Community Guidelines

Localz is built around real places and the people in them. You are more likely to bump into the person you are talking to than on most of the internet. These guidelines exist so that stays a good thing.

The Terms of Service are the legal agreement. This page explains the same rules in plain language, with examples, and is part of those Terms.

The short version

Talk to people the way you would if you might see them at the shops tomorrow. Say what you actually think. Do not make things up about people.

1. Be honest about your own experience

Opinions are welcome, including harsh ones. If an event was badly run, say so. If a venue was cold, the queue was two hours, or the headline act cancelled, other people genuinely want to know that.

What we ask is that it is your experience and that you do not state things as fact that you do not know to be true.

• Fine:“I waited 90 minutes and left before the main act. Wouldn’t go again.”
• Fine:“Felt badly organised to me — the signage was confusing and nobody could tell us where to go.”
• Not fine:“The organiser is a fraud and pockets the ticket money.” — that is an allegation of a crime. If you do not have evidence, do not post it.
• Not fine: Posting a review of an event you did not attend, or reviewing on behalf of a competitor.

2. Criticise the thing, not the person’s character

Reviewing an event, a venue, or a business is normal and healthy. Pile-ons aimed at an individual are not. Keep it about what happened rather than what kind of person you have decided someone is.

Organising other people to post against someone — a brigade, a mass-downvote, a coordinated wave of one-star posts — is against the rules regardless of whether the underlying complaint is fair.

3. Do not post other people’s private information

No home addresses, phone numbers, workplaces, car registrations, or photographs of someone taken without their knowledge in a private setting. This applies even when you are angry and even when the information is technically findable elsewhere.

4. No harassment, hate, or threats

No abuse directed at someone because of their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. No threats of violence, no following someone from room to room, no sexual messages to someone who has not invited them.

5. Nothing involving children

Any content that sexualises a minor in any way is reported to the authorities immediately and the account is removed permanently. There is no warning and no appeal.

6. Do not pretend to be someone else

Do not impersonate another person, a business, an event organiser, or Localz staff. Parody and commentary are fine when it is obvious that is what they are.

7. Keep it local and real

Do not fake your GPS location to get into hubs you are not near. Do not run bots or automated accounts without our permission. Do not scrape the service.

8. Selling and promotion

Occasional, relevant, honest promotion is fine — a local trader mentioning their own shop, someone flagging a genuine deal. Repeated advertising, referral-link spam, and anything designed to move money off-platform under false pretences is not.

Some promotional posts are moved automatically into a hub’s Deals or News board rather than sitting in the main chat. That is a sorting mechanism, not a punishment.

9. Scams

No advance-fee requests, fake ticket sales, cryptocurrency schemes, phishing links, or “DM me on WhatsApp” funnels. We remove these on sight and we do not need a report first.

What happens when a rule is broken

It depends on what happened and whether it looks deliberate. In rough order:

• The content is removed, usually with a note explaining why
• A warning on the account
• Suspension from a specific hub
• Suspension of the whole account
• Permanent removal, and a report to the police where the law requires it

We can also suspend an entire hub while we look into something. A suspended hub disappears for everyone, including its members, but nothing in it is deleted — we keep it so that it can be reviewed properly.

Reporting something

Use the report button on any message, or on the hub itself. Reports are not anonymous to us but they are anonymous to the person you reported.

If you are a person or a business who believes something posted about you is false and damaging, that has its own process with a fixed timetable — see Content Complaints.

If we get it wrong

Moderation decisions can be appealed by replying to the notification you receive, or by emailing admin@localz.chat. A different person reviews the appeal where that is practical.