Community guidelines

1. Who these apply to

These guidelines apply to everyone who uses Freetip: creators (their page, handle, profile picture, sounds and alerts) and fans (the name and message they add to a tip, and how they pay). They are part of our terms of service.

2. Be respectful

A tip’s name and message can appear on a public live stream and be read aloud to everyone watching. Write as you would in front of the creator’s audience. Honest feedback is welcome; insults, personal attacks and demeaning language are not.

3. Never allowed

In a name, message, handle, profile, sound or stream alert, never post:

• hate or discrimination against anyone because of their religion, caste, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability or any similar characteristic;
• threats, or content that encourages violence or self-harm;
• harassment, bullying or stalking of anyone, on or off the stream;
• sexual content, or offers of sexual services;
• anything that harms or sexualises children. We remove it and report it to the authorities;
• gambling, betting, lotteries or “get rich quick” offers;
• illegal drugs, weapons, piracy, hacking, or anything else that is illegal in India;
• links to scams, phishing or malware.

4. Keep money honest

A tip is a voluntary gift to a creator. Don’t use Freetip to:

• pay for goods or services, or move money between people;
• raise funds for a cause, or tip yourself;
• pay with a card or UPI account that isn’t yours;
• launder money or move it for any other dishonest purpose;
• ask your bank to reverse a tip you meant to send. If something went wrong with a payment, see our refund and cancellation policy first.

5. Respect privacy and be yourself

• Don’t share anyone’s personal details, such as a phone number, home address, email, workplace or real name they haven’t made public. This includes your own: a stream can be recorded by anyone watching.
• Don’t pretend to be someone else, such as another creator, a celebrity orFreetip staff. A handle must not copy another creator, brand or person.

6. No spam

Keep messages about the stream and the creator. No advertising, self-promotion or repeated messages. Links and email addresses are never read aloud.

7. Extra rules for creators

• Upload only sounds you made or have the right to play on your stream.
• Don’t use your page to promote anything listed under “Never allowed”, or to offer fans goods, services or rewards in return for a tip.
• Follow YouTube’s rules, as well as ours, when you show alerts.
• Use the tools you have: add banned words, approve messages before they play, and skip any alert you don’t want on screen.

8. How we keep it safe

• Before you pay: every name and message is checked against our profanity filter and the creator’s banned words. If one is blocked, the tip stops before payment, so you are never charged for it. You can change the words and try again.
• On stream: creators can approve each message first, skip an alert and add their own banned words. A message that breaks these guidelines is not shown, and a name that does shows as “Anonymous”.
• After a report: we look into it and may remove a message or sound, block someone from tipping, or warn, suspend or close a creator account. We may hold a payout while we check, as our terms describe.
• Serious harm: for fraud, threats, child safety or other illegal content, we keep the records the law requires and may report it to the police or other authorities.

Our filters are automatic and can miss things, which is why reports matter.

9. If a message is removed after you paid

The tip still reaches the creator and stays final, even if its message is held, rejected or removed for breaking these guidelines. Only payment errors are put right, as set out in our refund and cancellation policy.

10. Reporting a problem

If you see something that breaks these guidelines, tell us through our grievance process. Include the creator’s handle, the payment reference if you have one, roughly when it happened and what was said. Our response times are on the contact page.

11. Changes to these guidelines

We may update these guidelines as Freetip grows or the law changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters, we will tell creators by email before it applies.