CouchReel Community Guidelines

1. What CouchReel is for

CouchReel helps a household decide what to watch tonight, and keeps track of what you watched. Around that there is a small social layer: profiles, follows, lists, comments and a feed of what the people you follow are watching.

It is a place to talk about films and television. Everything below follows from that.

2. The short version

1. Talk about the show, not the person. Disagree with a rating, a take, a list. Don't go after whoever wrote it.
2. Mark your spoilers. Every comment box has a spoiler toggle. Use it and the text stays blurred until someone chooses to read it.
3. Post things you have the right to post. Your own words, your own images. No pirated streams, no links to them.
4. Be who you are. One person, one account. Don't pose as someone else, as a studio, or as us.
5. Keep it appropriate for a mixed audience. CouchReel is rated for teens. Adult content doesn't belong here, even behind a spoiler tag.

3. Not allowed

These get content removed, and repeat or severe cases get the account suspended.

• Harassment and bullying — targeted insults, threats, pile-ons, sexual harassment, or contacting someone who has blocked you through another account.
• Hate speech — attacking or dehumanising people over race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation. Discussing how a film handles these subjects is fine; attacking people is not.
• Sexual content and graphic violence — explicit sexual material, sexualised depictions of minors, or violence posted for shock value. Frank discussion of a film's content is fine; posting the material is not.
• Child safety — anything that sexualises a minor or puts a child at risk. We remove it, suspend the account, and report it to the relevant authorities.
• Self-harm and suicide — content that encourages, instructs or glorifies self-harm or suicide. If you are struggling, please reach out to a local crisis line; if you are worried about someone here, report the content and we will look at it first.
• Spam and scams — bulk or repetitive posting, advertising, link farming, phishing, engagement farming, or links to pirated streams and downloads.
• Impersonation — pretending to be another person, a public figure, a studio or brand, or a member of CouchReel staff. Clearly labelled fan and parody accounts are fine.
• Illegal content — anything unlawful where you are, including selling regulated goods.
• Privacy violations — posting someone's private information (address, phone number, workplace, documents) without their consent.
• Platform abuse — scraping, automated posting, vote manipulation, or evading a block or a suspension.

4. Reporting

Every comment, list and profile has a ⋯ menu with Report. Pick the closest reason:

Reports are private. The person you report is never told who filed the report. Submitting one hides the content from your view straight away; you can undo that from the same menu.

Two more reasons — child safety and self-harm or suicide — are being added as their own options. Until they appear, use Something else and say so in the text; those reports are escalated ahead of the queue.

5. Blocking and hiding

• Block (a profile, or a comment's ⋯ menu) is mutual invisibility: you won't see each other's profiles, lists, comments or activity, and any follows between you are removed. The person you block is not notified. You can unblock from Settings → Blocked accounts.
• Hide is the lighter option — a single comment or feed row you'd rather not see, reversible at any time, with no effect on the other person.
• Privacy is set per profile: Public (anyone, including people without an account), Followers only, or Private. There is also a separate switch that keeps your profile visible but stops your watching activity from appearing in anyone's feed.

6. How we review

• Everything you post publicly — usernames, bios, list names and descriptions, comments and uploaded images — passes through automated checks before it becomes visible to other people. Content held for review is visible to you, marked Under review, and nobody else sees it until it clears.
• Reports go to a human. We look at the reported content and the context around it, not just the report.
• Outcomes range from removing a single piece of content, to limiting an account's ability to post, to suspending it. Severity and repetition both matter.
• We don't publish review timelines we can't keep. What we will say is that child-safety and credible-threat reports are handled first.

7. If we act on your account

You'll get a message in your CouchReel inbox saying what was removed and which guideline it hit.

Appeals: reply to that message, or write to safety@couchreel.com from the email address on the account. Tell us what you think we got wrong. A different reviewer takes a second look. If the appeal succeeds we restore the content and the account.

8. Under-18s and account minimums

You must be 13 or older to have a CouchReel account, or older where local law sets a higher minimum. Accounts we believe belong to someone under that age are removed. CouchReel is rated 12+ / Teen in the stores and we intend to keep the public surfaces suitable for that rating.

9. Contact

• Safety and moderation: safety@couchreel.com
• Everything else: info@couchreel.com
• Report content in the app: ⋯ → Report on any comment, list or profile.

These guidelines will change as the social features grow. Material changes are announced in the app, and the date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.