Sample House Rules For Online Moderation

For organisations which oversee comments made within their online spaces and to their social media accounts, House Rules can be an important framework for your moderators or social media team to operate in.

They reduce the need for subjective interpretation of what an “offensive” comment might be, and create a consistent approach outlined by your organisation, making moderation easier for your team and more understandable for your online community.

They should be published somewhere, for example on your website or your Facebook page’s About section, so that they are transparent to all. This also means that they can be pointed to when there are arguments or when lots of comments are hidden for breaking the house rules – to show and reassure users that you are moderating comments and content, looking after your online spaces, and to remind people about the rules.

House Rules work under the rules of each platform. On some such as Facebook, you can moderate comments on your own page. On others like X, you can’t, and the best you’ll be able to manage will be reporting highly offensive comments and those which are serious breaches of the platform rules, to the platform. However, you can also (at the time of writing) mute selected accounts on X, which does offer another avenue.

While some organisations will have an internal team of people who oversee user comments made to their online spaces and accounts, others may consider engaging a third party moderation company, the best of which will work with you to make sure they are operating as you want.

Having started my career in the early ‘00s as a message board moderator for the BBC, I know that the house rules we worked to were often amended and re-used by other organisations. Over the years the BBC’s rules have changed, as their use of social media has evolved, and I felt it might be useful to share some sample house rules which I’ve put together for people to re-use as they need. It’s sensible for any organisation to consider each rule and either keep it, amend it or remove it as they see fit.

Sample House Rules For Online Moderation

  • We will moderate (i.e. hide, delete and/or report to the relevant social media platform) comments that we reasonably believe might be:

    ·       Abusive: content that is abusive, offensive, threatening, violent, disruptive, obscene, inflammatory, sexually objectifying, or harassing.

    ·       Discriminatory: content that is discriminatory against protected characteristics including discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, medical conditions.

    ·       Off topic: content (whether positive or negative) which is not about the topic of the post or the organisation. This may include:

    o   Trying to derail the conversation towards a different topic

    o   “Spamming” by repeating the same or similar comments

    o   Content which is unrelated to the topic or activity of the organisation

    ·       About an individual’s appearance: content (whether positive or negative) which is about the appearance of individuals, unless their appearance is the topic of the original post.

    ·       Illegal: content that is illegal or that suggests, supports or glamorises illegal activity.

    ·       Putting children at risk: any content that might put children at risk.

    ·       Containing personal information: content that discloses personal information, including but not limited to the name, address, telephone, mobile or fax number, email address or any other personal data in respect of any individual.

    ·       Infringing copyright: content that might infringe any copyright, database right, trademark or other intellectual property rights of any other person or organisation.

    ·       Misrepresenting identity: content where the author is attempting to impersonate another person or misrepresent their identity or affiliation with another person or organisation.

    ·       Defamatory: content that might be damaging to someone else’s reputation.

    ·       In contempt of court: content that might be in contempt of court (anything that could affect the outcome of a court case).

    ·       Posting for financial gain: content that is advertising or promoting products or services.

    ·       Containing inappropriate links: content that links to files or websites that contain malicious software or content that itself breaches any of the House Rules.

    ·       Breaking a social media platform’s own rules or guidelines: content that breaches the rules of the social media platform on which it is posted.

Once your House Rules are in place, you may consider offering additional guidelines for moderators including more nuance, which can also often help them to perform their jobs with more certainty and less stress.