Community Guidelines

1. Why These Guidelines Exist

NextChat connects you with people you've never met — that's the whole point, and it only works if people treat each other decently. These guidelines describe what we expect from everyone using the platform. They work alongside, not instead of, our Terms of Service and Content Moderation Policy, which cover the legal and enforcement side in more detail.

2. Be Real

• Use a username that's actually yours to use — don't impersonate another person, a public figure, or NextChat staff
• Guest accounts exist so you can try NextChat with almost no friction (just a username, no email) — that's meant for trying the product and short, low-commitment conversations, not for evading a block or a deleted account under a new identity
• You confirm you're 18 or older when you register or use guest access. If we discover otherwise, the account is removed

3. Treat People Decently

You're talking to a real person on the other end. Don't:

• Harass, threaten, bully, or demean anyone
• Send unwanted sexual content or push a conversation somewhere the other person clearly doesn't want it to go
• Share someone else's personal information without their consent (doxxing) — including screenshots of a private conversation posted elsewhere
• Use hate speech or slurs targeting any group
• Encourage or glorify self-harm, suicide, or violence

If a conversation makes you uncomfortable, you don't owe anyone an explanation — block them and, if it's serious, report it. Section 6 below covers exactly how both work.

4. Don't Spam or Abuse the Platform

• No unsolicited advertising, referral spam, or mass-messaging strangers with the same copy-pasted content
• No phishing links or malware disguised as files or images
• No scraping, automating, or building bots against NextChat — our rate limits exist specifically to keep this out, and circumventing them is itself a violation
• No creating multiple guest accounts back-to-back specifically to get around a rate limit, a block, or a report

5. Sharing Images

NextChat currently supports sharing standard image files (JPEG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, up to 10MB) inline in a conversation. To set expectations accurately:

• Images you send are not currently "one-time view" or self-expiring — once sent, the recipient can view it for as long as the message exists, the same as any other message content
• We cannot technically prevent someone from screenshotting or saving an image you send them, on NextChat or anywhere else
• Don't send images of anyone (including yourself, if you're a minor — you shouldn't be here at all) that you wouldn't be comfortable existing outside this conversation
• Never share sexual images of another person without their explicit, enthusiastic consent — and never of a minor, under any circumstance

6. Blocking and Reporting

7. Consequences

We don't run automated moderation — every enforcement action is a human decision made after a report or something else brought to our attention. Depending on severity, that can mean asking you to remove content, a warning, or permanent removal of your account. Illegal content (like CSAM) is reported to the relevant authorities as legally required. See our Content Moderation Policy for the full breakdown.

8. Questions or Concerns

If something in these guidelines is unclear, or you want to flag a pattern of behavior you're seeing that doesn't fit neatly into a single report, reach out: