How To Adopt Appropriate Behaviour In Social Media Platforms
Just as teenagers might experiment and test boundaries in real life, the same happens in the digital world. Online, young people might have already seen inappropriate behaviour or content and aren’t always sure what’s acceptable. Whether it’s filming themselves in their underwear or making nasty comments about someone, it’s important that they understand and reflect upon the consequences their behaviour could have for them and others. Furthermore, as a company, we must be able to take action when we see inappropriate or illegal behaviour and content within live streams.

Our community guidelines are essential in setting standards for user behaviour — our users have to agree to abide by them and we always refer to them when intervening in live streams. We make it very clear in these guidelines that we have zero tolerance for nudity and posing in underwear in Lives, for example.

If these guidelines aren’t followed, it’s our policy to engage and educate our younger users rather than punishing them. That means using opportunities when rules have been broken to help them understand and think about what they have done wrong and nudge them to change their behaviour in that moment and in the future. We’re already seeing the positive impact of real time in-app warnings and our approach has been welcomed by law enforcement, charities and other online safety advocates.

As one of our online safety advisors says,

“I’ve worked with putting live interventions in place to help prevent its users from putting themselves at risk. This is an important step change in the child online safety arena and one that other social media companies should consider following. The more real-time interventions with young  people that take place, the more we’ll be able to support and educate them. Young people make mistakes — that’s part of growing up — but it’s important that social media providers offer safety nets for them and nudge them in the right direction when their behaviour could put them at risk.”

If a site moderator sees something happening that violates our community guidelines and could put someone at risk, they send a warning message to the user. The message might say that the Live will be shut down in one minute or it might warn the user that they will be suspended from the app if they don’t change their behaviour.

We’re the only social video app to do this as we think it’s important that our younger users understand what the problem is and that we encourage them to change what they’re doing. After all, the best way to learn is in the moment and through real life experience.

We then take the appropriate action, which might include removing the content, suspending or closing down the user’s account and reporting potentially illegal activity to the police and other authorities, such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). It’s our aim to help users change their behaviour before it gets to that point but, in the end, we’ll do what is right for them and other users.