Built-in policies
CalmLens includes four built-in policies, each aimed at the standard most users expect from a particular kind of service. Pick the one closest to your community, then adjust it in Portal › Moderation policies if you need to; Policies and actions explains how a policy turns findings into a decision.
| Policy | Aims for | Choose it for |
|---|---|---|
| General community | A mainstream social platform with an adult and teenage audience | Social apps, forums and creator platforms where adults talk openly and adult content is shown only to verified adults |
| Children’s platform | A service built for children | Games, apps and communities whose users are children |
| Education and support | A learning, research or support community | Courses, research tools, newsrooms and peer-support groups that discuss difficult subjects openly |
| Wholesome community | A clean community with members of mixed ages from 13 | Learning apps with comments, hobby communities and family-friendly networks |
At a glance
The biggest differences between the policies. Each policy's page covers its rules in full, including the contexts that change an outcome.
| Content | General community | Children’s platform | Education and support | Wholesome community |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sexual text | Allow | Block | Block | Block |
| Adult nudity or sexual activity in images and video | Age-restrict | Block | Block | Block |
| Non-erotic nudity, such as breastfeeding or fine art | Allow | Block | Allow | Block |
| Suggestive content, such as flirtation or innuendo | Allow | Block | Allow | Allow |
| Graphic violence | Age-restrict in reporting, education, history or fiction; block otherwise | Block | Block | Block |
| Insults aimed at a person | Limit | Block | Limit | Block |
| Profanity | Not moderated | Block | Not moderated | Block |
| Someone’s own private details | Allow | Block | Allow | Block |
| Alcohol, tobacco/vaping or gambling | Allow | Block | Allow | Block |
| Historical, reporting and educational content | Reporting and support allowed; history only under Violence; teaching under Violence and Hate | Mostly blocked; see the policy’s exceptions | Allowed | Reporting and support allowed; history only under Violence; teaching under Violence and Hate |
What every built-in policy shares
Each built-in policy uses a 50% threshold, and Block is the default action for every category it moderates. Each policy’s page lists where it departs from that.
Every built-in policy allows:
- Wholly natural or non-violent death, such as an obituary.
- Revealing clothing, weapons without an attack, combat sport or training, and graffiti in images.
- Mild mockery or teasing under Harassment.
- Insults, threats, bullying or schemes wholly between invented characters in a story, comic, game or roleplay. A real or addressed person is never a fictional target, so a story, roleplay, meme or staged photo that mocks a real classmate, a public figure or another participant follows the policy’s other Harassment rules, as does a fictional frame around a real attack. Sexual content between characters is assessed under Sexual.
- Hate that wholly challenges represented prejudice (counterspeech). Children’s platform still blocks offensive slurs in it.
- A crime committed in a story, with each policy’s own exceptions.
Every built-in policy blocks, whatever the context:
- Sexual content involving a child or a character presented as a child, a real person’s intimate images shared, sought or threatened without their consent, and support for terrorism or violent extremism. These are platform restrictions in every policy, including your own.
- Offers or requests for sexual services or encounters under Sexual.
- Violent preparation and encouragement, and graphic violence (General community age-restricts it in some contexts instead).
- Self-harm methods and encouragement.
- Encouraging harassment, even in fiction.
- Criminal instructions, promotion, preparation and requests, even in fiction.
How the rules combine
Each rule on a policy’s page describes one context on its own; where content mixes contexts, every matching allowance and restriction still applies.
- An allowance only covers its own category. Allowing violence in a history lesson never excuses hate or harassment in the same content.
- An allowance only covers the content it describes. A separate attack that no allowance covers keeps the category’s default action, so a history passage cannot excuse a current threat beside it.
- Restrictions take precedence. They stop an allowed context from excusing actionable harm or restricted detail, such as graphic violence in a news report.
- Non-graphic discussion covers supported arguments, comparisons and analysis of qualifying content. It excludes graphic or explicit sexual detail, erotic presentation, threats, victim mockery, endorsement, harmful instructions and direct harmful requests. A discussion label never excuses a separate active harmful passage.
- Counterspeech challenges represented prejudice. Reporting, awareness and victim support are separate contexts.
Moderation categories defines each category and qualifier.
Updates
These pages describe the latest version of each built-in policy. A built-in policy you haven't edited receives each new version automatically; a policy you’ve saved changes to keeps its version until you update it. See Preset versions and updates.