Child safety standards

Contents

• Zero tolerance
• What is prohibited
• How Orbit protects young people
• How to report
• What happens after a report
• Reporting to the authorities
• Contact

Zero tolerance

Orbit is a chat app with servers, direct messages and voice and video calls. These standards apply to every part of it, and to everyone who uses it. They sit alongside our Terms of Service, which already forbid any content that sexualises children.

In these standards:

• A child or minor is anyone under 18.
• Child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) means any content or behaviour that sexually exploits, abuses or endangers children.
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) means any image, video, drawing, text or other material that shows or describes a child in a sexual way, whether real, edited or generated by a computer or AI.

What is prohibited

You must not use Orbit to do, share, ask for or encourage any of the following:

• CSAM. Making, uploading, sharing, linking to, asking for or storing child sexual abuse material, including drawn, edited or AI-generated material.
• Grooming. Building contact or trust with a child in order to sexually abuse or exploit them, online or in person, including moving a conversation somewhere more private for that purpose.
• Sextortion. Threatening to share sexual images of someone, or pressuring a child for sexual images, money or anything else.
• Sexualising minors. Sexual comments about children, sexual roleplay involving a minor, or sexual messages, images or requests sent to someone under 18.
• Trafficking. Advertising, arranging or helping with the trafficking or sexual exploitation of children.

Sexual content is only allowed in channels marked 18+, and never in a way that involves or targets anyone under 18.

How Orbit protects young people

• Minimum age. You must be at least 13 to use Orbit. When you sign up we ask your date of birth and keep only your age group. If you are 13 to 17, a parent or guardian must agree to our Terms for you. We do not make an account for anyone who says they are under 13, and we delete an account straight away if we find it belongs to someone under 13. Where the law sets a higher minimum age for a country, we apply it there.
• 18+ channels. People under 18 cannot open channels marked 18+. Anyone who gives an age we cannot accept and then tries again with a different one is flagged for an age check and cannot open 18+ channels until our team has checked their age.
• Blocking. Anyone can block another person, and the block is private.
• Limits on new accounts. New and unverified accounts have tighter limits on things like invites, servers, uploads and mentions.
• Upload checks. Hidden metadata, such as location, is removed from images before they are stored. Every upload is checked against a list of files Orbit has removed, so a removed file cannot be uploaded again. Images served through Orbit's content network are also scanned automatically against known child sexual abuse material.
• Server moderators. Server owners and moderators can delete messages and time out, kick or ban members in their servers.

How to report

• In the app. Open the menu on any message, choose Report and pick Child safety (or Under 13 if someone is too young to use Orbit). You can add a short note. This works in servers, direct messages and group conversations. The person you report is not told who reported them.
• By email. Email safety@orbithq.chat with what happened, where, and the usernames, server and message links if you have them. You do not need an Orbit account to report this way. Please do not attach or forward the material itself: describe it and tell us where it is.
• Emergencies. If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first.

What happens after a report

• Review. Orbit staff review every child safety report. A report keeps a copy of the message, its files, and the messages sent in the same conversation in the 30 minutes before it, so staff can see what happened even if the original is deleted.
• Removal. We remove CSAM and other content that breaks these standards as soon as we know about it. Removed files are added to a blocklist so they cannot be uploaded to Orbit again.
• Account action. Accounts that share CSAM or try to exploit a child are disabled and their sessions ended. Making another account to get around this is not allowed. For less serious breaches, we may warn the person or stop them sending messages or uploading.
• Preserving evidence. We keep reported and removed content in our moderation records, separate from the rest of Orbit, for up to 24 months, and longer where the law requires it or the authorities ask us to.
• Records. Every staff action is recorded with who took it, when and why.

Reporting to the authorities

Orbit follows the child safety laws that apply to it. When we find CSAM or a child at risk on Orbit, we report it to the authorities and share what we hold with them, as the law allows or requires:

• the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), led by the Australian Federal Police;
• the eSafety Commissioner in Australia; and
• the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline, for reports involving people or services in the United States.

We respond to valid requests from law enforcement and keep the relevant records while they look into it.

You can also report directly: in Australia to the ACCCE or eSafety, and in the United States to the NCMEC CyberTipline.

Contact

Our child safety contact can answer questions about these standards and how we apply them: safety@orbithq.chat.