Purpose
Online Safety welcomes informed disagreement, relevant questions, corrections, lived experience, and evidence that improves public understanding. Comment spaces are provided for discussion, not as an unrestricted hosting service or a substitute for formal corrections, complaints, emergency reporting, or confidential source communication.
Participation Standards
Comments should address the article or the issues it raises, contribute information or reasoned opinion, and treat other participants as people. Strong criticism of institutions, public figures, ideas, reporting, and policy is permitted. Personal abuse, intimidation, or identity-based degradation is not.
Participants should distinguish fact, allegation, personal experience, speculation, satire, and opinion. Claims of serious wrongdoing should be supported and may be withheld pending verification.
Prohibited Content
We may reject or remove content that is unlawful; defamatory; threatening; harassing; hateful; discriminatory; sexually exploitative; graphic without justification; supportive of terrorism or violent extremism; instructive of serious wrongdoing; maliciously deceptive; impersonating; spam; automated abuse; commercial solicitation; copyright-infringing; privacy-invasive; or unrelated to the discussion.
Doxxing is prohibited. Do not publish private addresses, personal phone numbers, identity documents, financial details, medical information, children’s information, non-public workplace data, private messages, or other sensitive personal information without a clear lawful and public-interest basis.
We may also remove repeated slogans, copied campaign messages, coordinated manipulation, undisclosed paid advocacy, artificial engagement, fabricated evidence, or content generated at scale without meaningful human contribution.
Moderation
Comments may be moderated before or after publication. We may edit obvious formatting errors, remove unsafe links, close threads, limit repetition, or preserve a comment while removing a specific unlawful element. Material edits to a user’s meaning are not made silently; the comment is rejected or an editorial note is added.
Moderation is risk-based and may not be immediate. Publication of a comment does not mean Online Safety verified or endorsed it. Failure to remove one comment does not create a right to publish another.
Names, Impersonation, and Anonymity
A display name may be used, but impersonation and false claims of authority are prohibited. We may request verification where a commenter claims to represent a person, organization, profession, or event central to the discussion. We may protect a commenter’s public identity while still requiring private verification in a high-risk case.
Privacy and Data
Comment forms may collect a name, email address, website, IP address, anti-spam information, and technical data as described in the Privacy and Cookie Policies. Email addresses are not displayed publicly through the standard comment function. Commenters should not include information they do not want published.
A public comment may be indexed, quoted, archived, syndicated, or discussed. Deleting an account or requesting removal does not guarantee deletion of lawful quotations, screenshots, moderation records, or archived copies where retention is justified.
Children and Vulnerable Users
Children should not submit personal information. We may remove content that appears to identify or endanger a child or vulnerable person. Adults must not solicit contact with minors or exploit a community space for grooming, coercion, or manipulation.
Corrections and Complaints Are Separate
A comment is not the preferred route for correcting a factual error or making a formal complaint. Send evidence-based correction requests to corrections@onlineSafety.org and formal complaints to complaints@onlineSafety.org. This ensures review by the accountable editorial function.
Enforcement and Appeals
Responses to breaches may include a warning, comment removal, link removal, thread closure, rate limitation, temporary restriction, permanent blocking, or referral where law or immediate safety requires it. We consider seriousness, intent, repetition, harm, and cooperation.
A person may appeal a moderation decision by emailing complaints@onlineSafety.org with the article URL, comment text, approximate time, and reason for appeal. We may decline repeated or abusive appeals.
User License
By submitting a public comment, the commenter grants Online Safety a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, display, moderate, reproduce, archive, and distribute the comment in connection with the publication and its editorial record. The commenter retains ownership and remains responsible for the submission.
Changes and Availability
Online Safety may disable comments on individual articles or across the site for safety, legal, editorial, capacity, or technical reasons. This policy may be updated as community functions develop.