Zero tolerance
StoaSquare is for adults 18 and older. Child sexual abuse material, and anything else that sexualizes, grooms or sexually exploits a child, is never allowed anywhere on StoaSquare: in posts, replies, photos, documents, profiles, groups or private messages.
Guideline 12 of our community guidelines says so, and the guidelines are part of our terms of use.
How to report it
- In the phone app or the web version, tap the three dots (•••) on a post or reply, or choose Report on a person’s page, a group or a conversation. Pick “A child is being harmed or shown sexually”.
- For a concern that is not about one post, reply, person, group or conversation, you can also send us a message without leaving the app: once you are logged in, open Settings (in the phone app it is under Me), choose Report a problem, and pick “A child safety concern”. Only the specially trained admins read those messages.
- Do not open, save, share or send the image or message again, not even to us.
- You can also report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678.
- If a child is in danger right now, call 911.
What we do
- The report goes only to specially trained admins, never to the moderators who handle other reports. They act on it within 4 hours.
- When the person reporting is an established member in good standing (usually someone whose email has been confirmed for a week, with no open strike), the post, reply or message usually comes down right away, before anyone reads the report. Otherwise it stays up until the trained admins have read it, so one false report cannot silence a neighbor.
- Opening what was reported takes two trained admins each time, and every look is written to a log that cannot be changed.
- When it is what the report says, we remove it, report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and remove the account that posted it (a second admin confirms the account removal). We make that report through NCMEC’s CyberTipline. Its pictures are fingerprinted so the same picture cannot be posted again.
- Recording our report to NCMEC asks for the account’s removal at once, and the account is removed when a second admin confirms it, as for every account removal. Nobody can take that request back. The member is not told why. A removed account’s email address cannot be used to join again for a year.
- We keep the report, what was reported and the account’s records for one year after we report it, as the law requires, also once the account is removed. Among our staff, only the trained admins can open the reported words, two of them each time, and our staff tools never show the reported pictures.
The law
StoaSquare follows United States law on child sexual exploitation, including the duty to report apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC’s CyberTipline and to keep what was reported (18 U.S.C. 2258A).
Contact
Questions about child safety on StoaSquare: write to contact@stoasquare.com. Never attach or send an image. To report something you saw on StoaSquare, use Report: it reaches the trained admins fastest.