What we have in mind for our Hush community
Self-expression
Hush is the place for you to express yourself. Sharing your thoughts and feelings helps you chill out and lift your mood.
Supporting each other
Life throws us many surprises. Hush strives to create a safe and supportive space where people help each other navigate through life’s rough waters by sharing feelings and experiences. Your expression generates energy that may inspire others embarking on their own journey of self-discovery and happiness.
Enrichment
We want every experience on Hush to add value to your life – be it gaining a new perspective, discovering a passion, influencing people for social change, satisfaction through helping others or refining the art of articulating your feelings or opinions. We want Hush to be a place for you to grow.
Fun
Explore, exchange views, reflect and meet new people. Importantly we want you to have lots of fun and laughter – this is a great way to relieve stress and help make your worries fly away. Humour and playful communication brings people together, helps overcome challenges and inspires hope. Seek out the numerous uplifting people that have found a place on Hush or explore the lighter emotions for a powerful and instant boost.
Privacy
Hush respects the importance of social gatherings that take place away from the prying eyes of those that you may know. We believe that you should have control over how you interact with our community. You may choose to expand your horizons, sharing emotions or experimenting with different personalities, with interesting people from all around the world. If you are after something more familiar then inviting your friends from your personal life or connections from other social networks may be the way to go. An even more intimate experience is also achievable for those that would rather surround themselves with trusted listeners or simply use the app as a personal journal.
What Hush expects from you
Contribute according to our community values:
- Caring
- Honesty
- Restraint
- Respect
Develop your identity:
- Build confidence
- Self-Esteem
- Sense of Purpose
- Cultural awareness
- Positive View of Personal Future
Why we have Community Guidelines
While Hush encourages you to freely express who you really are, we also strive to foster a positive and supportive community that values the wellbeing of all our users.
These guidelines establish the boundaries for the content and behaviours that we expect – to avoid any confusion:
Respect the Hush community
Hush is a place where different people from all over the globe can come to share emotions and the most personal of moments so we are unwavering in our determination to foster a respectful and understanding community. In order to preserve people’s safety and promote respect, Hush may delete your content or accounts without prior notice if you harass, threaten, stalk or attempt to humiliate or publicly shame others or use hate language.
Hush asks our community to exist harmoniously and embrace the richness of diversity. Users must not post offensive content against any ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexual orientation or religion.
Hush asks that you DO NOT call out, name drop or shame other users that have interacted with you in a manner which makes you uncomfortable. Privacy features such as the ability to Block a user or set your account to Private are at your disposal and should be used in such circumstances. If you still feel that a user is deliberately spamming or harassing you, the in-app reporting system is the correct way to ensure this matter is brought to our immediate attention.
Self-harm is an important issue that should not be glorified
We want to raise awareness of issues affecting people as we believe this can be a helpful way of coping and getting through a difficult period. Having said this, if you know someone who may have thoughts of self-harm or is going through a tough time, then there are services that can help. Hush is not a crisis support service – if you are in need of crisis or professional support, please check out the ‘I need help’ section in the sidebar of the app or check out the services in the link below:
Trigger warnings
Trigger warnings help users avoid the content they prefer not to see and help contribute to users’ safety on Hush, so we require users to tag certain content with a trigger warning before the post goes live. We require users to tag the following content with a trigger warning:
- Not-safe-for-work (NSFW)/explicit content
- Self-harm
- Suicide
Users are only required to tag posts if they include the content above. If you believe your post could be upsetting to others, you are encouraged to include a trigger warning. If in doubt, please enable a trigger warning using the appropriate toggle within the post options.
Abide by the law
Content posted on Hush must not:
- Incite illegal behaviour or violence
- Support or encourage terrorism or hate groups
- Share material that sexually exploits minors
- Constitute fraudulent activity, including obtaining or attempting to obtain financial advantage or private information by deception
Unacceptable profile pictures
For the comfort of all Hush users, Hush does not allow the use of profile pictures that include:
- Genitalia
- Nipples
- Suggestive stances/poses in underwear
- Semi nudity
- Graphic self harm images
- Pornography
- Gore
- Guns
- Promotion of violence
Before uploading a profile picture, consider whether it would be appropriate for a complete stranger or minor to view. Users as young as 13 may see your profile picture, so if it is not PG-13, it does not belong on Hush. Profile pictures that are deemed unacceptable will be replaced with a generic image. Repeated breaches of this guideline will result in your account being removed without further notice.
Other important behaviors that will not be tolerated on Hush
- Call out posts or name dropping. This rule is in place to prevent the spread of misinformation and keep users safe as we cannot verify the information in those posts. Please use the in-app report feature instead of report users who breach our guidelines. Users who breach this rule will face an immediate suspension.
- Hush posts that contain sexually explicit content must be tagged ‘NSFW’ using the in post options. NSFW stands for Not Safe For Work and is a common way of describing content that is sexually explicit in nature. Users must be 18 years of age or older to post NSFW content
- Hush is not a dating app. We do allow some user-created groups that discuss dating to remain in the app. These groups must be marked as explicit and are strictly 18+ spaces.
- Creating Groups with a sole purpose of being offensive or hateful towards any gender, religion, sexual orientation or other minorities
- Raiding of groups by posting irrelevant, off-topic, provocative or abusive content
- Spam, scams or other forms of solicitation. We do not allow users to solicit money for personal use, including links to personal GoFundMe, PayPal, Cash App etc.
- Copying Hush posts & comments to other sites without prior consent from the original content creator
- Posting gore or pornographic material
- Automated or programmatic methods of creating Hush accounts, posting content or boosting your interaction button numbers
- Username hoarding. Owning a few active accounts for various purposes is welcomed however registering and saving usernames in large volumes will not be tolerated. Devices with 20 or more active accounts registered may face an immediate ban.
- Selling usernames. Breaching this rule will result in an instant ban.
- Account sharing. Do not share your account details. If we identify that account sharing has occurred when addressing support requests, we will close the ticket.
- Harassment or abuse directed towards users, volunteers or Hush staff.
- Respect our systems – do not interfere with or disrupt the Site or the servers or networks connected to the Site