Community Guidelines

1. Protect animals

• No animal abuse, neglect, cruelty, staged distress, dangerous handling, fighting, baiting, or encouragement of harmful behavior.
• No illegal animal sales, wildlife trafficking, prohibited breeding, or content that helps someone evade animal-welfare or transport laws.
• Adoption, rehoming, breeding, and care claims must be truthful, lawful, and centered on animal welfare. PetPal is not an adoption agency or transaction guarantor.
• Do not present unqualified diagnosis or treatment claims as veterinary advice. Urgent health concerns belong with a licensed veterinarian.

2. Respect people and consent

• No threats, stalking, bullying, harassment, intimidation, sexual harassment, or unwanted repeated contact.
• No hateful conduct or discrimination based on a protected characteristic.
• No sexual exploitation, non-consensual intimate imagery, sexual content involving minors, or sexualized content involving animals. Apparent child sexual exploitation may be reported as required by law.
• Respect a block, rejection, declined call, or ended match. Do not use another account or channel to evade someone's choice.

3. Share authentic, lawful content

• Use media you created or have permission to share, including permission from identifiable people.
• Do not impersonate another person, falsely claim ownership of a pet, or materially misrepresent identity, health, breed, age, location, adoption status, or commercial intent.
• Clearly label materially AI-generated or altered content when it could mislead viewers about a real pet, event, product, or person.
• No graphic violence, illegal goods or services, fraud, scams, phishing, malware, counterfeit products, or infringement of intellectual-property rights.

4. Protect private information

Do not publish home addresses, precise live locations, passwords, verification codes, identity documents, financial information, private messages, or another person's personal details without permission. Avoid showing collars, documents, landmarks, or metadata that reveal a home address. Use PetPal's approximate-location and visibility controls.

5. Keep the community useful

• No repetitive spam, mass unsolicited outreach, engagement manipulation, fake accounts, coordinated inauthentic activity, or misleading links.
• Disclose commercial relationships, sponsorships, affiliate links, and material product incentives where required.
• Do not scrape profiles, harvest contact information, automate swipes or messages, sell access to accounts, or interfere with ranking and safety systems.
• Keep posts relevant to pets, pet communities, responsible care, and the stated purpose of each feature.

6. Match, chat, call, and meet safely

• Take time to verify a connection and keep early conversations in PetPal.
• Never send money, payment credentials, passwords, or verification codes to someone you do not trust.
• Get consent before recording or sharing a call or private conversation.
• For in-person meetings, choose an appropriate public place, tell someone you trust, and account for leashes, carriers, vaccination, disease exposure, temperament, and local rules.
• End a conversation or call when something feels unsafe. Block and report when appropriate.

7. Reporting, review, and appeals

Use the in-product report menu for a specific profile, post, message, media item, or account. Provide enough context for a reviewer without adding unrelated private information. Do not file knowingly false or retaliatory reports.

Automated systems may approve low-risk content or route uncertain public material to a reviewer. Private messages, chat attachments, and private-chat reports are excluded from automated content scanning. A report about public content may receive automated assistance, but remains for a human decision. Depending on severity, context, credible risk, and history, PetPal may reduce distribution, request changes, remove content, limit features, preserve evidence, suspend an account, or contact appropriate authorities. Eligible decisions may be appealed; a different reviewer should handle the appeal when reasonably available.

8. Questions

For policy questions or an urgent safety escalation, contact tiandisk001@gmail.com. These Guidelines supplement the Terms of Service.