Our standards against child sexual abuse and exploitation.

There is no tolerance on Pulse for child sexual abuse material, or for any sexualisation of a minor. We do not require a pattern of behaviour before acting. A single credible report is enough to remove content, end an account permanently, and refer the matter to law enforcement.

Pulse is for adults only

You must be at least 18 years old to hold a Pulse account. This is stated in our Terms of Service and enforced in the product rather than left as a promise:

• Creating a profile requires a date of birth, not a tick box. We ask for a date so that the answer can be checked rather than merely asserted.
• The check runs on our servers, at the moment the account is created, and refuses the request outright if the date is under 18. It is not something the app can be persuaded to skip, and it applies equally to accounts created with email, with Google, and with Apple.
• The date of birth is kept for as long as the account exists, is never shown to another user, and is not used to decide what you see. Its only job is to record that the account passed the age check. See our Privacy Policy.

We are honest about the limit of this.A self-declared date of birth is not identity verification. We do not run government-ID checks or age estimation, so a determined minor can lie to us. That is precisely why the reporting route below exists, why “they appear to be under 18” is one of the two most urgent report categories we have, and why we act on those reports quickly rather than asking for proof first.

What is prohibited

The following are banned outright, and are grounds for immediate and permanent removal:

• child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in any form — images, video, audio, drawings, or generated or edited media;
• sexualising a minor in any way, including in text, in a profile, in a voice note, or in a message;
• grooming, solicitation, or any attempt to arrange sexual contact with a minor, including using Pulse’s proximity, meetup or trip features to reach one;
• sextortion, or threatening to share intimate imagery of anyone, at any age;
• trafficking, or advertising or arranging the sexual exploitation of a minor;
• holding an account while under 18, or helping someone under 18 to hold one.

This list sits alongside the wider rules in Terms of Service §3, which prohibits objectionable content and abusive behaviour generally.

How to report it, in the app

Reporting is built into Pulse and takes a few seconds. You do not need an account in good standing, a reason to be there, or to have been the person harmed.

1. Open the profile, moment or message you are concerned about and tap the ⋯ menu.
2. Tap Report.
3. Choose a reason. For a child safety concern, pick “They appear to be under 18”, or “Nudity or sexual content” where the content itself is the problem. If neither fits, choose “Something else” and describe it — that box is read by a person.
4. Send it. The report reaches our moderation queue immediately, and the person you reported is not told who reported them.

You can also block anyone from the same menu, which is immediate and independent of moderation — it does not wait on us reviewing anything.

What happens after a report

Reports are not a suggestion box. Every report is filed under a category, and the category sets how fast it must be looked at:

• “They appear to be under 18” is one of our two highest-severity categories, with a triage target of 30 minutes. We deliberately set it there because a wrong call in this direction is cheap to undo and a missed one is not.
• A moderator reviews the account and the reported content and records an outcome: dismissed, warned, or banned. A ban suspends the account and cannot be recorded without a written note explaining it.
• Content found to breach this policy is removed, not hidden from the reporter alone.
• Every moderation action is written to an audit log, so decisions can be reviewed afterwards and, where necessary, handed to investigators.

Where multiple people report the same content, it is one decision rather than a pile of duplicates — the queue is organised around the content, so nothing sits behind its own repeats.

What we can and cannot see

Being straightforward about this matters more than sounding capable, so:

• Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted.They are encrypted on the sender’s device and can only be read on the devices in the conversation. We hold no key and cannot read them, which means we cannot scan them — for this or anything else. Reports from the people in the conversation are how message content reaches us, and a report brings the context with it.
• We do not run an automated classifier over profiles or Moments today. Our moderation queue is driven by human reports and prioritised by category and by how many people flagged the same thing.
• Profile photos, Moments and other publicly posted content are visible to moderators once reported, and can be removed.

We would rather say this plainly than imply a detection capability we do not have. It is also why we treat the reporting route as the primary control and staff it accordingly.

Reporting to the authorities

Where we find apparent child sexual abuse material, or credible evidence of the sexual exploitation of a minor, we report it. This is not discretionary and does not depend on the person having broken any other rule.

• South Africa— to the South African Police Service, consistent with the reporting duty in the Films and Publications Act, and to the Film and Publication Board’s hotline where appropriate. Cloverfields-Tech is based in South Africa and this is our primary route.
• Internationally— to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) through its CyberTipline, and to the relevant national authority where a report concerns another country.
• We preserve the account, the content and the surrounding context for the investigators rather than deleting it on the spot, and we do not tip off the account holder that a referral has been made.

Safety records are kept for up to 24 months after an account closes, specifically so that a removed account cannot simply return and so that a later investigation is not met with an empty file. This is the one category of data that outlives account deletion, and it is set out in our Privacy Policy.

Who to contact

Keeping these standards current

These standards are reviewed when the product changes in a way that affects them — a new way to post content, a new report category, or a change to how the age check works — and at least once a year regardless. The effective date at the top of this page is the date the current text took effect.

If you think something here is wrong, out of date, or overstated, tell us at cloverfields.tech@gmail.com. We would rather correct it than defend it.