Dear Online Community Users,
We understand how important our Online Community is for you to seek emotional support and sometimes share personal and painful experiences. We are grateful for the support that you provide each other during these difficult conversations. We want our Online Community to continue to be a space that users can express themselves and are committed to providing this space. But we must also ensure that those discussions do not risk encouraging harm or distress in others, especially when it comes to subjects like suicide and self-harm.
Rule 4 of our Online Community guidelines states:
Rule 4: No harmful or offensive content. Do not post or link to anything that is: graphic or obscene, defamatory or libellous, impersonating someone else, or infringing copyright.
This rule includes content that may encourage or normalise suicide or self-harm. The Online Safety Act 2023 now requires all online platforms, including ours, to take strong action on this type of content to protect users. For this reason, we remove any posts that may be viewed as portraying suicide as a positive or inevitable solution.
The moderation team use the Samaritans Understanding self-harm and suicide content as a guide. We try to balance the potential benefits of users sharing openly about difficult feelings with the risks of content that can be distressing, triggering and may act to encourage, maintain or exacerbate self-harm and suicidal behaviours.
We understand it may feel frustrating to be told some topics can’t be explored in the way you'd like. If you would like to talk about difficult feelings, we encourage you to do so with support services who are specially trained in this area. We hope you will continue to use the Online Community and we ask that posts avoid language or content that could make suicide or self-harm seem like an appealing option.
Kind Regards,
The Moderation Team