Code of Conduct
Last updated
Couchmate is a room full of people watching the same thing you are. These rules keep it fun. They apply to everything you do on Couchmate, including messages, reviews, usernames, vibes and reports, and they’re part of our Terms of Service.
Be a good couchmate
- Talk about the show. Cheer, groan, roast the ref, but don’t roast each other.
- Disagree with the take, not the person.
- There are real people on the other side of the screen, and some of them are teenagers.
- If someone’s bothering you, mute them. They won’t be told.
Not allowed
- Harassment and bullying. No insults, threats to expose someone, repeatedly targeting a person, or getting others to pile on.
- Hate. No attacks or slurs based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or serious illness.
- Threats and violence. No threatening to hurt anyone, praising violence against real people, or encouraging self-harm or suicide.
- Sexual content. No sexually explicit messages, unwanted sexual comments, or sexual remarks about real people.
- Personal information. Don’t share anyone’s private information, such as their real name, address, phone number, email, school or workplace, and don’t ask others for theirs. Keep your own private too.
- Impersonation. Don’t pretend to be another user, a celebrity, a network or Couchmate, including through your username.
- Spam. No ads, selling, scams, chain messages, flooding the chat, or posting the same thing over and over. No bots or automated accounts.
- Illegal activity. Don’t use Couchmate to break the law or to promote illegal goods or services, including pirated streams.
- Getting around the rules. Don’t dodge a mute, suspension or ban, including by making new accounts, and don’t make false or bulk reports.
Spoilers
Not everyone watches at the same time. Don’t spoil episodes, results or twists for people who haven’t seen them yet, such as viewers in a later time zone or in another country. Deliberate, repeated spoiling counts as harassment.
Reviews
Reviews are public, so everything above applies to them too. Also:
- Review what you watched: the episode, the movie or the show. Not the people in the room.
- If your review gives away what happens, mark it as containing spoilers. If you don’t, we may mark it for you.
We check reviews before they appear until a reviewer has had a few approved in a row, and we may remove any review that breaks these rules.
Keeping young people safe
We have zero tolerance for:
- any content that sexualizes minors, including jokes, links and descriptions;
- grooming: seeking out young people for romantic or sexual conversation, asking them to keep secrets, or trying to move them to another app or a private chat;
- asking anyone who might be under 18 for personal information or photos, or to meet.
We ban accounts for this immediately, and we report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as US law requires. We may also contact law enforcement.
Usernames
Usernames follow the same rules. We may change one that breaks them.
How we enforce these rules
- Reports. If you’ve saved your account, you can report a message. When several different people report the same message, it’s hidden for everyone while we review it.
- Review. We look at reports and may restore a message, keep it hidden, or take action against the account.
- Actions. Depending on how serious it is and what’s happened before, we may hide or remove messages, warn you, change your username, stop you chatting for a period, or ban your account and email address. Serious violations, such as threats or anything that puts young people at risk, can lead straight to a ban.
If you think we got a decision wrong, email support@couchmate.com with your username and what happened.
If someone is in danger
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency number. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the US or Canada. For urgent safety problems on Couchmate, email support@couchmate.com with “Urgent” in the subject.
Contact
Questions about this Code of Conduct: support@couchmate.com.