Child safety standards

Our standard

Yapp has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation. It is prohibited to use Yapp to:

• create, share, ask for, store or link to child sexual abuse material (CSAM), meaning any sexual image or video of a person under 18, including drawn, edited or AI-generated images,
• groom a child: build trust with a minor for sexual purposes, including sexual messages, requests for images, or attempts to meet,
• sexually extort anyone (sextortion), including threatening to share images unless someone pays or sends more,
• sexualize minors in any way, including comments about a minor’s body,
• traffic, advertise or solicit children for sexual purposes,
• help anyone else do any of these things.

People who are required to register as sex offenders, or who have been convicted of a sexual offense involving a child, may not use Yapp.

How Yapp is designed to prevent CSAE

• Age assurance for everyone: every user passes a facial age estimation check with liveness before using Yapp; adults also pass a photo ID check that compares the ID’s photo with their face. A typed birthday is never enough. Under-13s cannot join.
• For adults (18+) Separate age groups: users 13-15, 16-17 and 18+ are kept in separate groups at the database level. No discovery, search, request, message, call, room, event, notification or suggestion crosses groups. A verified teen can never be moved to the adult group without passing the adult ID check.
• For teens (13-17) Separate age groups: users 13-15, 16-17 and 18+ are kept in separate groups at the database level. No discovery, search, request, message, call, notification or suggestion crosses groups. A verified teen can never be moved to the adult group without passing the adult ID check.
• No stranger messaging: a new person can only send a short, readable chat request. Direct messages, media, snaps and calls work only between accepted friends in the same group. There is no random or anonymous chat or video.
• Teen defaults: private profiles, country-only location, no friend suggestions, no read receipts, quiet hours, and call permission off by default.
• First-contact filters: a teen’s first messages to a new person can’t include links, phone numbers, usernames or invitations to other apps.
• Media safety: every photo and video is checked before sending. Known illegal-content hash matches are blocked. Automated flags can be wrong: other flagged media may be delivered with a sensitive-content label and blurred for teens. Flagged teen media is prioritized for moderator review; content that breaks our rules is removed.
• Re-checks: accounts reported for being in the wrong age group are hidden from Discover until they pass a new age check.

How we detect it

• Hash checks that compare every uploaded image and video with our own list of hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and PDQ) of confirmed CSAM and of images removed under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and Cloudflare’s CSAM Scanning Tool on the media our servers deliver.
• Classifiers for nudity and sexual content in images and videos.
• Text signals for grooming and sextortion patterns, such as requests for images, requests to move to another app, and threats.
• For adults (18+) User reports from every profile, request, message, snap, story, room post and event, with “Sexual content” and “Wrong age group” reasons and the “Someone is threatening me” flow.
• For teens (13-17) User reports from every profile, request, message, snap and story, with “Sexual content” and “Wrong age group” reasons and the “Someone is threatening me” flow.
• Reports from people without a Yapp account, through our web form.

Reports about child safety are treated as critical and reviewed by trained staff, with a target of 24 hours or sooner.

What we do

When we find or are told about CSAE, we:

• remove the content and block it from being uploaded again,
• ban the accounts involved and block their devices from making new accounts,
• report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) through the CyberTipline, as US federal law (18 U.S.C. 2258A) requires, including confirmed grooming or sextortion (online enticement) and apparent child sex trafficking, and report UK-linked material that NCMEC reporting doesn’t cover to the UK National Crime Agency,
• preserve the content and related account information for 1 year from the report, and longer if law enforcement asks, under strict access controls,
• respond to valid law enforcement requests, and aim to act on emergency requests straight away,
• support the child: we show help resources, offer Take It Down (US) and Report Remove (UK) to get images removed elsewhere, and never treat a young person who was exploited as the one in trouble.
• if you are shown in the material, you can report it to us in the app; we confirm we received it within 36 hours, decide within 30 days with updates each week, and permanently block confirmed material (California Civil Code sections 3273.65 to 3273.69).

We follow the child-safety laws that apply to us, including 18 U.S.C. 2258A and the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and, once Yapp opens in the UK, the UK Online Safety Act and its codes and UK data protection law.

How to report

• For adults (18+) In the Yapp app: tap Report on any profile, request, message, snap, story, room post or event, or use “Someone is threatening me” in the Safety Center.
• For teens (13-17) In the Yapp app: tap Report on any profile, request, message, snap or story, or use “Someone is threatening me” in the Safety Center.
• Without an account: use our web form at joinyapp.app/report.
• By email: safety@joinyapp.app.
• You can also report directly to NCMEC (report.cybertip.org, 1-800-843-5678) or, in the UK, to CEOP (ceop.police.uk) or the Internet Watch Foundation (report.iwf.org.uk).
• If a child is in immediate danger, call 911 (US) or 999 (UK).

Law enforcement

Law enforcement agencies can send requests to lawenforcement@joinyapp.app. Emergency requests involving a risk of death or serious harm to a child are handled at any time.

Our child safety contact

[Child safety contact name], Child safety contact, Latency LLC, safety@joinyapp.app, [Address]

This person is responsible for these standards and can speak to how Yapp prevents, detects and responds to CSAE.

Our people

Staff who review child safety reports are trained, work under supervision, have access only to what they need, and have wellbeing support. Access to reported content is logged.

We review these standards at least once a year and after any serious incident.