Community Guidelines For Online Platforms

Launching a marketplace, membership site or social platform is exciting, but it can also raise a very practical question: what happens when users start posting, reviewing, messaging, selling or disagreeing with each other?

Clear community guidelines help you set the tone from day one. They tell users what behaviour is welcome, what crosses the line, and what your business can do if something goes wrong.

The good news is that community rules don't need to be long or intimidating. They do, however, need to work properly with your platform terms, content moderation policy, user-generated content licence and complaints system.

What Are Community Guidelines For An Online Platform?

Community guidelines are the rules users must follow when they use your platform, especially when they interact with other users or upload content.

They sit alongside your platform terms and help make your expectations clear in plain English. Depending on your business, they might cover:

• What users can and can't post
• How users should communicate with each other
• Rules for reviews, ratings, listings, comments, groups or forums
• Prohibited content, such as hate speech, threats, scams or unlawful material
• How your moderation team can remove content or restrict accounts
• How users can report content or appeal a decision

For example, say Nina runs an online marketplace where parents can buy and sell second-hand baby goods. Her community guidelines might ban unsafe product listings, misleading descriptions, abusive messages, fake reviews and attempts to move transactions off the platform.

Those rules don't just make the marketplace feel safer. They also give Nina a clearer basis to remove risky listings, deal with complaints and protect the reputation of the platform.

Do Community Guidelines Need To Be Separate From Your Platform Terms?

No, they don't have to be separate, but most platforms benefit from having both a legally binding set of platform terms and a more user-friendly set of community guidelines.

Your platform terms are the legal contract between your business and your users. They usually cover things like account registration, fees, payment, liability, intellectual property, privacy, termination and dispute processes.

Your community guidelines are usually more practical and behaviour-focused. They explain the day-to-day rules users need to follow when they post, message, list, review or participate in your online community.

A strong setup usually works like this:

• Your platform terms say users must comply with your community guidelines
• Your community guidelines explain the specific behaviour rules
• Your moderation policy explains how you review reports and enforce the rules
• Your privacy policy explains how you collect and use personal information during account management and moderation

This link matters. If your guidelines aren't connected to your terms, you may have a harder time relying on them when you remove content, suspend an account or refuse a user access to your platform.

You should also think about the Australian Consumer Law. If your users include consumers or small businesses, your standard terms need to be fair, clear and not misleading. Since the unfair contract terms regime was strengthened, unfair terms in standard form consumer and small business contracts can attract penalties. That doesn't mean you can't protect your platform. It does mean your rights, especially around suspension, cancellation and content removal, should be transparent and proportionate.

What Should Your Platform Community Rules Cover?

Your platform community rules should cover the behaviour and content risks that are most likely to come up on your particular platform.

A generic moderation policy template can be a useful starting point, but it often won't deal with the details that matter for your business model. A marketplace has different risks from a fitness membership or online learning community, a creator platform or a professional networking app.

User Behaviour

Set out the standards for how users should treat each other. This might include rules against:

• Harassment, bullying, threats or intimidation
• Hate speech or discriminatory comments
• Sexualised content or unwanted sexual messages
• Impersonation or fake accounts
• Doxxing, such as posting someone's private contact details without consent
• Spam, scams, phishing or suspicious links

If your platform is used by children or young people, you may need extra safeguards. If your service is an age-restricted social media platform, the Online Safety Act also requires reasonable steps to prevent Australian children under 16 from having accounts, so you should get advice on age assurance, privacy and account controls. The Online Safety Act 2021 gives the eSafety Commissioner powers to deal with certain serious online harms, including cyber-bullying material targeted at an Australian child, cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult, non-consensual intimate images, class 1/class 2 material and certain abhorrent violent conduct material.

Content Rules

Your guidelines should explain what users can upload and what is banned. This often includes:

• Illegal content
• Content that infringes copyright or trade marks
• Misleading, deceptive or fake content
• Graphic, violent or sexually explicit material, if not allowed on your platform
• Medical, financial or other regulated claims, if relevant to your industry
• Reviews that are fake, paid for but not disclosed, or posted by competitors

Reviews are a common risk area. Under the Australian Consumer Law, misleading or deceptive conduct is prohibited. If your platform publishes fake reviews, suppresses negative reviews in a misleading way, or lets sellers make false claims, that can create real legal and reputational risk.

Marketplace Rules

If you run an online marketplace, your community guidelines should also deal with trading behaviour. For example:

• Accurate descriptions, photos, pricing and availability
• Rules against counterfeit goods
• Safety requirements for particular products
• No fee avoidance or taking transactions off-platform, if that's part of your model
• How cancellations, refunds or disputes are handled
• Whether sellers need licences, insurance or qualifications

Some platform rules will depend on your industry. If users are selling food, telehealth or other health services, childcare services, alcohol, second-hand vehicles or financial products, there may be additional state, territory or federal rules to consider.

How Should You Deal With User Generated Content?

You should deal with user generated content by clearly setting out what users are allowed to upload, who owns it, and what licence your platform needs to use it.

User generated content can include posts, reviews, photos, videos, comments, messages, listings, profiles and forum contributions. Even if a user creates the content, your platform may need rights to store it, display it, promote it, resize it, moderate it or share it within the service.

Your platform terms should usually include a user content licence. This might say that the user keeps ownership of their content, but gives your business a licence to:

• Host, store and display the content on the platform
• Copy, format, crop or adapt it so the platform works properly
• Use it to promote the platform, if that's part of your model
• Share it with service providers that help run the platform
• Remove or restrict it if it breaches your rules

If you want to use user content in ads, social media, newsletters or case studies, say that clearly. Users can get upset if they see their content being used in a way they didn't expect, especially if it includes their name, image, business, children or customers.

You should also ask users to promise that they have the rights needed to upload the content. For example, a user shouldn't upload a photo taken by someone else, a brand's trade mark without permission, or a video featuring people who haven't agreed to be shown.

Copyright Act 1968 issues can come up quickly on content-heavy platforms. Trade mark issues can also arise if users list counterfeit products or use brand names in a misleading way. Your process should make it easy for rights holders to report concerns and for your team to assess takedown requests.

Can You Remove Content Or Suspend An Account?

Yes, you can remove content or suspend an account if your terms give you that right and you apply the process fairly and consistently.

This is one of the main reasons to connect your community guidelines with your platform terms. If a user breaches the rules, you want a clear contractual basis to act.

Your terms and guidelines should explain:

• When you can remove, hide, restrict or edit content
• When you can issue a warning
• When you can temporarily suspend an account
• When you can permanently close an account
• Whether you'll give notice before or after taking action
• Whether users can appeal or ask for a review

Some situations need urgent action. For example, if a user posts an explicit image of another person without consent, makes a credible threat, uploads suspected child abuse material, or lists counterfeit products at scale, you may need an urgent escalation pathway, restrict access, remove or disable the content, preserve only necessary non-content records such as URLs, account IDs and timestamps where appropriate, and get urgent specialist advice about reporting obligations.

Other situations may be better handled with a warning, a request for changes or a temporary restriction. A fair process helps protect your business from claims that decisions are arbitrary, discriminatory or commercially motivated.

Try to keep moderation records. You don't need a complicated system at the start, but you should be able to see:

• What content or conduct was reported
• Who reviewed it
• What rule was applied
• What action was taken
• What message was sent to the user
• Whether the user appealed or complained

These records can be very useful if a user challenges your decision, posts publicly about it or makes a complaint to a regulator.

What Complaints Process Should Your Platform Have?

Your platform should have a complaints process that's easy to find, simple to use and realistic for your team to manage.

Users don't expect every report to be handled instantly, but they do expect a sensible process. A good complaints process can also help you spot repeated bad behaviour before it becomes a bigger issue.

Your process might include:

1. A reporting button or contact form for users to flag content or conduct
2. Categories for reports, such as harassment, scam, IP infringement, unsafe product or fake review
3. An acknowledgement that the report has been received
4. An internal review process with escalation for serious matters
5. A decision, such as no action, warning, takedown, restriction or suspension
6. A short explanation to the reporting user, where appropriate
7. An appeal process for the user affected by the decision

Your privacy obligations matter here too. If you collect personal information through reports, identity checks, messages, screenshots or moderation notes, you need to handle that information properly.

The Privacy Act 1988 applies to many Australian businesses, including businesses with annual turnover over $3 million and some smaller businesses, such as health service providers and businesses that trade in personal information. Even if the Privacy Act doesn't apply to you yet, a clear privacy policy is usually expected by users, app stores, payment providers, data processors and partners.

If there's a serious data breach involving personal information and the Privacy Act applies to your business, you may need to assess whether the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires notification to affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Common Mistakes To Avoid

Most community guideline problems come from gaps between what the platform says it can do and what it actually does in practice.

Here are some common mistakes to watch for:

• Using vague rules: Saying be respectful is helpful, but it's usually not enough on its own. Give examples of banned behaviour.
• Forgetting to link the guidelines to your terms: Your terms should clearly say users must follow your community guidelines.
• Having no user content licence: Without a licence, you may not have the rights you need to display, promote or adapt user content.
• Overpromising moderation: If you say you review every post before it goes live, make sure you can actually do that.
• Applying rules inconsistently: If two users do the same thing but only one is suspended, you may face complaints about unfair treatment.
• Ignoring Australian Consumer Law risks: Fake reviews, misleading listings and hidden sponsored content can create problems for the platform, not just the user who posted them.
• Not planning for urgent harms: Serious abuse, doxxing, non-consensual intimate images or suspected illegal content need a faster pathway than ordinary complaints.

Templates can miss these details because they don't know how your platform works. Your rules should reflect your actual product, your users, your moderation capacity and your risk profile.

Key Takeaways

• Community guidelines set the practical rules for user behaviour, content, reviews, listings and messaging on your platform.
• Your guidelines should connect to your platform terms so you have a clear basis to remove content, suspend accounts and manage repeat breaches.
• User generated content needs careful handling, including a licence that lets your platform host, display, adapt and moderate content.
• A fair complaints and appeals process helps you manage reports consistently and avoid disputes with users.
• Australian laws such as the Australian Consumer Law, Privacy Act 1988, Copyright Act 1968 and Online Safety Act 2021 may affect how your platform rules should be drafted.
• Your moderation process should match what your team can actually deliver, especially as your user base grows.

If you'd like help with your platform terms, community guidelines, user content licence or moderation and complaints process, you can reach us at 1800 730 617 or team@sprintlaw.com.au for a free, no-obligations chat.