Community Guidelines

Last updated: March 4, 2026

Effective date: March 4, 2026

These Community Guidelines ("Guidelines") govern your conduct on the FanClash platform, including all interactions through live audio debates, real-time chat, team management, user profiles, and any other content you create, share, or transmit through the Service. These Guidelines are incorporated into and form part of our Terms of Service.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to comply with these Guidelines. Failure to comply may result in content removal, account restrictions, suspension, or permanent termination, at FanClash's sole discretion.

FanClash is a platform built for passionate sports fans. Our community thrives when members debate with intensity and integrity, respect each other, and contribute to a welcoming environment for all users. These Guidelines establish the standards of conduct that make that possible.

1. Respect and Civility

All users are expected to treat others with respect, regardless of differing opinions on teams, players, or sports. The following conduct is strictly prohibited:

• Hate speech: Slurs, bigotry, or derogatory language targeting any individual or group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. This includes coded language, symbols, and imagery commonly associated with hate groups.
• Personal attacks: Insults, threats, or demeaning language directed at a specific user. Challenge arguments and opinions, not the person making them. You can disagree passionately without being hostile.
• Harassment and bullying: Repeatedly targeting, intimidating, threatening, or engaging in unwanted contact with another user across any feature of the Service, including debates, chat, team naming, and profile content.
• Doxxing: Sharing or threatening to share another person's private information (real name, physical address, phone number, email address, workplace, school, financial information, or any other personally identifiable information) without their explicit, informed consent.
• Stalking: Persistently following, monitoring, or tracking another user's activity across the platform in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear or substantial emotional distress.

2. Prohibited Content

The following content is prohibited on all areas of the Service, including audio debates, chat messages, team names, team descriptions, user profiles, avatars, and any other user-generated content:

• Sexually explicit content: Pornography, graphic sexual descriptions, or sexually suggestive material in any form.
• Graphic violence: Gratuitously violent content, threats of physical harm, or content that glorifies violence against individuals or groups.
• Illegal activity: Content that promotes, facilitates, or depicts illegal activities, including but not limited to drug trafficking, weapons sales, human trafficking, fraud, and theft.
• Terrorism and extremism: Content that promotes, supports, or glorifies terrorist organizations, extremist ideologies, or acts of mass violence.
• Self-harm: Content that promotes, encourages, or provides instructions for self-harm or suicide.
• Spam and unsolicited promotion: Flooding chat or debates with repetitive messages, unsolicited commercial promotions, advertisements, or irrelevant links. This includes pyramid schemes, multi-level marketing, and cryptocurrency promotion unrelated to discussion topics.
• Misinformation: Deliberately spreading false information about other users, debate outcomes, team records, or platform operations with the intent to deceive or manipulate.
• Intellectual property violations: Content that infringes on copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights of any third party.

Language: While we recognize that sports debates naturally become heated and may include profanity, excessive profanity directed at other users (rather than about teams, plays, or sports topics) crosses the line from passionate debate into personal attack and is prohibited.

3. Debate Conduct and Fair Play

3.1 General Debate Rules

• Respect speaking turns and designated time limits during live audio debates.
• Allow other participants to complete their points before responding.
• Stay on topic. Deliberate derailment, trolling, and bad-faith argumentation degrade the experience for all participants and viewers.
• Accept outcomes gracefully, whether your team wins or loses the debate.
• Do not intentionally disconnect or abandon an active debate to avoid an unfavorable outcome.

3.2 Prohibited Competitive Behavior

• Vote manipulation: Creating multiple accounts, coordinating vote brigading, using automated scripts or bots, or employing any other method to artificially inflate or deflate vote counts is strictly prohibited.
• Match fixing: Colluding with the opposing team, pre-determining debate outcomes, or intentionally losing debates for any reason (including transferring ranking points) is not allowed.
• Exploiting bugs or vulnerabilities: Exploiting any software bug, glitch, or platform vulnerability to gain an unfair competitive advantage. Discovered vulnerabilities must be reported to security@fanclash.io through our responsible disclosure process, not exploited or shared publicly.
• Win trading: Coordinating with other users or teams to alternate intentional wins and losses for mutual ranking benefit.

4. Platform Integrity

• One account per person: Each individual may maintain only one FanClash account. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent bans, manipulate votes, inflate team sizes, or gain any unfair advantage is prohibited and may result in permanent banning of all associated accounts.
• No impersonation: Do not impersonate any other user, public figure, athlete, coach, team official, sports journalist, or FanClash employee or moderator. Parody or fan accounts must be clearly labeled as such.
• No unauthorized automation: Bots, scripts, scrapers, or any automated tools that interact with the Service without prior written authorization from FanClash are prohibited. This includes auto-voting tools, chat bots, and data scraping.
• Account sharing: Your account is personal and non-transferable. Do not share your login credentials with others or allow others to access the Service through your account. You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.
• No circumvention: Attempting to circumvent any security measures, access controls, rate limits, or enforcement actions (including bans) through technical means, new accounts, or third-party tools is prohibited.

5. Team Standards

• Team naming: Team names, logos, and descriptions must comply with all provisions of these Guidelines. Names that contain profanity, slurs, hate speech, sexually explicit language, references to illegal activity, or content that impersonates official sports organizations will be changed by moderators without prior notice.
• Team leader responsibility: Team leaders and administrators bear additional responsibility for the conduct of their team members during organized debates. Persistent misconduct by team members may result in enforcement actions against the team as a whole.
• Team dissolution: Teams that exist primarily to harass, troll, target, or demean specific users, communities, or groups will be disbanded without notice. Members of disbanded teams may be subject to individual enforcement actions.
• Recruiting: Teams may recruit members through in-platform communication, but aggressive, misleading, or coercive recruiting tactics (including spamming invitations) are prohibited.

6. Audio and Live Interaction Conduct

Live audio debates are the core of the FanClash experience. The following rules apply to all live audio interactions:

• No excessive background noise, intentional audio disruption, or screaming designed to prevent others from speaking or being heard.
• No playing music, soundboards, pre-recorded content, or AI-generated audio during your speaking turn or while others are speaking.
• Mute your microphone when you are not actively speaking.
• Do not record, stream, or broadcast debate audio to external platforms without the explicit consent of all participants. Violation may also implicate applicable wiretapping and recording consent laws.
• Do not use voice changers, modulators, or other tools designed to disguise your identity for purposes of harassment, impersonation, or circumventing enforcement actions.

7. Reporting Violations

If you encounter behavior that violates these Guidelines, we encourage you to report it promptly. Timely reports help our moderation team act quickly and maintain a safe environment for all users.

7.1 How to Report

• In-app reporting: Use the report buttons available in debate rooms, chat conversations, user profiles, and team pages. In-app reports provide our moderation team with the relevant context (timestamps, content, participants) for faster review.
• Email: Send a detailed report to support@fanclash.io, including your username, the username(s) of the user(s) involved, a description of the violation, and any supporting evidence (screenshots, timestamps, recordings where legally obtained).

7.2 Confidentiality

All reports are reviewed by our moderation team. We will never reveal the identity of the reporter to the reported user. We treat all reports as confidential to the fullest extent possible, subject to legal obligations and the need to investigate and address the reported conduct.

7.3 False Reports

Submitting false, frivolous, or malicious reports with the intent to harass another user or manipulate the moderation system is itself a violation of these Guidelines and may result in enforcement action against the reporting user.

8. Enforcement Actions

FanClash reserves the right, but is not obligated, to monitor user conduct and content on the Service. When we determine that a violation of these Guidelines has occurred, we may take one or more of the following actions, at our sole discretion:

Immediate permanent bans may be issued without prior warning for severe violations, including but not limited to: credible threats of violence, hate speech, doxxing, sharing of sexually explicit content involving minors, terroristic threats, and illegal activity.

The severity, context, frequency, and impact of the violation will be considered when determining the appropriate enforcement action. FanClash is not required to follow a progressive enforcement sequence and may escalate directly to any level of action based on the circumstances.

9. Appeals Process

If you believe an enforcement action was taken in error or was disproportionate, you have the right to appeal. To submit an appeal:

• Email: appeals@fanclash.io within 14 calendar days of the enforcement action.
• Include your username, the date of the enforcement action, and a clear explanation of why you believe the decision should be reconsidered. You may include any supporting evidence.

Our moderation team will review your appeal and provide a written response within 7 business days. The appeal decision is final. During the appeal review period, the original enforcement action remains in effect.

Appeals submitted after the 14-day deadline, or appeals that do not contain sufficient information for review, may be declined without a substantive response.

10. A Note on Competitive Spirit

FanClash was built for passionate fans who love their teams and love to debate. Trash talk is part of sports culture, and we embrace that. There is, however, a clear line between competitive banter about teams and personal attacks on individuals:

• Acceptable: "Your team's defense is the worst in the league and anyone who watches the film knows it."
• Not acceptable: "You're an idiot for supporting that team."
• Acceptable: "That trade was the biggest mistake your franchise has made in 20 years."
• Not acceptable: Personal insults, slurs, or threats directed at the person making the argument.

When in doubt, apply this test: "Would I say this face-to-face to a stranger at a sports bar without expecting a confrontation?" If the answer is no, reconsider before posting.

11. Minors and Age-Appropriate Conduct

The Service is not intended for users under the age of 13 (or 16 in the EEA/UK). Users between the ages of 13 and 18 (or the age of majority in their jurisdiction) may use the Service with parental or guardian consent, as described in our Terms of Service.

All users must conduct themselves in a manner that is appropriate for a mixed-age audience. Content or behavior that would be inappropriate for a minor user aged 13–17 to encounter is prohibited, even if all participants in a specific debate are adults.

If you suspect that a user is under the minimum age, or if you encounter any content involving the exploitation of minors, report it immediately using the in-app reporting tools or by emailing support@fanclash.io. FanClash will report suspected child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and applicable law enforcement agencies.

12. Cooperation with Law Enforcement

FanClash will cooperate with law enforcement agencies and comply with valid legal process (subpoenas, court orders, search warrants) in connection with investigations related to conduct on the Service. We may disclose user information and content to law enforcement without notice to the affected user where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent harm to any person, to report suspected child exploitation, or as otherwise required by law.

13. Updates to These Guidelines

We may update these Community Guidelines as the platform evolves and as we learn from the community. When we make material changes, we will:

• Update the "Last updated" and "Effective date" at the top of this page
• Notify users through the Service (such as an in-app notification or banner)
• For significant changes that expand the scope of prohibited conduct, provide at least 7 days' notice before enforcement begins on the new provisions

Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any updated Guidelines constitutes your acceptance of the revised Guidelines. If you do not agree to the updated Guidelines, you must stop using the Service.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions about these Guidelines or need to report a violation, contact us through the following channels:

• General support: support@fanclash.io
• Report violations: support@fanclash.io
• Appeals: appeals@fanclash.io
• Security vulnerabilities: security@fanclash.io