SodaLife Creator Content Moderation Policy

Status: Draft for Legal review | Version: 0.2 | Owner: Trust & Safety

1. Purpose

This policy defines, for a moderator reviewing creator activity from the Admin Portal, exactly what content and conduct is prohibited on SodaLife and what happens when it is found. It exists to satisfy three obligations at once:

App store requirements. Apple's Guideline 1.2 and Google Play's User-Generated Content policy both require that an app carrying live or user-submitted content define objectionable content in its terms, give users a way to report it, and be able to act against violating accounts. Neither store prescribes exact wording — they require that the behaviors below cannot occur on a live SodaLife session without consequence.

Indian law. As an intermediary under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as amended in 2022, SodaLife must inform users of prohibited content categories, make reasonable efforts to prevent them, and act on notice. This is the substance of Rule 3(1)(b).

The sign-up acceptance step. This document is the substantive policy behind the zero-tolerance acceptance a Creator or Viewer agrees to at sign-up. It is what a moderator cites when taking action, and what Support cites when explaining a termination.

This is an operational draft. Legal must finalize exact wording and statutory citations before any of this language is published as user-facing Terms of Use or used in a termination notice.

2. Scope

This policy applies to all content and conduct originating from a Creator account: live audio/video streams, one-to-one and group calls, in-session chat and messages, profile content (photo, bio, display name), and on-stream monetization prompts. It governs everything a moderator reviews via user reports, proactive spot checks, or automated flags in the Admin Portal. Viewer accounts that solicit or provoke a Creator into a violation are equally in scope and are actioned on their own account.

3. Enforcement Standard: Zero Tolerance

SodaLife operates a zero-tolerance policy: any confirmed violation of the categories in Section 4, by a Creator or a Viewer, results in immediate and permanent termination of the account. There is no warning, grace period, or graduated response — a single confirmed instance is sufficient.

Termination is enforced at the identity level, not only the account level — device identifier, phone number, and payment identifier are blocked where feasible, so a terminated user cannot simply re-register under a new account.

Termination decisions under this policy are final. If SodaLife later introduces an appeals mechanism, Legal will define its scope separately; moderators should not represent to a user that a zero-tolerance termination can be appealed unless and until such a process exists.

Every termination must be logged with: timestamp, the specific Section 4 category violated, an evidence reference (clip, screenshot, or chat log), and the system_config policy version the user had accepted at the time — this is what makes the termination defensible if challenged.

4. Prohibited Content & Conduct

Every category below is grounds for immediate, permanent termination per Section 3.

4.1 Child Safety

No sexual content involving, or appearing to involve, a minor, and no content that sexualizes a minor in any way, including without explicit nudity. No grooming behavior — an adult account soliciting private contact, gifts, or personal information from a minor, or steering a minor-presenting account toward romantic or sexual framing. This category is independently unlawful under the POCSO Act and IT Act provisions on child sexual abuse material, and is the one category both Apple and Google treat as grounds for removing the app itself, not merely the offending account.

4.2 Sexual Content

No overtly sexual or pornographic material — explicit depiction or description of sexual organs or sexual activity intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional response — on any live audio or video session. No solicitation of sexual acts, "private show" arrangements, or use of the platform to facilitate prostitution or exploitation, on-platform or by redirecting to another app. No non-consensual intimate imagery of any person, real or fabricated/deepfaked. Borderline or suggestive content that falls short of this bar should still be flagged for review and documented with the specific timestamp and behavior observed.

4.3 Violence, Self-Harm & Dangerous Acts

No depiction or promotion of real violence, gore, or dangerous stunts presented for viewers to imitate. No content encouraging or instructing self-harm or suicide, and no content constituting a genuine threat against a specific person. Where a moderator observes a user expressing active suicidal intent — as distinct from prohibited content about self-harm — the immediate priority is the platform's user-safety response, handled under the separate crisis-response runbook, not this policy.

4.4 Hate Speech & Incitement

No content that promotes enmity or incites violence between groups on the basis of religion, caste, community, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, and no slurs or dehumanizing language directed at a protected group. No defamatory or mean-spirited commentary aimed at humiliating or intimidating a targeted individual or group, and no inflammatory religious commentary or misleading quotation of religious texts.

4.5 Harassment, Threats & Impersonation

No targeted harassment, doxxing, stalking, or threats against a specific individual. No impersonation of a real person, brand, or SodaLife staff without disclosure. No non-consensual recording or redistribution of another user's audio or video from a private session.

4.6 National Security, Public Order & Unlawful Content

No content threatening the sovereignty or integrity of India, relations with foreign states, or public order; no content in contempt of court or intended to defame. No content promoting terrorism or extremist organizations, or providing instructions for weapons or explosives.

4.7 Misinformation

No deliberately false claims presented as fact where the intent or likely effect is to mislead at scale — including health misinformation and fabricated claims about public events. Because "misinformation" is not tightly defined in law, borderline cases should be escalated to Trust & Safety or Legal for a decision rather than actioned on a moderator's sole judgment, even though the resulting consequence, once confirmed, is the same as any other category.

4.8 Fraud, Scams & Platform-Integrity Abuse

No soliciting payment outside SodaLife's monetization system or directing users to a competing platform to evade commission or moderation. No fabricated emotional or financial appeals used to solicit gifts under false pretenses. No promotion of betting, gambling, or money-circulation schemes. No sale or promotion of drugs, weapons, or other illegal goods or services on-stream.

4.9 Intellectual Property

No broadcasting of copyrighted material the creator does not hold rights to, including film or TV clips, unlicensed music, or pirated sports broadcasts.

4.10 Spam & Platform Manipulation

No bot-driven fake engagement, coordinated gifting or rating manipulation, or repeated unsolicited promotional broadcasts.

4.11 Exploitation of Tragedy or Current Events

No content that capitalizes on or seeks to profit from real-world tragedy — violent conflicts, terrorist attacks, epidemics, disasters — including using such events as a hook to solicit gifts or attention.

5. Platform-Level Risk Flags (Beyond Individual Content Review)

The items below are not per-post moderation categories — a moderator cannot "fix" them by actioning a single account. They are structural characteristics of how the app itself works, and are flagged here because Apple's guidelines assess them at the app level, and because they materially affect whether the app is approvable at all, independent of how well individual sessions are moderated.

Random/anonymous matching model. Apple's Guideline 1.2 explicitly states that apps whose experience ends up being primarily "Chatroulette-style" — random or anonymous connections between strangers — or that reduce people to objectified ratings ("hot-or-not" style voting), do not belong on the App Store and can be removed without notice, no matter how well the content itself is moderated. If SodaLife's core mechanic is matching Viewers with Creators they don't already know, this needs a Product/Legal review independent of this moderation policy — the mitigation is generally strong identity verification, no fully anonymous pairing, and a matching design that isn't purely random.

Age-gating for mature content. Apple requires creator-content apps to let users identify content that exceeds the app's age rating, and to gate access to it using a verified or declared age mechanism. If any Creator content on SodaLife can run more mature than the app's overall store rating, an age-gate needs to exist at the product level, not just be handled by after-the-fact moderation.

Published contact information. Apple requires easily discoverable contact information for the developer/operator, current in both the app and its support page — this is a store-listing/support requirement, not a moderator task, but worth confirming ownership.

6. What Moderators Should Keep in Mind

Live content is time-sensitive. By the time a report reaches the queue, the moment may have passed — prioritize the live queue over historical reports and rely on clip or snapshot evidence rather than the reporter's description alone.

"It was a joke," "the other person consented," or "it's normal in my community" does not exempt conduct from Section 4 — the standard in Section 3 is uniform.

Document before you act. Every termination needs a timestamp, the specific rule violated, an evidence reference, and the accepted policy version, per Section 3.

Both roles are in scope. A Viewer who pushes a Creator toward a violation, or arranges an off-platform payment, is actioned on their own account as well.

When the category is ambiguous — particularly Section 4.7 and parts of 4.5, 4.9, and 4.10 — escalate to a senior moderator or Trust & Safety before terminating, since the consequence is severe and irreversible.

7. Open Items for Legal

Verify final wording and statutory citations for each category in Section 4; the references above (POCSO Act, IT Act provisions on sexual content, IPC provisions on hate speech, IT Rules 2021 Rule 3(1)(b)) are directional and must be confirmed before publication.

Confirm the record-retention period and format for moderation evidence given IT Rules record-keeping obligations.

Confirm whether any appeals or review mechanism should exist for a zero-tolerance termination, and if so, define its scope — app store policy generally expects some recourse to exist even on a strict platform.

Confirm this document's categories and the zero-tolerance standard are reflected consistently in the user-facing Terms of Use and the sign-up acceptance screen text.

Route Section 5's random-matching and age-gating flags to Product/Legal as a standalone review — these are Apple app-approval risks that exist independent of how well this moderation policy is enforced, and no amount of moderator diligence on individual sessions resolves them.