Community Guidelines

We put strangers in a room together, and that only works if everyone knows where the lines are. We’d rather tell you plainly, in advance, than make it up after something goes wrong.

If you only read one paragraph: be decent to people, turn up when you say you will, and if something feels wrong, tell us.

They cover everything you do on Outsidey, and everything you do at Outsidey events.

That means your profile and your photo, the events you propose, the venues you submit, the reviews you write, the reports you send us, and how you behave at a book club, on a walk, or over dinner. We organise these events. We’re not a listings board, so we don’t get to say that what happens at them is nothing to do with us.

We may also act on credible reports of things that happen between members away from Outsidey, where it creates a safety risk on the platform. We keep this narrow: it means conduct towards someone you met through Outsidey, not your life in general.

You must be 18 or over to use Outsidey.Everything here is built for adults, our events happen in pubs, restaurants, and other places that aren’t set up for under-18s, and we don’t make an exception.

We ask for your date of birth when you sign up, and you have to give us an accurate one. If we find out someone under 18 has an account, we’ll close it and delete their information.

If you think someone on Outsidey is under 18, tell us at safety@outsidey.co.uk.

One account each, and it’s yours. Don’t share your login, and don’t sign up on someone else’s behalf.

That depends on how serious it was, whether it’s happened before, and the risk to other people. We use the least severe measure that meets the problem: it may be a warning, a restriction on a particular feature, removal from a community, or suspension of your account. Some of the things listed below lead straight to permanent removal on a first occurrence.

The process, the notice you’ll get, and how to appeal are set out in our Terms of Service and explained in our Moderation and enforcement policy.

Most of what goes wrong at events isn’t dramatic. It’s someone being rude, dismissive, or hard work, and everyone else quietly deciding not to come back.

We split this into two. Hurtful behaviour is uncivil: insults, sniping, name-calling, talking over people, making someone the butt of the joke. Harmful behaviour is unsafe, illegal, or targeted, and it’s covered by the rules below. Repeated reports about hurtful behaviour will change what you have access to.

Example. At a book club, one member repeatedly interrupts another and makes remarks about how little she seems to have read. Nobody is threatened, and no law is broken, but three people don’t come back.

This includes repeated, unwanted contact, online or off.

It includes: following someone, waiting for them, or turning up where you know they’ll be after being asked not to; contacting someone who’s asked you to stop; finding someone on social media after they’ve stepped away from you here; sustained abuse aimed at one person; and getting other members to pile on. Harassment can be a criminal offence even where no threat is ever made, and it takes surprisingly little: continuing to show up at the same recurring event after someone has asked you to stop can be enough.

Outsidey has no messaging, which removes the most common route for this. It doesn’t remove the route that matters most to us, which is in person.

Example. A member leaves an activity group after an uncomfortable evening. Another member finds her on Instagram, messages her twice, and then books onto the next walk she’s attending.

If someone doesn’t select you in “people I connected with”, leaves your community, or stops coming, the next step is to let it go, not to find them somewhere else.

Consent means welcomed communication and welcomed actions. If you’re not sure whether something is welcome, ask. If you’ve asked once and been turned down, you have your answer.

Outsidey is platonic by default.Communities and events are for friendship. A member who hasn’t opted into dating hasn’t agreed to be approached romantically, and treating an event as a dating opportunity is a breach of these rules.

If you’ve opted into dating, that’s a preference we use for matching. It isn’t a signal you can act on towards anyone else, and it doesn’t change how you’re expected to behave at an event.

We don’t allow pick-up techniques, seduction routines, or wingman tactics, in any form, anywhere on the platform.

Example. Over dinner, a member asks another for her number. She says no. He asks again before dessert, and once more as the group leaves.

We don’t allow unwanted sexual comments, unwanted sexual attention, or unwanted physical contact of any kind. Touching someone sexually without their consent is a criminal offence, and we treat reports of it as our most serious category after the ones in rule 10.

We don’t allow anyone to pressure, coerce, or take advantage of someone who is drunk, unwell, or otherwise not in a position to consent.

Zero tolerance, no exceptions, no context in which this is acceptable.

We don’t allow: sending or showing someone an image of genitals to alarm, distress, or humiliate them, or for sexual gratification. Showing it on your phone screen counts. We don’t allow sharing, or threatening to share, an intimate image of someone without their consent, whether or not they’re an Outsidey member. We don’t allow recording someone in a private act, filming up someone’s clothing, or recording someone breastfeeding.

This applies just as much to images that have been edited, faked, or generated by software to look like a real person. An intimate image of someone that they never posed for is still an intimate image of them.

All of these are criminal offences. Anyone who does them is permanently removed, and we will report it.

Your profile photo is the one image you have to upload. It must be a recent photo of you, clothed, with your face visible, and nothing else in it.

Ask before you photograph or film anyone at an Outsidey event, and stop if you’re asked to. Don’t post photos of other attendees anywhere without their agreement. Some people are here precisely because they’re at a low point, and they may not want a record of it on someone else’s feed.

This is our house rule rather than the law, and we’ll act on a breach of it like any other breach. The things in rule 5 are different: those are criminal.

When Outsidey takes photographs at our own events, we’ll tell you at the start and give you a straightforward way to opt out on the day. You can also tell us at any time that you don’t want to appear in our photos, and we’ll honour it.

Don’t attack people because of who they are: race, ethnicity, national origin, religion or belief, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, disability, age, marriage or civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity.

There’s a difference between attacking a person and discussing an idea, a belief, or an institution. Disagreeing with a religion isn’t the same as abusing a member for practising it. Slurs aimed at a person are a breach regardless of how the argument started.

We won’t run events that exclude people on the basis of a protected characteristic, other than where the law specifically allows it and we’ve documented why. Our women-only events operate under that exception.

No threats of violence, whether direct, implied, or conditional. Implied threats count: “the next time I see you, you’ll be sorry” and “you’d better watch your back” are both breaches, and both may be criminal.

No encouraging or organising violence, and no bringing violence to an event.

We’d rather people were able to talk than not.

So: talking about your own experience, asking for support, and talking about recovery are all fine here. What isn’t allowed is encouraging, promoting, or giving instructions for suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating, or pressuring anyone else towards it. Encouraging or assisting serious self-harm is a criminal offence.

If you’re struggling, Samaritans are available day and night on 116 123. If you’re worried about someone at an event and it’s urgent, call 999.

Outsidey isn’t a place to commit, plan, or promote crime – whether in the few places you can post (your profile, your event proposals, your venue submissions, and your reviews) or in person at an event – and we’ll remove and report content and accounts involved in it. Three categories deserve to be set out separately.

Terrorism content.We don’t allow content that encourages, praises, or provides support for terrorism, or that is produced by or on behalf of a proscribed organisation. This applies to your profile, your event proposals, your venue submissions, and your reviews. Accounts involved are removed permanently and referred to the police.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse content.Zero tolerance. Outsidey is for adults only. We don’t allow any content that sexualises a child, any sexual content involving anyone under 18, or any attempt to contact, groom, or arrange to meet a child. Accounts involved are removed permanently, and we report to the police and the National Crime Agency. This is the one category where we act first and ask questions afterwards.

Other priority illegal content.This is the group that’s most likely to come up in practice, because it’s the group that arises when people meet in person. It includes harassment and stalking; controlling or coercive behaviour; threats to kill; encouraging or assisting serious self-harm; supplying or offering to supply controlled drugs; fraud; sexual offences; racially or religiously aggravated offences; offences involving offensive weapons; and public order offences.

Most of these appear as ordinary rules elsewhere in this document.

Don’t bring illegal drugs to an Outsidey event, and don’t supply or offer to supply them to anyone. Supplying controlled drugs is a serious criminal offence, and offering counts even if nothing changes hands. Anyone doing this at an event is removed permanently.

Some of our events happen in pubs and restaurants. Drink if you want to, and don’t if you don’t. Nobody should be pressured either way, and pressuring someone to drink is a breach of rule 1.

Look after your drink and your belongings, and keep them in sight. If you feel unwell or unsafe, tell a member of venue staff. Many venues run Ask for Angela, a scheme that lets you discreetly ask staff for help if you feel unsafe; it isn’t available everywhere, but it’s worth knowing about.

Don’t bring weapons to an Outsidey event.

Never send money to someone you met through Outsidey, and never share your bank details, card details, or passwords with them. Not for an emergency, not for an investment, not for a taxi home. If someone asks, don’t send it, and report them.

Don’t create a false profile, or misrepresent who you are, in order to get money out of someone. That’s fraud, and the offence is complete the moment the lie is told. Nobody has to lose anything.

Don’t ask other members for loans, donations, or investment.

Events are not a sales opportunity.

Don’t use Outsidey to sell products or services, recruit for a business, promote a multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme, recruit candidates or clients, or find beta testers.

Talk about your beliefs, political or religious, as much as anyone else at the table. Don’t use an event as a platform, and don’t press them on someone who’s changed the subject.

Don’t share other members’ personal information: their surname, address, workplace, phone number, or anything else they’ve told you in confidence.

The attendee list for an event is there so you know who you’re meeting. It isn’t a contact list, and it isn’t yours to keep, copy, or share. The same goes for anything you learn about someone at an event, including anything about their health, their relationships, or how they’re feeling.

Don’t threaten to share someone’s information, and don’t use it to find them elsewhere.

One account per person. Use your real first name and a recent photo of yourself. Don’t pretend to be someone else, and don’t set up an account for anyone but yourself.

Don’t tell people you’re something you’re not in order to get something out of them.

If we’ve suspended or closed your account, don’t come back under a new one. That includes signing up with a different email address, a different card, or through someone else. Ban evasion is a breach in its own right, and if we find the new account, we’ll close it too.

Only upload photos you took yourself or otherwise have the right to use. If you think something on Outsidey infringes your copyright or trade mark, email legal@outsidey.co.uk with the details and we’ll look at it.

RSVPs are a promise to a small group of people, several of whom are nervous about coming.

If you can’t make it, cancel in the platform as early as you can so someone else can take the spot. Cancelling is always fine. Repeatedly booking and not turning up is not, and it’s a pattern we track and act on.

Your booking is for you. Don’t bring a plus one.Everyone at an Outsidey event has agreed to these guidelines, and someone who hasn’t joined hasn’t. If you’d like a friend to come, they’re welcome to join Outsidey.

Anyone can propose an event. We review every proposal before it goes live, and we’ll approve, edit, or turn it down.

What we need from you: accurate details, a real venue, and an activity that everyone attending can reasonably expect from the description.

We don’t run events at private homes. Ever.Not yours, not anyone else’s. This is an absolute rule and we won’t approve an exception to it. Meeting strangers is safest in public places with staff and other people around.

We also won’t approve: events at venues we haven’t checked; events involving alcohol at a venue whose licence we can’t verify; events that need equipment, supervision, or expertise we can’t stand behind; events with a commercial purpose; or events that are really a date.

You can review a venue after you’ve attended an event there. We check attendance before a review can be written, which keeps reviews honest and keeps our ratings meaningful.

Write about the venue, not the people. First-hand experience only. Be honest, including when it’s unflattering.

Don’t write fake reviews, don’t write reviews for a venue you have a connection to without saying so, and don’t accept anything in exchange for a review. If you were given something, including a free or discounted place at an event, you have to say so in the review itself. That disclosure is a legal requirement, not just one of ours.

Don’t include anyone’s personal information, including staff names, in a review.

Being critical is fine. Writing something you know to be untrue in order to damage a venue is not, and depending on what you write and why, it can be a criminal offence as well as a breach of these rules.

We may remove a review if it wasn’t written by someone who attended, if it’s about a different venue, if it contains personal information, if it’s abusive, or if we have reason to believe it’s fake. We won’t remove a review just because a venue doesn’t like it. If a venue complains that a review is defamatory, we follow the process set out in our Moderation and enforcement policy, which in some cases requires us not to remove it.

Reporting is one of the few levers you have over another member here, and it works because we take it seriously.

Report things that breach these guidelines. Disliking someone, disagreeing with them, or finding them boring isn’t a reason to report them, and reporting someone because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or any other protected characteristic is itself a serious breach.

Retaliation isn’t okay.If someone breaks a rule, that doesn’t entitle you to break one back, and it doesn’t entitle you to report them for something they didn’t do.

Don’t leave a bad venue rating or a thumbs down to damage someone you’ve fallen out with. Ratings are for what actually happened.

Occasionally something that would normally break a rule is clearly fine in context: a member describing their own experience of harm, a discussion of something in the news, an obvious joke that landed badly. We’ll take context into account, and we may add a warning or restrict something rather than remove it.

The reverse is also true. These rules can’t name everything, and we may act on behaviour that breaches the spirit of these guidelines even if no listed rule describes it exactly.

Neither cuts both ways on the worst things: context never applies to rule 5 or to the first two parts of rule 10. There is no context in which those are acceptable.

We’d rather be honest about the limits of what we can offer than reassuring and wrong.

We don’t vet members.We don’t run background checks or criminal record checks on members. We won’t tell you our members are verified, vetted, screened, or safe, because they’re people and we don’t know.

What we do instead:we run events in public venues we’ve checked, never in private homes; we require a real photo; we review every event proposal before it’s published; we read every report we receive; and we act on the ones that need acting on. That’s a genuine set of controls, and it’s also the whole set.

We don’t review everything before it’s published. We review event proposals and venue submissions in advance. Profiles, photos, and reviews go live without prior review, and we look at them when something is reported or flagged.

We don’t currently use automated tools to scan or classify content.No image classifiers, no keyword filters, no automated moderation decisions. If that changes, we’ll update this document and say what we’ve added and what it does.

We’re not a court.We’re not in a position to establish what happened between two people at a dinner, and we won’t pretend otherwise. What we can do is act on reasonable grounds, in the interests of everyone else, and we will. That means we may act without being certain, and we may act on something we can’t prove.

We keep reporters confidential.We’ll never tell someone who reported them, unless the law requires it. If we act on a report, the person will be told what rule they breached, not who told us.

We’re not an emergency service.We can’t respond in real time, we can’t intervene at an event we’re not at, and we can’t make a police report for you. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999.

Support you might want, none of which is us:

• Samaritans — 116 123, free, day and night
• National Domestic Abuse Helpline (run by Refuge) — 0808 2000 247
• Rape Crisis England & Wales — 0808 500 2222
• Victim Support — 08 08 16 89 111
• Action Fraud — 0300 123 2040, or report online at actionfraud.police.uk

None of this is a rule. It’s what we’d tell a friend.

Meet the group inside the venue, not outside it, and not somewhere else first. Tell someone you trust where you’re going and roughly when you’ll be back. Keep your drink and your bag with you. Plan how you’re getting home before you need to know.

Leaving early is always fine. You don’t need a reason, you don’t need to explain, and nobody at Outsidey will think anything of it. If you want an excuse, use us: say Outsidey emailed you about something.

If something happens at an event, or you feel unsafe, tell the venue staff, and tell us afterwards at safety@outsidey.co.uk. If it’s a crime, report it to the police. We’ll help where we can, and we’ll act on our side regardless of whether you report it to anyone else.

We want events to work for you, and we’d rather sort that out before you arrive than after.

Tell us about any access needs in your profile or at hello@outsidey.co.uk, and we’ll take them into account. If a venue doesn’t work for you, tell us, and we’ll look at what else we can do. We never charge anyone for meeting an access need.

If you’re a member: use the report option on the post-event feedback page. If the event was a while ago and the feedback window has closed, email safety@outsidey.co.uk (or support@outsidey.co.uk — both reach us) and tell us the event and the person. There’s no time limit on reporting something to us.

If you’re not a member: email safety@outsidey.co.uk. You don’t need an account. This route is for anyone affected, including venue staff, someone named in a review, or someone who came to an event with a member.

What happens next.We read every report. We’ll look at what you’ve told us, at anything else we hold, and usually at what the other person has to say. We’ll take action if we think, on reasonable grounds, that a rule has been broken. We won’t always be able to tell you the outcome, because it’s often information about someone else, but we’ll confirm we’ve dealt with it.

If it’s urgent and someone is at immediate risk, call 999 first and tell us afterwards.

Full detail on how decisions are made, what notice you get, and how to appeal is in our Terms of Service and our Moderation and enforcement policy.

We’ll update these guidelines when our service changes, when our safety practices change, or when the law changes.

When a change materially affects your rights or how we enforce these rules, we’ll give you reasonable notice before it takes effect, update the effective date, and describe what changed on this page. If you don’t want to accept a material change, you can cancel your membership, and the position on your fee is set out in our Terms of Service.

What changed: Version 1.1 tightens the wording of rule 10, and removes a handful of asides that were not rules. What is and is not allowed has not changed.