Community Guidelines and Safety

Community guidelines

Animates is for adults who want to meet other fans. These rules apply to profiles, photos, messages, community rooms and watch parties.

Adults only

You must be 18 or older. We remove accounts that belong to anyone under 18, and profiles that include photos of children on their own.

Be yourself

• Use your own photos, and show your face in at least one of them.
• Don't pretend to be someone else, and don't lie about your age.
• Cosplay photos are welcome. A profile made only of character art or someone else's pictures is not.
• One account per person.

Treat people well

• No harassment, threats, bullying or stalking, on Animates or by taking things off the app.
• No hate speech or slurs about race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age or body.
• When someone says no or stops replying, leave them alone.
• Disagreeing about a show is fine. Attacking the person is not.

Keep it legal and safe

• No nudity or sexually explicit photos, and no unwanted sexual messages.
• No sexual content of any kind that involves minors, including drawn or animated characters who are or appear to be children.
• No violence, self-harm content or content that promotes illegal activity.
• No selling, advertising, asking for money, or paid sexual services.
• No spam, bots or collecting other people's information.
• Don't share someone else's private information or photos without their permission.

Safety tools in the app

• Block: blocking someone hides you from each other across the whole app, including community rooms. It also ends any match between you. They aren't told.
• Report: report a profile, photo, prompt answer or message. A copy of what you reported is sent to our team. The person isn't told who reported them.
• Unmatch: ends the conversation for both of you.
• Verified badge: shows that a person has passed our selfie video check.
• Privacy switches: you decide which personal details appear on your profile. Other people only see a rounded distance, never your exact location.

Meeting someone in person

• Get to know the person in the app first. Keep the chat on Animates until you trust them, because we can only act on what happens here.
• Meet in a public place for the first few dates. A convention, cafe or busy restaurant is ideal.
• Tell a friend who you're meeting, where and when. Share your live location with them if you can.
• Arrange your own way there and back.
• Keep an eye on your drink and your belongings.
• Leave if you feel uncomfortable. You don't owe anyone an explanation.

Animates doesn't run criminal background checks on members. A verified badge confirms that a person matches their photos; it says nothing about their character.

Scams and money requests

Never send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency or bank details to someone you met on Animates, however urgent their story sounds. Be careful with anyone who:

• asks to move to another app straight away,
• says they're overseas, in the military or working offshore and can't meet,
• talks about an investment, an emergency or a prize, or
• asks for your sign-in code, which lets them take over your account.

Report them in the app. You can also report fraud to the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

What happens when you report

1. Your report reaches our team with a copy of the profile, photo or messages you reported.
2. We review it against these guidelines. Reports about child safety, threats and violence are reviewed first.
3. Depending on what we find, we may remove content, warn the person, restrict what they can do, or ban them permanently.
4. Where the law requires it, or where someone may be at risk of serious harm, we report to the authorities.

We keep reports and their evidence for up to 2 years, even if the reported person deletes their account. If you think we got a decision wrong, email support@animatesapp.com and we'll look again.

Child safety standards

Animates has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation. These standards apply to everyone who uses the app.

What is prohibited

• Any account belonging to a person under 18.
• Child sexual abuse material of any kind, including drawn, animated or computer-generated content that sexualizes minors or characters who appear to be minors.
• Grooming, sexual messages to a minor, or any attempt to meet a minor.
• Sextortion, trafficking, or any other sexual exploitation of a minor.
• Content that praises, excuses or encourages any of the above.

How to report it

Use Report in the app and choose the underage or child safety reason, or email support@animatesapp.com. You don't need to be sure; tell us what you saw. Please don't forward or screenshot abusive images. Describe them and report the account.

What we do

• We review child safety reports before all others.
• We remove the content and permanently ban the account.
• We report apparent child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), as United States law requires, and we cooperate with law enforcement.
• We keep the evidence needed for those reports, even if the account is deleted.

Contact for child safety

Regulators, law enforcement and child safety organizations can reach the person responsible for child safety at Animates at support@animatesapp.com, or by mail at ANIMATES LLC, 254 Chapman Rd, Ste 208, Newark, DE 19702, United States.

Help lines

These United States services are free and independent of Animates.