Community Guidelines

Hearth is a place for people who love to cook. We want it to feel like a shared kitchen, warm and welcoming. These guidelines explain what is and isn't okay so everyone can enjoy it.

Be kind

Treat other cooks with respect. Disagreeing about how much garlic is enough is fine. Attacking someone is not.

Please don't:

• Harass, bully, threaten or intimidate anyone.
• Post hate speech or content that targets people for their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or nationality.
• Send unwanted messages after someone has asked you to stop.
• Share someone's private information without their permission.

Keep it appropriate

Hearth is about food. Anything you post, including recipes, photos, notes, comments, messages and your profile, should be suitable for a general audience.

Please don't post:

• Sexual, graphic or violent content.
• Content that promotes self-harm, illegal activity or dangerous behavior.
• Offensive names, bios or profile photos.

Keep food safe

Recipes affect people's health, so accuracy matters.

Please don't share recipes or advice you know to be unsafe, such as dangerous cooking or storage methods, or misleading claims about allergies or medical benefits. If a recipe involves a known risk, such as raw ingredients, say so.

Respect other people's work

Many recipes come from cookbooks, blogs and family kitchens. Sharing is part of cooking, but credit matters.

• Only share content you have the right to share.
• Don't copy a full cookbook or a paid recipe and post it as your own.
• Give credit when a recipe comes from someone else. Hearth records where copies come from, and you can note the source too.
• If you believe your work has been copied without permission, report it or contact us.

No spam

Please don't use Hearth to advertise, sell or promote things that aren't about cooking. This includes repeated identical posts, misleading links and mass messaging. Recipe videos should link to the recipe's own source and not be used to drive traffic elsewhere.

Be yourself

Use an honest display name. Don't pretend to be another person, a business or Hearth staff. Don't create extra accounts to get around a block or a suspension.

Your privacy and your control

You decide how visible you are.

• Viewable Profile: turn it off and other people can't find you or see your recipes. Any public recipe links you shared also stop working.
• Activity and Messages: each has its own switch in your profile settings.
• Block: if someone is bothering you, block them. You will no longer see each other's recipes, comments or messages, and you will stop sharing shopping lists.

Anything you share by public link can be forwarded by whoever receives it, so only share what you're comfortable with anyone seeing.

Reporting a problem

If you see something that breaks these guidelines, tap the ⋯ button on a recipe, profile, comment or message and choose Report. You can choose a reason (spam, offensive content, harassment, copyright, unsafe food advice or something else) and add details. Reports are private, and the person you report is not told who reported them.

Reporting is for content that breaks these guidelines. It isn't for recipes you simply dislike. You can also block someone at any time without reporting them.

We review every report. Please don't send false or repeated reports to target someone. That is itself a violation.

What happens when guidelines are broken

We look at each report in context. Depending on what happened, we may:

• Remove the content.
• Send a warning.
• Temporarily suspend an account.
• Permanently remove an account, for serious or repeated violations.

We may act immediately and without warning when the content is dangerous or illegal.

Questions and contact

If you have a question, a concern or a request that doesn't fit in a report, contact us at support@hearthbound.download.

Hearth works because people look out for each other. Thank you for helping keep it a good place to cook.