Update. Community Guidelines 2023

We introduced “content” as a new term in our guidelines. Content includes all sorts of user materials published on the platform — from coubs to comments. From now on, the Community Guidelines cover all types of content.

We’re still against any advertising on the platform, so we decided to add a more detailed explanation to the rule. “We ask users not to use links, watermarks, and QR codes that can be considered as advertising or promotion of resources, including those that violate the laws or contain harmful content. Users may add links to their social media and website in their account settings.” All promotional content will be deleted, and channels that publish it will be banned.

The team has formed their opinion concerning explicit content. Spoiler: the deleted NSFW category is not coming back. “We do not allow and, therefore, will ban coubs that contain content and/or subtext that is built around sexuality and/or explicit imagery, such as pornography, erotica, as well as content with excessively sexual and/or provocative undertones, including sexualized imagery of minors.” Coub is a platform for adults, but we don’t want it to be associated with excessively sexualized content. This principle will be applied to content copied from other platforms too. The team will allow moderate use of such content only for creative purposes and with enabled “Sensitive content” mark. However, the final decision will be made by the editorial team.

“Coub is a platform for short videos, and, therefore, we believe that publications with static images or slide shows do not go in line with the Coub’s concept, even if published as videos. We apply the same principle to coubs that mostly consist of audio visualizing effects, including equalizers, spectrum analyzers and others.”

In the previous edition of the Community Guidelines we missed out this important issue but realized that it still needed to be addressed. “We urge users not to publish similar coubs in a row. Coubers tend to get irritated by the repeating content and are likely to report it, as well as the channels that post such content. However, publishing a series of coubs within the same theme is permissible, but they should have distinctive differences in meaning.”

“It’s forbidden to create accounts and channels to purposefully cause harm, bypass restrictions, and manipulate the statistics of published content. Additionally, we will not tolerate unreasonable complaints, requests, and other actions that overcomplicate the Support and Moderation teams’ work.” We had to introduce this rule to our guidelines, as some users create multiple accounts to boost likes and reports, which other users rightfully find unfair. Misuse of the reporting mechanism also fell into this category, as this overloads the work of support and moderation teams.

“Our users want to be able to see only relevant coubs in communities. That’s why we’ve produced recommendations for what’s expected to be published in each of them: themes, content specifications, etc. Publishing coubs in irrelevant communities will be considered a violation of the platform’s rules.”

All rules have exemptions, and ours are no different. This is why we may allow content that was created for artistic, educational, or scientific purposes. “If the excessive demonstration of sexuality, violence or other restricted topics is not the coub’s sole purpose, and the video sequence is not limited to these topics, our team may approve it.” But it doesn’t mean we’ll base our decision solely on the source. Without sufficient context, a coub may not be eligible for this exemption.

We slightly changed the description for content that falls under the “Sensitive content” category, making it clearer and more understandable. Coubers can mark their work with the “Sensitive content” label and disable the display of such content in the settings. The label does not deprioritize coubs on the platform but hides such content from unauthorized users.

The reasons for coub bans got clearer and now correspond with the Community Guidelines. But we hope our users won’t break the rules in the first place, as we find little pleasure in sending these emails.