Heard Child Safety Standards

Document key: heard-child-safety
Version: 1.0.0
Last updated: September 5, 2026
Effective date: September 5, 2026
Canonical URL: https://discoverheard.com/child-safety

These are Heard's published standards against child sexual abuse and exploitation. They apply even though Heard is designed only for adults.

Heard is currently published by Justin Lauinger as an individual. Heard has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material, child sexual exploitation, grooming, sextortion, trafficking, or any conduct that endangers a minor.

1. Heard is for adults only

Only people age 18 or older may create or use a Heard account, submit content, or participate through another person's account. Heard is not directed to children or teenagers.

Adult-only eligibility does not eliminate child-safety risk. An adult may attempt to upload abusive material, target a minor off-platform, or include information about a minor in a recording or report. These standards apply whenever Heard becomes aware of that risk.

Heard's adult-only rule applies now, but the public-v1 technical eligibility attestation is not active. Creator publication remains disabled, and the eligibility control and underage-account response must be activated and tested before public app launch.

2. Prohibited conduct and content

Never use Heard to create, upload, store, request, solicit, trade, link to, threaten to distribute, normalize, celebrate, or instruct others to access:

child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including material that appears to depict a minor in sexually explicit conduct;
sexualized content involving a real, fictional, generated, or purported minor;
grooming, enticement, sextortion, sexual solicitation, or coercion involving a minor;
child sex trafficking, facilitation, recruitment, or advertising;
instructions for creating, finding, concealing, or evading detection of CSAM;
sexual role-play in which a participant is presented as under 18;
nonconsensual or exploitative recordings of a minor;
attempts to identify, shame, blackmail, or further victimize a child survivor; or
contact information, locations, schedules, or other data shared to facilitate abuse or abduction.

This prohibition applies to audio, titles, profiles, descriptions, links, coded language, synthetic or manipulated media, attempts, and off-platform conduct that creates a credible safety risk on Heard.

3. What Heard does when it learns of a concern

When Heard obtains a credible report or actual knowledge of facts indicating child sexual exploitation or abuse, Heard may:

immediately stop processing or disable access to content;
restrict or terminate the involved account;
prevent further publication or interaction;
preserve relevant content, context, account, upload, access, and report records in a restricted system;
limit access to personnel with a need to handle the matter;
respond to valid legal process and cooperate with authorized law enforcement; and
take additional steps needed to protect a child or prevent further harm.

Heard will submit a CyberTipline report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) as soon as reasonably possible whenever 18 U.S.C. § 2258A requires it, and may make other lawful safety reports.

Heard will not treat every report as CSAM or send every report to NCMEC. Reporting and preservation decisions must follow the facts and applicable law. Technical file inspection is not content moderation. Heard's text-based automated moderation may flag a transient transcript for sexual content involving minors, but it cannot reliably detect CSAM, nonverbal audio, coded context, or every risk and is not proactive CSAM detection.

Heard's technical controls can keep creator audio private, route high-risk matters for restricted review, remove public delivery after an authorized decision, and preserve an existing private copy under a restricted hold. Creator publication remains disabled while trained coverage, evidence handling, hold authority, the one-year statutory preservation procedure, access review, NCMEC reporting readiness, and release procedures are completed.

4. How to report a child-safety concern

If a child is in immediate danger in the United States, call 911. You can also report suspected online child sexual exploitation directly to the NCMEC CyberTipline.

Use the authenticated in-app child-safety report reason for an audio post or creator when that control is available. You may also report a non-emergency child-safety concern to the Heard contact below. Creator publication remains disabled until reporting, restricted review, alerting, failure recovery, operator coverage, and the response procedure are tested. A report does not replace contacting 911 or NCMEC when appropriate.

Heard child-safety contact:

Child-safety point of contact: Justin Lauinger
Email: support@discoverheard.com

In a report, provide only what is safe and necessary:

the Heard handle and content identifier or URL;
when and where you encountered the concern;
a concise description of the behavior; and
whether you believe a child is in immediate danger.

Do not download, save, screenshot, copy, forward, email, or attach suspected CSAM. Do not investigate the suspected offender yourself or contact them. Preserve the Heard content identifier and report through the safe channel.

The support and safety contact is not staffed 24 hours a day and is not an emergency service.

5. Preservation and privacy

Ordinary account or content deletion does not override a legal duty to preserve evidence. Under the current version of 18 U.S.C. § 2258A, a completed provider report to the CyberTipline is treated as a request to preserve the contents provided in the report, together with reasonably accessible contextual files, for one year after submission. Heard may preserve material longer only when lawfully permitted or required.

Heard's current hold control can protect only an existing ready private-quarantine copy while public delivery remains revoked. It cannot recreate a private copy that no longer exists or authorize preservation by itself. For a completed CyberTipline report, Heard will preserve the submitted contents and reasonably accessible contextual files for the period required by law, restrict access, and document any lawful extension, release, or deletion.

Preserved material must be segregated, access-restricted, protected from unnecessary copying, and used only for safety, legal compliance, investigation, or related security purposes. Heard's Privacy Policy describes this legal-hold exception.

Heard will avoid exposing a child's identity in notices, support responses, transparency material, or enforcement explanations except where disclosure is necessary and lawful.

6. Accounts and enforcement

Heard may permanently terminate an account for a single child-safety violation or credible attempt. A person whose account was terminated may not create or use another account.

Heard may also remove related content, block pending uploads, preserve evidence, restrict associated accounts, and take action based on reliable off-platform evidence when necessary to prevent harm on the Service.

Child-safety enforcement is separate from copyright counter-notice procedures. Content preserved or removed for child safety will not be restored merely because a copyright dispute ends.

7. Controls required before creator publication

Before creator publication begins, Heard must:

implement an adult-eligibility control and an underage-account response;
activate and production-validate the in-app content and creator report path;
activate Justin's monitored child-safety contact, dedicated escalation identity, training, availability gate, and publication-pause procedure;
establish severity triage, restricted evidence handling, escalation, and law-enforcement procedures;
establish NCMEC CyberTipline/provider registration and legally reviewed reporting and preservation procedures;
implement the one-year post-report preservation period, secure-access restrictions, contextual-file handling, lawful extension criteria, and documented release or deletion;
rehearse the private-hold and disposition exclusion using approved authority, least-privilege audit, at-least-30-day review, cause-specific duration, and no-republication release procedure;
test account restriction and public-content removal;
reconcile safety retention with account deletion and privacy requests; and
complete the required Google Play child-safety self-certification if Heard is listed as a Social app.

Publication of these standards does not claim that every product or operational control is active.

8. Updates

Heard may update these standards as the Service, law, or safety practices change. The version and effective date will appear at the top. Material changes will be reflected in the Community Guidelines, reporting flow, operator procedures, and app-store declarations as appropriate.

9. Contact

General website: Heard
Child-safety contact: support@discoverheard.com
Emergency: call 911 or the appropriate local authority