Moderation and safety features

This page lists the tools BranchBeat uses to moderate content and to protect the people who use it, including teens. Parents and guardians can ask us about any of them, or about how they apply to their child’s account: see the end of this page.

Tools everyone has

• Reporting. Any post, comment, direct message or account can be reported from inside the app, with one of ten reasons, including “Harassment or bullying”, “Sexual content”, “Child safety concern” and “May be too young to use BranchBeat”, for an account that may belong to someone too young for BranchBeat. The person reported is not told who reported them. Anyone, with or without an account, can also report by email.
• Blocking. A blocked account can no longer message you, and you no longer see each other’s posts, comments or messages. Blocked accounts are listed in Settings, where a block can be undone.
• Muting. A muted conversation stops sending notifications.
• Comment control. The author of a post can delete any comment on it.
• Removing messages. You can remove a message for yourself, delete your own message for everyone, and delete a conversation from your inbox.
• Notification choices. You choose which kinds of notification you get, in Settings.

Automatic checks

• The safety check. Posting, commenting and messaging are open only to people who have turned on an automated safety check. It screens text written for other people (captions, comments, direct messages, names and usernames) with a content-moderation service before it is published or sent, and text that several people report is checked again.
• Hashtags. Some hashtags are blocked and never listed. Searching for some self-harm terms shows helplines instead of posts.
• Age signals. Written rules look for signs that an account belongs to someone younger than they said, such as a stated age, in post captions, comments and profile text. They never use faces, voices or recordings, and they do not read direct messages unless one is reported.

What our moderators do

• Every report is emailed to our team and reviewed by a person in a moderation queue. Child-safety reports are marked urgent and reviewed first.
• Moderators can hide a post or comment (reversible), or remove it.
• An account can be suspended, which also hides what it has posted and commented, or closed.
• Content reported as a child-safety concern is preserved and taken out of view, never simply deleted, and apparent child sexual abuse material is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as our Child Safety Standards describe.
• An intimate image shared without consent is removed within 48 hours of a valid request (see TAKE IT DOWN).

Protections for teens

Accounts of people under 18, and accounts we have reason to believe belong to someone under 18, are set up differently, and the account holder cannot switch these protections off before they turn 18:

• Their posts can be seen only by people they follow who also follow them.
• They do not appear in search results or suggestions, or in other people’s lists of followers.
• An adult can follow them only if they follow that adult first.
• Someone can start a conversation with them only if the two follow each other.
• They see no ads.
• Their calibration recordings are never used to train the shared transcription model.

Age review

If we believe an account belongs to a child under 13, we lock it to the practice tools at once and hide its posts and comments from other people. A person reviews it within 3 business days; if the review confirms it, we delete the account and everything it holds, and if not, we restore it. Where the signs point to a teen who said they were an adult, the teen protections above are applied, and the account holder can tell us in the app if that is a mistake.

Parent and guardian controls

Where the law requires a parent’s approval before a teen can use the social features, the account works with the practice tools only until a parent or guardian approves it in the app, from their own adult account. A parent who approves can, in the app:

• set a daily time limit;
• set quiet hours;
• turn direct messages on or off;
• see the teen’s privacy settings, and the names of the people the teen follows and exchanges messages with, never the messages themselves;
• withdraw approval at any time.

Wherever a teen lives, they can also link a parent or guardian to their account: either of them can start it, the teen has to accept it in the app, and either of them can end it at any time. A linked parent can use the same controls. Parents and guardians explains how approval works.

Ask us about these features

If you are the parent or guardian of someone who uses BranchBeat, you can ask us about any of these features, or how they apply to your child’s account, by emailing support@branchbeat.com with “Moderation features” in the subject. You do not need a BranchBeat account. A person replies by email. To have a child’s content or account removed, see Delete Your Account.