Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: June 15, 2026 · Version 1.0

1. Purpose and Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy (the “AUP”) sets the rules that everyone agrees to when using the community features of The Personality Project, forums, group chat rooms, direct messages, opt-in peer-mentorship pairings, comment threads, and any other surfaces where you interact with other members.

The AUP is incorporated into our Terms of Service (posted at https://thepersonalityproject.com/#/terms) and is binding. Breaking the rules in this AUP can lead to content removal, account restrictions, or account termination, as described in §6 and §7.

This AUP applies in addition to the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy. It does not replace any law that applies to you in your jurisdiction.

Direct messages between members are stored on our servers and are not end to end encrypted. Moderators may access message content where necessary to enforce this AUP or to respond to a safety concern.

2. Community Values

The Personality Project is a wellness and self-education community. Many members are working through personal challenges, managing mood, building habits, understanding themselves better. The community works because we treat each other with the respect and the care we would want for ourselves.

Three values guide everything in this AUP:

• Safety first. We will always err on the side of the safety of vulnerable members over the convenience of any other member.
• Peers, not clinicians. Our members support each other from their own experience. No one in the community, including any moderator, is acting as your therapist, doctor, or counsellor. Real clinical care comes from licensed providers (see §4).
• Honest, kind, and on the rails. Be honest about what you know and don’t know. Be kind even when you disagree. Stay on the topics the community is here for.

The rules below operationalize those values.

3. Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to do any of the following, in any community surface or in private messages to other members.

3.1 Harm to others

• No harassment. No insults, slurs, sustained negative attention, or targeted attacks on another member.
• No hate speech. No content that demeans, threatens, or incites violence against people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or any other protected characteristic.
• No threats. No threats of violence, self-harm directed at others, or other intimidation.
• No encouragement of self-harm or suicide. Do not encourage, glorify, or coach another member into self-harm, suicide, eating-disordered behavior, or other harmful conduct. (Discussing your own experience honestly is welcome; see §4.)

3.2 Sexual content

• No sexually explicit content in any community surface, including direct messages between members.
• No sexual content involving minors, in any form, ever. Such content will be removed immediately, the responsible account will be terminated, and the content will be reported to law-enforcement authorities as required by law.
• No sexual approaches. Do not use direct messages or pairings to make sexual approaches to other members.

3.3 Illegal content

• No content that is illegal in your jurisdiction or in ours, including content that infringes intellectual-property rights, defames others, violates export controls, or facilitates illegal activity.
• No instructions for illegal acts, including drug synthesis, weapon construction, or fraud.

3.4 Privacy of other members (no doxxing)

• No doxxing. Do not post, share, or attempt to discover another member’s real name, address, phone number, employer, school, photograph, or any other identifying information that the member has not voluntarily shared in the community themselves.
• No outing. Do not reveal another member’s sexual orientation, gender identity, health status, or other sensitive personal information without their explicit consent.
• No screenshot-and-share. Do not screenshot another member’s private messages or non-public posts and share them elsewhere without that member’s consent. The community works because members trust that what is said here, stays here.

3.5 Spam, commercial promotion, and manipulation

• No spam. No repetitive posting, no irrelevant promotional content, no automated posting, no link drops.
• No commercial promotion of products, services, courses, coaching, “wellness” practices, supplements, MLM opportunities, or other commercial offerings to other members.
• No affiliate-link drops. Do not paste your own affiliate or referral links into community surfaces. (The Service includes its own carefully-disclosed affiliate program described in our Terms of Service §7.2; that does not extend to member-to-member promotion.)
• No lead generation, recruiting, or solicitation of members for outside opportunities (including therapy practices, support groups, study participation, business opportunities, or fundraising) without our prior written consent.
• No manipulation of community metrics, no fake accounts to upvote your own content, no coordinated brigading, no engagement-bait that misuses safety or crisis surfaces to gain attention.

3.6 Impersonation and authenticity

• One person, one account. Do not create multiple accounts to evade restrictions, manipulate community metrics, or pretend to be more than one person.
• No impersonation. Do not impersonate any other person, including The Personality Project staff, moderators, healthcare professionals, public figures, or another community member.
• No false credentials. Do not falsely claim professional credentials (e.g., “I’m a licensed therapist”) or other identity attributes to influence other members.

3.7 Manipulation of the Service

• No attempts to circumvent rate limits, geofence enforcement, age-gating, anti-cheat measures on assessments, or moderation decisions.
• No reverse-engineering, scraping, or automated extraction of community content, except as expressly permitted by law.
• No introduction of malware, exploit code, phishing links, or other content designed to harm other members or the Service.

4. Mental-Health Specific Rules

These rules are specific to the wellness context of the Service. They apply in addition to §3.

4.1 No clinical advice from peers

The Service is a wellness and self-education tool, not a clinical service. Other members are peers, not clinicians. Within the community:

• Do not diagnose another member, formally or informally. Statements like “I think you have depression” or “your score means you have a clinical disorder” are not allowed, even if well-intentioned.
• Do not recommend or contraindicate treatments for another member, including medications, therapies, supplements, or alternative practices. Statements like “you should stop taking your medication” or “you need [specific medication]” are not allowed.
• Do not hold yourself out as a clinician in the community, whether through professional credentials, the use of clinical-sounding language to convey authority, or the framing of your posts as professional advice.

What is welcome:

• Sharing your own experience. “When I had similar feelings, what helped me was…” is a peer-support post and is welcome.
• Asking for peer perspectives. “Has anyone else found a way to manage [feeling]?” is welcome.
• Pointing other members to professional resources. “It might be worth talking to a licensed therapist about this” or “Have you considered contacting your healthcare provider?” is welcome.

If you are a licensed clinician in real life and you are using the Service as a member, you may say so in your profile, but you must not provide clinical advice through the Service even then. The professional relationship your license supports is one your patients enter into with you formally, it does not extend to community members here.

4.2 Crisis-content handling, what community members must and must not do

If you encounter a community post that suggests another member is in crisis (talking about suicide, self-harm, or harm to others), the following rules apply.

Do:

• Respond with empathy if appropriate, and point the member to the in-product crisis resources or to a regional crisis hotline (e.g., 988 in the United States and Canada, 1-866-APPELLE in Quebec, Samaritans 116 123 in the United Kingdom).
• Use the report button on the post to alert moderators. Moderators will assess and may temporarily restrict the thread, surface additional resources, or take other appropriate action.
• If you are genuinely concerned for someone’s immediate safety and you know enough specific information to direct emergency services, contact your local emergency services (e.g., 911) about your own concern. You are responding as a human who is worried; you are not acting on Scrawlr’s behalf.

Do not:

• Do not attempt to dispatch emergency services to another member’s location through The Personality Project. We do not collect or surface the location information that would be required, and we do not contact emergency services on behalf of users.
• Do not “intervene” via DM. Reaching out privately to a member you don’t know who has posted about a crisis is often unhelpful and sometimes harmful. Use the report channel instead.
• Do not attempt clinical intervention. You are not their clinician. Refer them to professional help; do not try to be their professional help.
• Do not publish another member’s crisis content elsewhere, including screenshots, paraphrases, or links to their post outside the community.

The Service surfaces automated crisis resources to members who post crisis content. That is our system’s role. Your role as a community member is to be a kind, careful peer.

4.3 Sharing assessment results

Members are welcome to share their own assessment results (IQ percentile, OCEAN profile, MBTI type, clinical-scale band) if they choose, and to discuss them. The following rules apply:

• Do not share another member’s results without that member’s explicit consent.
• Do not interpret another member’s results as clinical findings. Severity bands on instruments like PHQ-9 or GAD-7 are research-grade self-assessment categories; they are not clinical diagnoses, and they should not be treated as such within the community.
• Do not compare or rank members by their results, either publicly or in private messages, in a way that could cause harm.

5. Reporting Violations

If you see a violation of this AUP, please report it. The fastest way is the Report button on the offending post or message, which routes the report to our moderation team. You may also email moderation@thepersonalityproject.com

We aim to acknowledge reports within 72 hours and to act on substantiated reports within a reasonable additional time. Reports involving imminent safety, sexual content involving minors, or illegal content are prioritized.

You may report anonymously through the in-product Report button. We will not share your identity with the member you reported unless you give consent or unless we are legally compelled to do so.

6. Moderation and Enforcement

6.1 Trust levels

The Service uses a karma based trust level system that adjusts a member’s posting privileges based on community activity and any prior violations. Karma rises and falls with activity such as upvotes, downvotes, helpful contributions, and moderation events. The current trust tiers are:

• New: the default starting tier at 0 karma, standard posting rights with some rate limits
• Member: reached at 25 karma
• Trusted: reached at 100 karma, reduced rate limits and additional features
• Established: reached at 250 karma
• Veteran: reached at 500 karma, the highest earned tier
• Moderator: an admin granted role, granted by an administrator and not earned through karma

Trust level transitions are automated. Karma can fall as well as rise, and a member may move to a lower tier if their karma drops below the threshold for their current tier. We may also manually adjust a trust level in response to substantiated reports.

6.2 Enforcement escalation

When a member violates this AUP, we apply a graduated escalation:

• Warning. A first or minor violation typically receives a written warning explaining the rule violated and giving the member a chance to adjust.
• Content removal and restriction. Repeated or more serious violations may result in removal of the offending content and a temporary restriction (e.g., reduced trust level or limited posting privileges) of a few hours to a few days.
• Temporary ban. Further violations may result in a temporary ban from community surfaces (typically 7 to 30 days). The member’s account remains active for non-community uses (assessments, journaling) during the ban.
• Permanent ban. Egregious violations, persistent violations after prior bans, or any violation involving threats, doxxing, sexual content involving minors, or illegal content may result in permanent termination of community access, and in the most serious cases, termination of the entire account.

We may skip steps in this escalation where the violation is severe. For example, we will skip directly to permanent ban for any violation involving sexual content involving minors or credible threats of violence.

6.3 Appeals

If you believe an enforcement action against you was a mistake, you may appeal:

• How to appeal: email moderation@thepersonalityproject.com with the subject line “Appeal” within 30 days of the enforcement action, explaining the action you are appealing and why you believe it was incorrect.
• What we do: a moderator who was not involved in the original decision will review the appeal and respond with a decision within a reasonable time, typically within 14 days.
• Outcome: the appeals decision is final, except where applicable law gives you a further right (for example, certain consumer-protection rights in your jurisdiction).

Appeals do not pause the enforcement action while they are reviewed, except in the case of permanent account termination, where we will (where possible) preserve your data until the appeal is resolved.

7. Our Discretion

Scrawlr reserves the right, at our sole discretion and consistent with applicable law, to:

• Remove or restrict any content we believe violates this AUP
• Restrict, suspend, or terminate any account we believe is being used in violation of this AUP, the Terms of Service, or applicable law
• Investigate suspected violations, including by reviewing reported content and contacting affected members

We are not obligated to monitor community surfaces proactively, and our decision to remove or not to remove specific content does not constitute endorsement of any other content. Decisions are made by our moderation team applying the rules in this AUP; we aim for consistency but will exercise judgment where the rules require it.

8. Quebec, Language Rights

If you are a resident of Quebec, you have the following additional rights:

• The right to post in French. You may participate in community surfaces in French. We will not restrict, throttle, or down-rank your content because it is in French.
• The right to file a complaint in either French or English. If you wish to report a violation, ask a question of moderation, or appeal an enforcement action, you may do so in French or in English. Our moderation team will respond in the language of your choice.
• The right to receive moderation notices in French. Notices about content removal, restrictions, bans, or appeals will be provided in French upon request.

These rights are consistent with our compliance with the Quebec Charter of the French Language.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this AUP from time to time. When we do, we will:

• Update the version number and last-updated date in the footer
• For material changes (for example, adding a new category of prohibited conduct or changing the moderation escalation), give at least 30 days’ advance notice through email and a prominent in-product notice
• For minor or clarifying changes, post the updated AUP; the change takes effect upon posting

10. Contact

For questions about this AUP, to report a violation, or to file an appeal:

• Moderation: moderation@thepersonalityproject.com
• In-product: use the Report button on any post or message
• Postal: Scrawlr, Attn: Moderation Team, 1820-999 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6C 2W2