Acceptable Use Policy

This policy governs use of the Debategle website, API, and real-time services. It supplements the Terms of Service and the Community Rules at /rules. Violations can result in rate limiting, suspension, or permanent removal from the platform.

Prohibited uses

• Using the service if you are under 18, or facilitating use by a minor
• Any activity that is illegal in your jurisdiction or ours
• Harassment campaigns, coordinated reporting abuse, or brigading of any user
• Creating accounts to evade a ban or suspension
• Operating bots, scripts, or automated tools that participate in debates or manipulate matchmaking and ratings
• Mass account creation, credential stuffing, or automated signup
• Scraping user profiles, debate transcripts, or any non-public data
• Attempting to bypass, disable, or deceive the moderation systems, including tampering with video frame sampling
• Probing, scanning, or exploiting vulnerabilities outside of responsible disclosure (below)
• Impersonating another person, a moderator, or Debategle staff
• Reselling, sublicensing, or white-labeling the service without written permission

Automated enforcement

Debategle applies rate limits to authentication-sensitive and abuse-prone endpoints, throttles real-time traffic per user, and uses layered automated moderation across text, voice captions, and video frames. These systems act automatically and their decisions are logged. Attempting to circumvent them is itself a violation of this policy.

Security research and responsible disclosure

We welcome good-faith security research. If you find a vulnerability, report it through the contact page or the address published in /.well-known/security.txt. Give us a reasonable window to fix the issue before public disclosure, do not access other users’ data beyond what is needed to demonstrate the issue, and do not degrade the service. We will not initiate legal action against researchers who act in good faith within these rules. This authorization covers only systems we operate: it cannot authorize testing of third-party services we use (such as Clerk, Supabase, or Cloudflare), and it does not bind third parties or law enforcement.

Consequences

Depending on severity, violations result in warnings, strikes, escalating temporary bans (24 hours, 72 hours, 7 days, permanent), suspension pending review, or immediate permanent removal. Ban evasion resets nothing: new accounts created to evade enforcement are removed when detected.