Hate and Harassment Policy

Hateful conduct and harassment erode trust, disrupt communities, and discourage participation. To ensure a safe and respectful environment for everyone, we strictly prohibit hateful behavior and harassment, which includes sexual harassment.

Below are some examples of behaviors that are not allowed and may result in actions against your account, including removal:  

Harassment

Harassment is content or patterns of behaviors that demean or threaten an individual. Some examples of what we consider harassment include: 

• Unwanted conduct and contact
  • Accounts dedicated to targeting, threaten, or harm others. Individuals creating alternate accounts for harassment may receive enforcement action on related accounts. 
  • Targeting an individual with repeated or unwanted obscene / insulting language. 
  • Engaging in continued contact after being asked to stop.
  • Using a buyer or seller’s contact information for purposes outside of Whatnot transactions.  
• Personal attacks or repeated disparagement 
  • Engaging in personal attacks based on appearance, hygiene, intellect, or personality.
  • Targeting someone with negative doctored or artistic content.
  • Sellers disparaging buyers or others in their stream. For example:
    • A seller targeting individuals in their chat with demeaning profanity after an item goes for below expected value 
  • Repeated or extended disparagement of an individual. For example:
    • Spending a significant amount of time in a stream questioning the reliability of another seller’s customer service.
    • Sending unsolicited DMs with the intention of “exposing” a seller.
    • Insulting another individual repeatedly across multiple streams.  

Note: Exceptions to this policy may be made for discussing newsworthy events or public figures.

• Threats and harmful wishes
  • Wishing death, disease, or physical harm on an individual 
  • Making implied or hypothetical threats of harm 
  • Exposing or threatening to expose a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity without their consent 
  • Glorifying, endorsing, or expressing approval of a person’s past or current traumatic events including self injury or eating disorders or other medical history

Sexual Harassment 

Sexual harassment includes unwanted sexual advances, sexual objectification or degrading attacks about an individual’s sexual practices. For example, we don’t permit: 

• Unwanted romantic approaches. Examples include the following:
  • Sexual objectification. Examples include the following:
    • Making unwanted comments about a person’s body parts 
    • Encouraging someone to perform on/join an adult content site
    • Asking a host to pose or try on clothes in a sexually suggestive manner 
• Disparagement of a person based on person's perceived sexual practices or sexual morality, or that of a family member 
• Sharing or threatening to share intimate images or audio of someone without their consent 
• Threats, blackmail, or attempts at forced coercion for intimate images

Hateful Conduct 

We consider hateful conduct as any behavior that promotes violence or hatred on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical condition, and veteran status. Some examples of hate that we do not permit include:

• Intolerance, hate, or subjugation against a protected group: Any content that expresses intolerance or hatred against a protected group, or an individual based on their membership in a protected characteristic. 
• Sexualizing, demeaning, dehumanizing or suggesting inferiority based on a protected group.
• Mimicking another race to mock or demean.
• Encouraging violence or harm based on membership in a protected group. 
• Mocking, celebrating, glorifying or denying hate crimes/violence.
• Racial slurs or epithets, when targeted at an individual or at a protected group. We understand that slurs can be used self-referentially or in a positive manner. While we allow for these cases, it's important to clearly and conclusively indicate intent in these cases.
• Support for known hate groups or ideologies.
• Content that promotes harmful stereotypes/theories based on protected characteristics.
• Hateful images, gestures, or other symbols. For example:
  • Symbols from known hate organizations 
  • Nazi propaganda, even if historical artifacts
  • Items depicting the Swastika, even historical artifacts. We will permit depictions of swastikas in pre-1933 historical artifacts or books, or where the context is clearly anti-Nazi
  • Depictions of Black Americana where such depictions are grotesque or derogatory depictions from the Jim Crow era, such as Gollywog dolls, or individuals in black face 
  • Live, recorded or photography of blackface/yellowface/redface/brownface 
  • A note on the confederate battle flag: We will permit the confederate battle flag to be displayed on products when the display is historical and not hateful in anyway and is instead displayed on: 
• historically accurate miniatures/models
• artistic depictions denouncing the flag and/or slavery
• Civil-War themed (or related) art on the cover of books or video-games (without any hateful context, not celebrating the confederate battle flag). 

Off-platform Abuse

If we are provided verifiable evidence of off-platform coordination of harassment or hate to occur on Whatnot, we may take action. For example:

• Posting a seller’s stream on social media and encouraging your followers to send hateful or disparaging messages on Whatnot. 
• Encouraging others to create fake accounts to insult or impersonate another user on Whatnot.  

Additionally, in rare instances, we may take action against individuals engaging in verifiable hate or harassment occurring off our platform if the behavior poses a significant threat to the health of the Whatnot community or individuals. When evaluating these cases, we consider both the severity and its persistence over time.