Evidence with a duty of care.

Accuracy

State what you know, what you observed, and what remains uncertain. Do not fill gaps with confident speculation.

Evidence

Keep original files and context. Disclose meaningful edits, source relationships, capture time, and location confidence.

Dignity

A person in a newsworthy event is still a person. Minimize humiliation, intrusion, and needless identification.

Safety

Do not publish information that creates a foreseeable, avoidable risk to victims, witnesses, responders, children, or communities.

Correction

A transparent correction strengthens the record. Hiding a known material error weakens it.

Independence

Never coordinate accounts or sources to make one report appear independently corroborated.

• Original photos or short video with an honest description of when, where, and how they were captured.
• First-hand observations that clearly distinguish direct observation from inference or second-hand information.
• Official statements, public records, credible source links, or publisher corrections with dates and attribution.
• Context that changes how evidence should be understood, including an earlier capture date, different location, staged setting, or material edit.
• Corrections supported by original evidence, source updates, or a clear explanation of the error.
• Translations, captions, transcripts, maps, or summaries that preserve source meaning and disclose any AI assistance.
• Safety-sensitive reporting submitted privately so moderators can generalize, delay, redact, or withhold identifying details.

Do not submit content that materially deceives people about what occurred, where, when, to whom, or with whose support.

• No staged scene, recycled footage, altered document, fake witness, false source, fabricated quotation, or false location presented as authentic evidence.
• No deepfake, face swap, cloned voice, fully generated event image or video, or synthetic witness presented as a real capture.
• No meaningful crop, splice, speed change, omitted sequence, dub, caption, translation, or enhancement that changes the apparent event without clear disclosure.
• No misrepresenting satire, fiction, reenactment, gameplay, simulation, training exercise, or old footage as a current real-world event.
• No submitting the same source through coordinated accounts to manufacture independence or corroboration.
• No knowingly false report, legal notice, moderation flag, provenance claim, or appeal.

Benign adjustments such as exposure correction, stabilization, compression, accessibility captions, or redaction can be acceptable when they do not change the apparent facts. Preserve the original and disclose any edit that could matter to interpretation.

• Do not threaten, praise, incite, instruct, coordinate, or solicit real-world violence or terrorist activity.
• Do not reveal real-time tactical positions, safe routes, shelters, protected witnesses, hostage locations, or details that could assist an attacker.
• Do not post identifiable images of people who have died or suffered severe injury merely for shock, humiliation, or engagement.
• Graphic evidence must be necessary to understand a newsworthy event, accurately labelled, access-restricted where appropriate, and presented with the least harmful framing.
• Do not interfere with responders, cross safety lines, create hazards, or delay assistance to capture content.
• Do not impersonate emergency services or present unofficial advice as an official instruction.

Newsworthiness does not erase privacy. Consider whether identifying a person is necessary, whether the place is private, whether consent was possible, and what harm publication could create. Public-space recording laws differ by country and do not always permit publication.

• Never dox: do not publish a private address, personal phone or email, identity document, financial record, medical record, password, or other data likely to enable harm.
• Do not expose survivors, protected witnesses, refugees, dissidents, people in hiding, patients, or people seeking sensitive services.
• Do not publish exact homes, domestic-violence shelters, schools, medical facilities, protected habitats, military-sensitive locations, or emergency escape routes without a compelling lawful need.
• Do not upload private communications or recordings obtained unlawfully or in a setting with a strong expectation of privacy.
• Ask consent before making an ordinary private person the focus where circumstances allow. A refusal to be interviewed is not evidence of wrongdoing.
• When a face, plate, screen, badge, or address is not needed, blur or frame it out. Fireflies may add redaction before publication.

Fireflies may keep exact coordinates and original metadata in restricted evidence storage while displaying a rounded, approximate, or city-level public location. Moderators may delay or suppress a location even when accurate.

• Accounts are limited to people aged 18 and over.
• Never upload child sexual abuse material, sexualized content involving a minor, grooming, exploitation, or links that facilitate access. Report it through the illegal-content route; do not reshare it.
• Avoid identifying a child who is a victim, witness, accused person, patient, missing person, or in state care unless a lawful authority asks the public to share specified information.
• Do not reveal a child’s school, routine, exact live location, home, medical condition, or family-contact details when that could create risk.
• Consent from an adult is not enough where publication is exploitative, unsafe, unlawful, or contrary to the child’s interests.
• Use additional care for people who may not be able to consent freely because of distress, injury, disability, detention, coercion, or crisis.

• No attack, dehumanization, exclusion, or incitement against people based on race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious disease, or another protected characteristic.
• No credible threat, stalking, unwanted sexualization, repeated targeted abuse, dogpiling, intimidation, or encouragement of others to harass.
• No slur or hateful symbol used to endorse hatred. Documentary use may be retained when necessary, clearly contextualized, and access-limited.
• No posting allegations of serious wrongdoing as established fact without an adequate basis and appropriate attribution.
• No naming a private person as a suspect based only on resemblance, rumor, crowdsourced guessing, or unverified leaked material.

Criticism of institutions, ideologies, conduct, and public-interest decisions is allowed. Context, target, likelihood of harm, news value, and whether the material documents rather than endorses abuse all matter.

• No non-consensual intimate imagery, sexual extortion, voyeuristic material, or content shared beyond the consent given.
• No sexual exploitation, trafficking, solicitation involving coercion, or intimate content involving a minor.
• No instructions, encouragement, challenges, or romanticization that meaningfully facilitate suicide or self-injury.
• Newsworthy documentation may be limited, warned, redacted, or withheld to protect affected people. Method details should not be included unless strictly necessary and responsibly framed.
• If someone appears at immediate risk, contact local emergency services or an appropriate crisis service. A Fireflies report is not crisis intervention.

• No sale, facilitation, or instruction for illegal drugs, weapons, forged documents, stolen credentials, trafficking, malware, or other unlawful goods or services.
• No fraud, impersonation, phishing, financial deception, fabricated fundraiser, or manipulation of a crisis for payment.
• No instruction that meaningfully enables hacking, sabotage, evasion of safety controls, or physical harm.
• No spam, undisclosed paid placement, affiliate manipulation, mass solicitation, or engagement bait unrelated to documenting an event.
• No unlawful copyright, trademark, trade-secret, or database-right infringement.

Documentary reporting about harmful or illegal activity can be allowed when the presentation does not facilitate it and when sensitive operational details are removed or restricted.

• Do not impersonate a witness, publisher, official, organization, victim, moderator, or another Firefly.
• Do not sell, rent, transfer, or share accounts, or operate deceptive account networks.
• Do not evade a warning, restriction, suspension, location safeguard, upload limit, or appeal outcome.
• Do not manipulate map clusters, status labels, source diversity, reporting tools, or correction history.
• Do not scrape personal data, run facial recognition, or build dossiers from Fireflies content without a lawful basis and authorization where required.
• Disclose material conflicts such as employment by a party to the event, payment for the submission, political campaign work, or direction from a source.

1. Assess context

   Reviewers consider the content, claimed purpose, evidence, event, language, likely harm, audience, public interest, legal context, and account history.

2. Choose a proportionate measure

   Possible outcomes include no action, warning, context label, correction request, blur, location generalization, access gate, visibility reduction, event detachment, removal, feature limit, or account action.

3. Explain the decision

   Where required and safe, Fireflies gives affected users the core facts, policy or legal basis, duration and territory, role of automation, and available redress.

4. Review eligible appeals

   A person can challenge an eligible decision without penalty. Appeals should receive human review and may affirm, modify, or reverse the original outcome.

Severe violations may lead to immediate removal or suspension without a prior warning. Repeated lower-severity violations may lead to escalating measures. Fireflies will not use a mechanical strike count where context, age of the record, correction, or severity makes that unfair.

Use the content report control for policy concerns, the correction path for factual errors, the DSA notice-and-action route for allegedly illegal content, and the appeals route to challenge a decision. Urgent safety issues may also be sent to [LEGAL / DSA EMAIL]; this inbox is not an emergency service.

• Report illegal content
• Moderation appeals
• Content & AI Policy