” rule 2a). 
6. Violating rule 3a, 3b or 5 will result in a warning.
7. Violating rule 3a, 3b or 5 with two prior warnings may result in account ban.
8. Violating rule 3a or 5 as your first post after account registration may result in an immediate account ban under the assumption of spam and malicious use.

1. General spam will be removed and a warning will be issued. Repeated warnings may result in an account ban under the assumption of malicious use.
2. Malicious use may result in an immediate account ban if determined as such.
   1. Scamming. Do not attempt to scam others out of their earnings, views, votes or property. This includes but is not limited to:
      1. Promoting malicious websites or software (malware)
      2. Linking to pirated software (the distribution of which is considered illegal)
      3. Knowingly promoting MLM/Ponzi schemes
      4. Promoting fake giveaways or paid “crypto/fx trading” group scams.
   2. Bot spam. The malicious use of bots for creating posts and writing comments, as well as the viewing of posts or profiles (see also rule 2c, 2d).
   3. Metric manipulation. Do no manipulate metrics such as views, likes or subscriptions. When this is detected such metrics will be adjusted to compensate and your profile may be quarantined (temporarily or permanently) from recommended and trending feeds.
   4. Misleading metadata. Do not create fake or misleading descriptions, tags, titles, or thumbnails in order to game views or trick users in bad faith.
      1. Note: this addresses the use of fake metadata entirely unrelated to the actual content, not intentional “clickbait”, which is fine.
3. Name squatting. Do not name squat a username or profile on the platform or related. Name squatting is defined as registering a username or profile with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. This includes name squatting notable creators from other platforms such as YouTube, which can be considered impersonation subject to an account ban.
4. Dogpiling or brigading. Coordinated group attacks with the aim to harass, silence or otherwise shut down other users, thereby substantially affecting their user experience on the platform.
5. Unlawful harassment. Demonstrable harassment that is determined to be unlawful within the domicile of the originator. See also “Harmful or illegal content” guidelines.