Community Guidelines

Every chat room is shared space. These guidelines explain what we expect from members and what we do when someone crosses the line. They apply to all public rooms, all personal circles, and any private message exchanged through the platform.

Core principles

Three short principles guide the rest of this document:

1. Be respectful. Treat every member the way you would want a stranger to treat your sister, brother, or close friend in a public space.
2. Be honest. Use one identity. Do not impersonate other users, public figures, or staff. Do not lie about your age to access content meant for adults.
3. Be lawful. Conduct that is illegal in Sri Lanka or in the country where the platform is hosted is also not allowed here.

What is encouraged

Most of the activity on Sri Lankan Chat is welcome and routine:

• Friendly conversation in Sinhala, Tamil, English, or any mix of the three.
• Sharing news from your district, your university, or your country of residence.
• Helping new members understand how the chat works.
• Creating a personal circle for genuine friends, classmates, or family.
• Asking questions about the language, culture, food, history, music, sport, and current affairs.
• Expressing opinions on cultural and political topics with civility and without hate speech.

What is not allowed

The list below is not exhaustive. Moderators use judgement when something falls outside the letter of these rules but clearly breaks the spirit of them. Do not do the following on the platform:

Harassment and abuse

• Personal attacks, slurs, threats, or sustained insults aimed at another member.
• Doxing — revealing another person's real name, address, workplace, school, phone number, or family details without consent.
• Coordinated pile-ons or repeated unwanted contact after a user asks you to stop.

Hate speech and discrimination

• Content that demeans or threatens people based on ethnicity, religion, caste, language, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, or national origin.
• Promoting violence against any community, religious group, or political group.
• Holocaust denial, incitement to ethnic violence, and similar dehumanising content.

Sexual content and child safety

• Pornographic images, videos, audio, or links of any kind.
• Sexual content involving minors of any kind, in any room, public or private. This is a permanent ban offence and we report verified cases to authorities.
• Soliciting nude images, sexual contact, or romantic relationships from anyone who appears to be under 18.
• Sex work advertising, paid escort services, or sexual content for hire.

Illegal activity

• Buying, selling, or arranging the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, stolen goods, fraudulent documents, or pirated software.
• Phishing, scams, fake giveaways, romance scams, and any deception aimed at extracting money or credentials from other members.
• Distributing malware, trojans, or links to malicious downloads.

Spam and disruption

• Posting the same message repeatedly across rooms or in quick succession in one room.
• Promoting unrelated services, websites, Telegram channels, or social media accounts as if they were chat content.
• Using bots, scripts, or automated tools to send messages or join rooms.
• Attempting to crash, flood, or otherwise interfere with the chat infrastructure.

Privacy violations

• Sharing private chat logs from a personal circle in public without the participants' consent.
• Recording calls or video that include other members and posting them without permission.
• Posting other people's photos in a way meant to embarrass, shame, or extort.

How we enforce the rules

Moderators have a few different tools and use the lightest one that fits the situation:

• Warning. A direct message or note from a moderator pointing out the issue. Used for first-time, low-severity issues.
• Message removal. The moderator hides a specific message from the room. The user can keep chatting.
• Room restriction. The user can only join certain rooms or has reduced privileges (no media uploads, for example).
• Temporary ban. Access to the platform is suspended for a defined period.
• Permanent ban. The account is closed. Some severe categories — child safety, doxing, threats of violence — result in permanent bans on the first offence.

We try to be transparent: when we ban an account, we record the reason internally so that future moderation decisions can refer to it. We do not announce bans publicly unless an explanation is necessary to address rumours.

Reporting a problem

If you see something that breaks the rules, you have a few options:

1. Use the report button or "warn user" option on the offender's profile inside the chat.
2. Send a message through the contact page describing what happened, when, and in which room.
3. If a room owner is the problem, contact us through the contact page rather than reporting them inside their own room.

You do not need to be the target of misconduct to report it. Bystander reports are welcome and are kept confidential.

If you run a personal circle

Creating a circle gives you control, but also responsibility. As a circle owner you should:

• Invite people you actually know, or at least people whose conduct you can vouch for.
• Set a password for the circle when discussions might be sensitive.
• Use the upload settings to match the level of trust in the circle: registered only, verified only, or off entirely.
• Remove members who break the platform rules inside your room. The platform rules apply inside private circles too.
• Cooperate with moderators if a complaint is raised about activity in your room.