Last updated: 1 November 2022
Hey, and thanks for coming to the party! But just in case…
SHAYK is the place to let your hair down. You won’t find boring conversations here. We want to hear about shrimp tacos, stinky cheese, and so much more—and we promise not to judge you as we try to figure out what stinky cheese is. On this app, you can talk about anything and everything. We think we have a handle on the general idea of decency and play nicely with others. We take this stuff quite seriously, so if you see somebody out of line, let us know by reporting* it so we can handle the person.
*Fine print: If you must, throw in a gif/link/video
Sometimes people behave badly. Sometimes you don’t agree on everything. We don’t know about you, but we don’t take any of this personally. If you have beef, tell us about the beef or find a different place for your beef. We are here to have fun and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
So let’s not ruin things for everyone else!
We want to put human back in social media, so we’ve created a place for you to say whatever you think and hear what other people are saying.
We want everyone to have fun on SHAYK, because we’re all a bunch of smartass weirdos who want a place to enjoy their own irreverent brand of humor wherever they are.
To give you the best possible experience, we’ve established some ground-rules for what’s acceptable on SHAYK. Because social media is too serious, we’re committed to keeping it a little less…serious. We want what you talk about to be your natural conversation—not a rehearsal for your next audition or performance.
- 13+: Like many movies and your other favorite social apps, SHAYK is 13+.
- Keep it real: There’s no spam allowed on SHAYK, and that includes fake or bot accounts created for the purposes of offering promotions or unsolicited content. And because we want you to come as you are, that also means that impersonation is not allowed and that using someone else’s account is also off-limits. Third-party tools or software for voice distortion or text-to-speech functionality are also prohibited. If tools like these are important to help you to get the most out of SHAYK, we’d love to hear from you so we can work with our team on potential solutions.
- One account is all you need: SHAYK members are permitted one account and one account only. Having multiple conversations from different profiles or having more than one account is against our rules—it’s too confusing. We take removals from SHAYK seriously and attempting to evade guidelines or recreate a profile that has been temporarily disabled or removed can result in a permanent ban.
We care about each other:
- Respect each other: We expect everyone on SHAYK to respect each other, full stop. We do not tolerate talks, messages or other content that encourages violence, bullying, hatred or harm against an individual or a group of individuals on the basis of age, body type, disability, ethnicity, gender, intellect, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status. There are a few other behaviors we want to call out, too:
- Don’t doxx: Content or talks that reveal or threaten to reveal personally identifiable information of someone else without their explicit permission or participation is off-limits.
- Don’t ruin the vibe: Our comment feature is intended to help more people contribute to talks, not to purposefully disrupt them. Trolling isn’t a good look (ever!) and isn’t allowed on SHAYK.
- Respect our team, too: Respect is also expected when communicating with our SHAYK Support Team, whether that’s via email, in-app support or elsewhere. Threatening, harassing or engaging in otherwise disrespectful behavior toward our team may result in a permanent ban.
- No fake reports: Submitting purposely false incident reports to our team makes it harder for us to focus on real reports and is also considered a form of bullying or harassment.
- No hate: We hope we don’t have to explain this, but hateful content or promoting violence or organized crime, including terrorism and extremism, is not okay. This includes conversations that speak positively of hate groups, individuals associated with those groups or the use of related slogans, symbols or salutes. We also do not permit content that praises violent tragedies and/or disparages their victims.
We care about you:
- Self-injury or harm: We care about our members, and prohibit content or interactions that support, encourage or promote acts of physical or mental harm — for example, cutting, eating disorders, or suicide. We understand the importance of mental health and how open conversation can help in removing the stigma associated with these topics. With this in mind, we do allow members to talk about suicide and self-injury in a way that helps raise awareness about these issues.
- If you need support for any of these issues, it’s available. We encourage individuals who are struggling with thoughts of self-harm or suicide, or who know someone is seriously considering self-harm/suicide, to immediately contact local emergency services or a suicide prevention hotline like Befrienders Worldwide or Findahelpline.com which are global resources for free, confidential help.
- Sexual content and exploitation: We don’t allow explicit sexual content that is not for the purpose of education or discussion. To break this down a bit more:
- Harmful content: You may not share or promote information that is intended or likely to cause harm to any person or groups of people. That can mean non-consensual content (for example, private recordings shared without permission containing sexual content) or content promoting or portraying sexual assault.
- Solicitation: Solicitation is not permitted on SHAYK. Plain and simple.
- Minors: The points above unconditionally apply to minors (e. g.: solicitation or sexualization of children).
- The fine print: Violating these guidelines goes beyond SHAYK; sexualized content can risk your safety and violate local laws, triggering legal penalties in some locations.
- False or misleading information: Using the app to spread or attempt to spread false or misleading information or news surrounding major world events, natural disasters, politics, and medical advice (including Covid-19 misinformation) is against our rules.
- Intellectual property: Using or sharing audio recordings (including music) that violate or infringe someone else’s copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights is not allowed. All original content shared on SHAYK must be owned by that person alone.
- One more thing: Content that is sexually and/or violently graphic or content that may disgust or shock people is prohibited.
Last boring (but serious) stuff to get out the way:
- Last but certainly not least, all SHAYK users are required to follow local, national and international laws specific to their area. Below are some specific examples for reference:
- Drugs and Controlled Substances: SHAYK does not allow content that endorses or enables illegal drugs use. Information that could be perceived as being helpful in evading law enforcement or for the purposes of committing any criminal offense (or aiding/encouraging anyone to do so) is strictly prohibited.
- Investment and financial schemes: Investment and financial schemes, and content or services that are adult in nature, are prohibited.
- Illegal or regulated goods: Content on SHAYK cannot promote the sale of or be used to sell these. No exceptions.
- Threats: Threats are considered criminal activity and can result in an account being disabled or banned. Any conversations, audio, or messages deliberately degrading or humiliating other people or encouraging those actions will be removed.
If you have any questions, please submit them via the “Feedback” section in-app or email talkto@SHAYK.com to reach our team.
For any reminders, these guidelines are also available in-app by visiting Settings → Privacy.
At SHAYK, we believe that words are basically the greatest. We’ll do our part to make sure you can express yourself freely on our community while following some guidelines you should know. We’re kinda new ourselves, but we like the direction things are going. If you need us, we’re here for you anytime!
