Fair and explainable decisions
Content Moderation and Appeals
How Bothlo reviews reports, acts on content and accounts, and handles appeals.
1. Reactive moderation
Community Topics and comments are published immediately. Bothlo reviews content after a user report, an illegal-content notice, a safety signal or operator observation. A single report and a high report count do not automatically remove content.
2. Triage
A simple pre-filter may classify a queue item as normal, suspicious or urgent based on patterns such as empty/very short text, excessive links, spam-like wording or possible duplicates. This prioritises human review; it is not a final legal or policy decision.
3. Possible actions
- take no action or reject a report;
- mark a report reviewed/resolved;
- hide, soft-remove or restore an argument, comment or Community Topic;
- lock or unlock future discussion on a Community Topic;
- restrict or suspend publishing;
- ban an account for a set period or permanently;
- preserve records or contact competent authorities where law or immediate safety requires.
Soft removal keeps database records while preventing ordinary public display. Removed parent comments may stay as “[Comment removed]” so visible replies are not destroyed.
4. Decision factors
Reviewers consider the rule or law involved, context, severity, credible risk, intent, reach, previous violations, age/safety concerns, proportionality and whether a less restrictive action is sufficient. Disagreement with an opinion is not a violation by itself.
5. Notice
Where the system supports it and law permits, the affected member receives the decision type, reason, rule, date, duration and appeal deadline. Information may be limited if disclosure would endanger someone, compromise security or violate law.
6. Appeals
An eligible signed-in user may open Moderation decisions and submit one reasoned appeal per recorded decision before the deadline. The current database sets a 30-day deadline. Appeals can be submitted, placed under review, upheld or reversed. The reviewer should not simply repeat the original reason and should record the outcome. Important decisions and final appeal outcomes may be sent by transactional email.
7. Abuse and urgent matters
Bad-faith reporting or appeals may be restricted. For immediate danger contact emergency services. For allegedly illegal content use the public report form. Questions: contact@bothlo.com.