Acceptable Use Policy

Plain-language summary

• Bold, strange, and far-future ideas are welcome. We never reject a serious idea just because it sounds impossible today.
• What is banned is conduct: illegal acts, abuse, deception, and step-by-step instructions that could hurt people.
• There is zero tolerance for anything that sexually exploits or endangers children.
• Do not spam, scam, fake votes or engagement, or try to game our ranking and safety systems.
• Do not attack our systems — no malware, scraping, abusive automation, or prompt injection against our AI.
• Do not pretend to be someone else, or claim a false link to Clap Ideas or its operator.
• We enforce this with AI pre-checks and human review. You can report problems at our reporting form.

1. The spirit of this policy

Clap Ideas is an AI-powered global idea democracy and future-technology lab. Our mission is Democratizing Ideas. Building the Future.That means we actively want ambitious, speculative, and unconventional ideas. A concept that seems impossible today is welcome here — we classify the breakthrough it would need, rather than reject it.

So this policy is not about silencing big thinking. It draws one clear line: the difference between discussing an idea and handing someone a usable recipe to cause harm, and the difference between honest participation and abusive or illegal behaviour. Speculative discussion of a topic is allowed. Operational, step-by-step instructions to build a weapon, synthesise a hazard, or attack a system are not.

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) applies to everyone who uses Clap Ideas (“the Platform”) — every idea, comment, pathway, project, event, message, profile, and upload. It works together with our Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, Research & Innovation Safety Policy, and AI Transparency Policy. If you break this policy, we may act under our Moderation, Enforcement & Appeals Policy.

2. No illegal activity

You must not use the Platform to plan, carry out, promote, or facilitate anything that is illegal under the laws that apply to you or to us. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Buying, selling, or trading illegal goods, drugs, or stolen property.
• Money laundering, fraud, or financing of terrorism.
• Coordinating violence, trafficking, or other serious crimes.
• Breaking court orders, sanctions, or export-control laws.

You are responsible for knowing and following the laws that apply to you, including the laws of your own country.

3. No harassment, hate, exploitation, or abuse

You must not:

• Harass, bully, threaten, stalk, or intimidate anyone.
• Attack people or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or serious illness, or promote hatred or violence against them.
• Incite or celebrate violence, self-harm, or terrorism.
• Share, threaten to share, or solicit someone’s private information without their consent (sometimes called “doxxing” — publishing private details to target a person).
• Exploit, demean, or abuse vulnerable people.

Robust debate is fine. Personal attacks, targeted harassment, and dehumanising content are not.

4. Child safety — zero tolerance

We have zero tolerance for any content or conduct that sexually exploits, endangers, or abuses a minor (a person under 18). This is the most serious line on the Platform.

• Never upload, share, request, or link to child sexual abuse material (“CSAM”) or any sexual content involving minors, real or AI-generated.
• Never sexualise, groom, or attempt to contact a minor for sexual purposes.
• Never solicit sexual content, money, or images from a minor.

We act immediately on credible reports, remove the content, terminate the account, preserve evidence, and report to the relevant authorities and child-safety organisations as required by law. See also our Children, Minors & Age Policy.

5. No sexual exploitation or non-consensual content

You must not:

• Post sexual content that involves a minor in any form (see section 4).
• Share intimate or sexual images of any person without their consent, including “revenge” content and AI-generated or face-swapped sexual images of a real person.
• Use the Platform for sex trafficking, coercion, or commercial sexual exploitation.
• Post sexual content in spaces meant for general or younger audiences.

Clap Ideas is an ideas and research platform, not an adult-content service. General pornographic material is out of scope and may be removed.

6. No spam, scams, or manipulation

You must not:

• Post repetitive, bulk, or unsolicited promotional content (spam).
• Run scams, deceptive schemes, pyramid or Ponzi structures, or phishing campaigns.
• Inflate engagement with fake accounts, bought votes or followers, vote rings, bots, or coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
• Manipulate rankings, scores, trending lists, duplicate detection, or search results through artificial signals.
• Create multiple accounts to evade limits or bans, or to make one person look like many.

Our AI ranking and scoring systems assume good-faith participation. Trying to game them harms everyone and is a violation.

7. No malware, phishing, or cyber abuse

You must not:

• Upload, link to, or distribute malware, viruses, ransomware, spyware, or other harmful code.
• Phish for credentials, payment details, or other sensitive information.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any account, system, server, or data, or to probe or scan our infrastructure for vulnerabilities outside our Security & Responsible Disclosure Policy.
• Interfere with, overload, or disrupt the Platform or its security features.

If you are a security researcher, follow our responsible-disclosure process — do not test against live user data.

8. No dangerous instructions or hazardous experimentation

This is where the “idea vs. instruction” line matters most. You may discuss bold or risky scientific and engineering ideas in the abstract. You may not post operational, step-by-step instructions that a person could follow to create real-world harm. Specifically, you must not provide:

• Instructions, recipes, formulas, or technical specifications for weapons capable of mass casualties, including chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (“CBRN”) agents, devices, or their precursors.
• Instructions to build, modify, or deploy explosives, incendiary devices, or untraceable or illegal firearms.
• Step-by-step guidance for dangerous, regulated, or hazardous experiments — for example synthesising hazardous chemicals or pathogens, or high-voltage, radiation, or high-pressure procedures — presented for real-world execution without proper authorisation, expertise, and safeguards.
• Specific, actionable instructions intended to seriously harm people, critical infrastructure, or the environment.

For where the line sits between a speculative idea and unsafe build instructions, and how we label or restrict high-risk topics, see our Research, Experiment & High-Risk Innovation Safety Policy. Remember: AI outputs on this Platform can be wrong, and they are never a substitute for qualified expert and safety review.

9. No encouragement of self-harm

You must not:

• Encourage, promote, or provide instructions for suicide or self-harm.
• Pressure, dare, or coach anyone toward self-harm.
• Glorify or sensationalise self-harm or eating disorders.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact your local emergency services or a recognised crisis helpline right away. We may surface supportive resources and may remove or restrict content that promotes self-harm.

10. No IP infringement or posting confidential information

You must not:

• Post content that infringes someone else’s copyright, trademark, patent, or other intellectual-property rights.
• Upload trade secrets, classified information, employer-owned or client-confidential material, or anything you are under a legal or contractual duty to keep private.
• Misappropriate another person’s work and present it as your own.

Remember that ideas you publish here are public and non-confidential. For the full picture see our Idea Submission & Open Collaboration Terms and our IP & Attribution Policy. To report copyright infringement, use our Copyright & DMCA Policy.

11. No impersonation, deception, or false affiliation

You must not:

• Impersonate another person, organisation, or public figure.
• Misrepresent your identity, credentials, qualifications, or affiliations.
• Falsely claim that you, your project, or your event is endorsed, sponsored, employed, or authorised by Clap Ideas or its operator without written approval from an authorised administrator.
• Use deceptive names, logos, or branding to mislead other users.

12. No unauthorised fundraising or investment solicitation

You must not:

• Solicit investments, sell securities, or offer equity, loans, or financial returns through the Platform.
• Run unauthorised fundraising, crowdfunding, or money-collection schemes outside the Platform’s official donation features.
• Present donations as investments. Donations on Clap Ideas are voluntary support, not investments — see our Donation, Sponsorship & Refund Policy.

13. No export-control or sanctions evasion

You must not use the Platform to evade export-control laws, trade restrictions, or sanctions. Do not share controlled technical data with restricted parties, and do not use the Platform if you are located in a sanctioned jurisdiction or are on a prohibited-party list, where applicable law forbids it.

14. No scraping, excessive automation, or AI abuse

You must not:

• Scrape, harvest, or bulk-collect content or personal data from the Platform without our written permission.
• Use bots, crawlers, or automation that exceeds reasonable limits or degrades performance for others. Any approved automated access must follow our API & Developer Terms.
• Use the Platform’s AI features to mass-generate spam, deceptive content, or material that violates this policy.

Note that text embeddings used for duplicate detection and search are computed locally and are not sent to any third-party AI provider; generation features rely on a third-party AI provider as described in our AI Transparency Policy.

15. No prompt injection or model exploitation

Our AI systems handle idea intake, structuring, research briefs, duplicate detection, ranking, scoring, moderation pre-checks, and comment classification. You must not try to attack, trick, or exploit them. Specifically, you must not:

• Attempt prompt injection— hiding instructions in your content to make the AI ignore its rules, reveal hidden system instructions, or behave in ways it should not.
• Jailbreak, adversarially manipulate, or otherwise coerce the AI into producing prohibited or unsafe output.
• Try to extract, reconstruct, or reverse-engineer our models, prompts, embeddings, or internal systems.
• Embed malicious payloads designed to corrupt AI processing or downstream systems.

Our safety design treats AI as a recommender that escalates to humans; attempts to subvert that design are a serious violation.

16. No circumventing safety or moderation systems

You must not:

• Evade, disable, or work around moderation, safety filters, rate limits, or access controls.
• Use coded language, deliberate misspellings, or obfuscation to slip prohibited content past detection.
• Re-post content that has already been removed for violating our policies.
• Create new accounts to avoid a suspension or ban (sometimes called “ban evasion”).

17. How we enforce this policy

We use a combination of AI pre-checks and human review. AI classifies and recommends; human administrators make the final call on escalated, high-risk, or appealed cases. Depending on severity and history, we may:

• Label, hide, downrank, restrict, or remove content.
• Issue warnings or temporary limits.
• Suspend or permanently terminate accounts.
• Preserve evidence and report serious matters (such as child-safety cases) to authorities.

For the full process, severity tiers, and how to appeal a decision, see our Moderation, Enforcement & Appeals Policy.

18. How to report a violation

If you see content or behaviour that breaks this policy, please tell us. You can report a concern directly, and you can read more about what happens next in our Safety & Abuse Reporting Policy. For urgent threats to life, contact your local emergency services first. For legal questions about this policy, email legal@clapideas.com.

19. Related policies & contact

This policy works together with the Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, Research & Innovation Safety Policy, AI Transparency Policy, and Moderation, Enforcement & Appeals Policy. For questions, email legal@clapideas.com.

Change history is tracked by document version; see the Legal Centre.