Community Guidelines

As people around the world confront this unprecedented public health emergency, we want to make sure that our Community Guidelines protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19. We’re working to remove content that has the potential to contribute to real-world harm, including through our policies prohibiting coordination of harm, hate speech, bullying, harassment and misinformation that contributes to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm. As the situation evolves, we continue to look at content on the platform, assess speech trends, and engage with experts, and will provide additional policy guidance when appropriate to keep the members of our community safe during this crisis.

The Short
We want Ava to continue to be an authentic and safe place for inspiration and expression. Help us foster this community. Post only your own photos, videos, and content and always follow the law. Respect everyone on Ava, don’t spam people or post nudity.

The Long
Ava is a reflection of our diverse community of cultures, ages, and beliefs. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the different points of view that create a safe and open environment for everyone.
We created the Community Guidelines so you can help us foster and protect this amazing community. By using Ava, you agree to these guidelines, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and our Terms&Conditions. We’re committed to these guidelines and we hope you are too. Overstepping these boundaries may result in deleted content, disabled accounts or other restrictions.
In some cases, we allow content for public awareness which would otherwise go against our Community Guidelines – if it is newsworthy and in the public interest. We do this only after weighing the public interest value against the risk of harm and we look to international human rights standards to make these judgments.
* Share only photos and videos that you’ve taken or have the right to share.As always, you own the content you post on Ava. Remember to post authentic content, and don’t post anything you’ve copied or collected from the Internet that you don’t have the right to post.
* Post photos and videos that are appropriate for a diverse audience. We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow on Ava. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, buttocks and breasts. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK.
*         Foster meaningful and genuine interactions.Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent. Don’t offer money or giveaways of money in exchange for likes, followers, comments or other engagement.
You don’t have to use your real name on Ava, but we do require Instagram users to provide us with accurate and up to date information. Don't impersonate others and don't create accounts for the purpose of violating our guidelines or misleading others.
*         Follow the law. Ava is not a place to support or praise terrorists, organized crime, or hate groups. Offering sexual services, buying or selling firearms, alcohol, and tobacco products between private individuals, and buying or selling illegal or prescription drugs (even if legal in your region) are also not allowed. Ava also prohibits the sale of live animals between private individuals, though brick-and-mortar stores may offer these sales. No one may coordinate poaching or selling of endangered species or their parts.
Remember to always follow the law when offering to sell or buy other regulated goods. Accounts promoting online gambling, online real money games of skill or online lotteries must get our prior written permission before using any of our products.
We have zero tolerance when it comes to sharing sexual content involving minors or threatening to share intimate images of others.
* Respect other members of the Ava community. We want to foster a positive, diverse community. We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages. We do generally allow stronger conversation around people who are featured in the news or have a large public audience due to their profession or chosen activities. 
It's never OK to encourage violence or attack anyone based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, disabilities, or diseases. When hate speech is being shared to challenge it or to raise awareness, we may allow it. In those instances, we ask that you express your intent clearly.
Serious threats of harm to public and personal safety aren't allowed. This includes specific threats of physical harm as well as threats of theft, vandalism, and other financial harm. We carefully review reports of threats and consider many things when determining whether a threat is credible. 
* Maintain our supportive environment by not glorifying self-injury. The Ava community cares for each other, and is often a place where people facing difficult issues such as eating disorders, cutting, or other kinds of self-injury come together to create awareness or find support. We try to do our part by providing education in the app and adding information in the Frequently Asked Questions so people can get the help they need.
Encouraging or urging people to embrace self-injury is counter to this environment of support, and we’ll remove it or disable accounts if it’s reported to us. We may also remove content identifying victims or survivors of self-injury if the content targets them for attack or humor.
* Be thoughtful when posting newsworthy events.We understand that many people use Ava to share important and newsworthy events. Some of these issues can involve graphic images. Because so many different people and age groups use Instagram, we may remove videos of intense, graphic violence, to make sure Ava stays appropriate for everyone.
We understand that people often share this kind of content to condemn, raise awareness or educate. If you do share content for these reasons, we encourage you to caption your post with a warning about graphic violence.
Help us keep the community strong:
* Each of us is an important part of the Ava community. If you see something that you think may violate our guidelines, please help us by using our reporting option. We have a team that reviews these reports and works as quickly as possible to remove content that doesn’t meet our guidelines. We may remove entire posts if either the imagery or associated captions violate our guidelines.
* You may find content you don’t like, but doesn’t violate the Community Guidelines. If that happens, you can unfollow or block the person who posted it. 
* Many disputes and misunderstandings can be resolved directly between members of the community. If one of your photos or videos was posted by someone else, you could try commenting on the post and asking the person to take it down. If that doesn’t work, you can file a copyright report. If you believe someone is violating your trademark, you can file a trademark report. Don't target the person who posted it by posting screenshots and drawing attention to the situation because that may be classified as harassment.
* We may work with law enforcement, including when we believe that there’s risk of physical harm or threat to public safety.