Community Guidelines

1. Adults only, verified

You must be 18 or older. Everyone, guest or member, verifies their age with AgeVerif before entering any room or using private messages, images or webcam. See how age verification works. Lying about your age, helping a minor get in, or getting around age verification (someone else's identity, a shared session, a VPN or any other trick) means you lose access.

2. What's allowed

Flirting and explicit conversations between consenting adults are allowed in the rooms labeled as adult rooms; that's what they're for. In other public rooms, keep it non-sexual. In private messages, keep it non-sexual unless the other person has clearly said they want to go there. You can share your own photos, go on cam and send voice notes, as long as everyone who appears is an adult and has agreed to it. Blocking or muting someone is always allowed, for any reason.

3. Nothing sexual involving minors

Nothing sexual involving anyone under 18, ever: no images or videos, no requests, no role-play, no drawings, no AI-generated images, no "jokes". Never try to contact a minor for anything sexual. We report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and ban the people involved permanently. See how we protect children.

4. Sexual consent and intimate images

Not allowed:

• Sharing someone's intimate images without their consent, or threatening to, whether the images are real or AI-generated (deepfakes).
• Sending sexual images, including of your genitals, to someone who didn't ask for them, by message or on cam.
• Recording, screenshotting or spreading another person's cam, voice or photos without their consent.

If intimate images of you are shared without your consent, see Report intimate images.

5. No commercial sex, no trafficking

Don't offer, request, advertise or arrange sex or sexual content for money, gifts, crypto or anything of value, including escorting, "sugar" arrangements, paid cam shows or selling content. Don't recruit, exploit or traffic anyone. We remove this content and ban the people involved; anything involving a minor is reported to NCMEC.

6. Threats, harassment and sextortion

Not allowed:

• Threats of violence, rape or other serious harm.
• Harassing someone, or contacting them again after they've said no or blocked you.
• Posting someone's real name, address or other private information (doxxing).
• Sextortion: threatening to share someone's images or information unless they pay or send more.

7. Hateful conduct

Hateful conduct means using ChatNow to vilify, humiliate or incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. It isn't allowed. Disagreeing is fine; dehumanizing people is not. You can report hateful conduct and get a direct response.

8. Violence, terrorism and self-harm

No support for, promotion of or recruitment for terrorist organizations, and no praising of attacks. Never encourage anyone to kill or harm themselves. If you're struggling, people can help right now.

9. Scams and spam

Not allowed:

• Romance scams, "investment opportunities", phishing links, asking for money or gift cards, fake giveaways.
• Advertising, affiliate links, flooding a room or mass messaging.

10. Drugs and weapons

Don't sell, buy or advertise drugs or weapons on ChatNow.

11. Platform integrity

Not allowed:

• Coming back after a ban, running several accounts or getting around age verification.
• Bots, scrapers, automated messages, or attempts to break into other people's accounts or our systems.
• Impersonating another person, a moderator or the ChatNow team.

12. How moderation works

• Human moderators are active every day. A moderator is on call 24/7 for reports about intimate images and child safety.
• An AI model (OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini) reviews the text of public and private messages after they're sent, without your username or any identifier, and helps moderators spot likely violations. It doesn't remove anything itself; a person decides. Details are in AI moderation and language models.
• Every image sent on ChatNow is compared with digital fingerprints of known child sexual abuse material (from Project Arachnid, run by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection) and with StopNCII fingerprints of intimate images people have asked to protect.
• Profile bios are reviewed before they appear. Anti-spam and rate limits, VPN detection and one session per account help slow down spam and ban evasion.
• Webcam video and sound are never recorded. Webcam and voice notes aren't analyzed automatically: there, block, mute and the report button are how you protect yourself, and moderators act on your reports.
• We never use fake profiles or bots that pretend to be real people.

These tools help us find problems; they don't catch everything. That's why your reports matter.

13. Penalties

Depending on how serious the violation is and your history, we may:

• remove the content;
• reduce the visibility of your messages for a while;
• mute you for a set time;
• suspend you (a temporary ban);
• ban you permanently, by account, IP address and device.

Anything sexual involving minors, terrorism, intimate images shared without consent, serious threats and trafficking mean an immediate permanent ban. We report crimes to the authorities when the law requires it or when someone is in danger.

Every decision against you comes with the reasons, the rule applied, whether an automated tool was involved and how to appeal. Nobody is permanently banned by a machine alone.

14. Report and appeal

Use the report button on any message or profile and choose the reason that fits. Reporting without an account, intimate images, response times and appeals are covered in Report & Appeals. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 first.

15. Examples of US crimes these rules cover

18 U.S.C. §§ 2251–2252A and 1466A (child sexual abuse material); 2422(b) (enticing a minor); 1591 and 2421A (sex trafficking, promoting prostitution online); 47 U.S.C. § 223(h) (publishing intimate images without consent); 18 U.S.C. §§ 2261A and 875 (stalking, threats); 2339B (material support to foreign terrorist organizations); 1030, 1028 and 1343 (hacking, identity fraud, wire fraud); 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(h) and 843(c) (online drug sales and ads); 18 U.S.C. § 922 (unlawful firearm transfers).