Moderation policy

Who is accountable. James Simpson, director of THE SNUG CLUB LTD, is the person accountable for content moderation and for our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023. That is not a department; it is one person, and saying so is more use to you than a generic address. Reach him at info@thesnug-club.co.uk.

What is not allowed. Anything illegal. Harassment, threats, or content directed at somebody to frighten or humiliate them. Anything sexual involving a child, in any framing whatsoever — there is no context in which this is a judgement call. Somebody else's personal details. Content designed to defraud, including fake sale listings. Impersonating a pub, a band, or another member. Spam and anything posted to sell something outside Buy, Swap, Sell. Beyond that: it is a pub conversation, and the bar is roughly what a landlord would tolerate at a table.

What happens before anything appears. Everything posted is screened automatically. The screen can only hold a post for review — it cannot reject one outright, because an automated judgement on its own is not a good enough reason to silence somebody. A new member's first 3 threads are held for a person to read before they appear, because somebody who turns up to abuse a room does not first build a posting history.

Nothing vanishes silently. A held post stays visible to the person who wrote it, marked as held, on their own screen. You will never find that something you wrote has quietly stopped existing without your being told. If we remove something, we tell you and we say why.

Reporting something. Every thread and every reply carries a Report control, and it works without an account and while the rooms are closed. You can add a reason and, if it helps, a sentence of detail. Reports go to a queue that a person reads.

How fast we work the queue. Held posts and reports are reviewed within five working days, and in practice sooner. Anything reported as involving a child, a credible threat to somebody's safety, or content we believe is illegal jumps the queue and is looked at the same day. We would rather commit to something we can keep than print a number that sounds better and breaks the first busy week.

Complaining, and appealing. If we hold or remove something of yours, or you think we have got a report wrong, email info@thesnug-club.co.uk with a link to the post. A person reads it, we aim to answer within five working days, and we will give you the outcome and the reason for it. If you disagree with that outcome, reply and say so: it gets looked at again. We are not going to pretend there is an independent appeals panel — there is one company and one person — but a second look with the argument in front of us is a real thing and it does change decisions.

Suspending or closing an account. Repeated breaches, or a single serious one, can mean an account is suspended or closed. We will tell you which and why, and the complaints route above applies to that decision too. Closing your own account is always available to you and needs no reason — email info@thesnug-club.co.uk.

Photographs. The rooms accept a photo with a post, and at present that photo is screened and then discarded rather than stored — there is nowhere to keep it yet. A post held for a person to read carries the words and not the picture, for the same reason. It is worth saying plainly rather than letting somebody assume their picture is on a server somewhere. If that changes, this page changes with it and we reassess the risk profile before it ships, not after.

Private messages. There are none, between members, anywhere on this site. Messages exist only between a member or a band and a pub about a booking, which is a different thing and is visible to everybody in the thread and to us. If member-to-member messaging is ever built, this policy and the risk assessment behind it are rewritten first.

Age. You must be 18 to hold an account, because the whole service is about licensed premises. We ask for a date of birth at sign-up and we do not verify it — no age assurance technology is in place, and we are not going to imply otherwise. That fact, and what follows from it, is recorded in our children's access assessment.

Reviewing this policy. This is reviewed whenever the service changes in a way that changes the risk — adding stored images or private messaging would each be one — and otherwise at least once a year. The date at the top is the last review.