Sadistic Online Exploitation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Spirit of the Policy
• Principles and Rationale
• Policy
• Allow

Spirit of the Policy

We believe people share and connect more freely when they do not feel that their pain, fear, humiliation, or distress can be turned into entertainment. 

Online sadistic exploitation includes content that depicts, promotes, celebrates, encourages, or amplifies the harm, humiliation, degradation, distress, or self-harm of another person. This can include clips, images, captions, comments, reactions, edits, memes, livestreams, messages, or other content that frames another person’s suffering as funny, deserved, entertaining, or rewarding. 

Medal does not allow users to exploit another person’s pain or vulnerability for attention, entertainment, intimidation, harassment, sexual gratification, or cruelty. 

Context and intent matter. We may allow content that is shared to condemn, report, document, raise awareness, seek help, or support a victim or survivor. However, content may be removed when the framing, caption, comments, edits, reactions, or surrounding context mocks, praises, encourages, or further exploits the person depicted.

Principles and Rationale

Rationale

We recognize Medal as a social platform where users share gaming clips, conversations, messages, reactions, and community content across our services and related community spaces. Because content can be reshared, edited, reacted to, and amplified quickly, harmful content can cause further emotional, reputational, or physical harm to the person being targeted or depicted. 

We remove online sadistic exploitation to help prevent users from using Medal to shame, abuse, degrade, intimidate, or encourage harm against another person.

Principles

The goal of our Community Standards is to encourage expression while helping create a safe environment for our users. 

Safety

Safety is essential to community building. At Medal, we remove content that encourages, causes, celebrates, or amplifies real-world harm, including physical, emotional, financial, or privacy-related harm against another person. 

Voice:

We want users to share their experiences, opinions, and gaming moments freely. We allow discussion of difficult or sensitive topics when shared responsibly, including content meant to raise awareness, condemn harm, seek support, or discuss matters of public interest. 

Equity:

Medal is used by people from many backgrounds, cultures, and regions. Because our standards must apply across different contexts, we review content based on the overall context and the spirit of the policy, not only the literal wording of a post.

Policy

The following content is not allowed on Medal.

We remove content, including clips, images, videos, audio, livestreams, captions, comments, usernames, profile content, direct messages, edits, memes, reaction content, or other interactions, that depicts, promotes, celebrates, encourages, or amplifies the sadistic exploitation of another person.

1. Content depicting harm, abuse, humiliation, or distress

   We remove content that depicts or frames a real person, or a person represented as real, experiencing or being subjected to harmful or abusive acts, including:

   1. Physical or emotional pain, whether inflicted, experienced, implied, or shown through context.
   2. Humiliation, degradation, dehumanization, or demeaning treatment intended to shame or debase the person.
   3. Distress, including visible fear, anguish, panic, coercion, intimidation, or psychological suffering.
   4. Acts of self-harm or suicide, whether explicit or implied, when the content exploits, mocks, encourages, sensationalizes, or makes entertainment out of the person or act.
      
      

2. Content showing sadistic behavior toward another person

   We remove content where a person is shown, heard, or described as engaging in sadistic behavior toward someone who is being harmed, abused, humiliated, degraded, distressed, coerced, or intimidated. This includes:

   1. Laughing at, mocking, taunting, or encouraging a person while they are being harmed or distressed.
   2. Praising, celebrating, or expressing enjoyment of another person’s pain, humiliation, distress, or self-harm.
   3. Saying or implying that the person deserves the harm, abuse, humiliation, or distress.
   4. Encouraging the behavior to continue, repeat, intensify, or be shared with others.
      
      

3. Content that amplifies or promotes sadistic exploitation

   We remove content that spreads, repackages, or promotes sadistic exploitation, including:

   1. Reposting harmful content with captions, titles, stickers, effects, edits, music, comments, or reactions that mock, praise, or make entertainment out of another person’s suffering.
   2. Creating compilations, memes, edits, challenges, reaction content, commentary, or community prompts that encourage users to laugh at, shame, harass, or further abuse the person depicted.
   3. Asking others to find, repost, share, trade, react to, or spread content for the purpose of humiliating, degrading, threatening, or exploiting another person.
   4. Using Medal features or Medal-related community spaces to coordinate harassment, humiliation, threats, abuse, or further exploitation.
      
      

4. Content targeting victims or survivors

   We remove content that targets victims or survivors of serious harm, abuse, sexual violence, self-harm, suicide, death, or other traumatic events by:

   1. Mocking, celebrating, or making jokes about their experience.
   2. Claiming or implying they deserved the harm.
   3. Encouraging additional harm, harassment, or humiliation toward them.
   4. Using their image, name, likeness, story, or private information to degrade, threaten, shame, or exploit them.
      
      

5. Content involving intimate or private exploitation

   We remove content that exploits a person’s intimate, private, or sexual content in a sadistic, coercive, threatening, or vengeful context.

   1. This includes threatening to share, offering, requesting, distributing, or encouraging others to distribute intimate images, private sexual conversations, or sexually exploitative material without consent. This content may also be reviewed under our Sexual Exploitation Policy.

Allow

The following content does not violate this policy when shared responsibly and without mocking, praising, encouraging, sensationalizing, or further exploiting the person depicted, and is therefore allowed on our platform.

We allow content that is clearly shared for:

1. Condemnation of harm, abuse, humiliation, harassment, or exploitation.
2. Seeking help, support, resources, or community care.
3. Reporting, documenting, or raising awareness about harmful behavior.
4. Newsworthy, educational, or public-interest discussion.
5. Survivor-centered discussion or personal storytelling that does not encourage or glorify harm.
6. Fictional, animated, or clearly in-game content that does not target, represent, or exploit a real person.
7. Recovery-focused content related to self-harm or abuse, provided it does not include sadistic framing, encouragement, mockery, or graphic exploitation.

When the purpose of the content is unclear, Medal may remove it if the overall context appears to exploit, celebrate, encourage, or amplify another person’s suffering.