Community Guidelines

Last updated: 7 September 2026. These Guidelines form part of our Terms of Service.

Marabou was built for Black love — a place where you do not have to explain yourself, brace for a slur, or wonder whether a message was a compliment. That only holds if it is enforced. These Guidelines say what we expect, and exactly what happens when someone ignores it.

1. What we want

• Show up as yourself. Your face, your age, your real situation.
• Lead with a sentence, not a survey. "Hey" is not an opener; a reaction to something on their profile is.
• Take no for an answer, the first time. Silence is also an answer.
• Disagree without contempt. Pulse is for real talk — argue about date night, red flags and whose jollof is better. Argue with the take, not the person.
• Look out for each other. If you see something ugly, report it. You are not "telling"; you are keeping the room decent.

2. Hate and discrimination

Not tolerated, in profiles, posts, comments or messages:

• Slurs and hate speech of any kind, including terms aimed at Black people. Reclaimed use between members does not make a slur acceptable in a public feed, and our filters do not read intent.
• Attacks based on race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age.
• Colourism — ranking people by shade, "team light-skin / dark-skin" content, or treating a skin tone as a preference to announce.
• Texturism and featurism — mocking natural hair, noses, lips or bodies.
• Ethnic or national put-downs within the diaspora — African, Caribbean, Haitian, African-American, Afro-Latino. All of it is family here.
• Fetishising anyone's race, or describing a person as a type you want to "try".
• Hate symbols, extremist content, or coded numeric hate references.

Preferences are allowed. Stating one as a rejection of a whole group is not. "I love a Sunday cook-up" is a preference. "No dark-skinned women" is a rule about people, and it does not belong here.

3. Harassment

• No threats, intimidation, stalking or pile-ons.
• No repeated contact after someone stops replying, blocks you, or asks you to stop.
• No insults about someone's body, income, children, accent or family.
• No creating another account to reach someone who blocked you. That is evasion, and it ends the account permanently.
• No outing anyone's sexuality, HIV status, immigration status or anything else they told you privately.

4. Sexual content and consent

• No nudity or sexually explicit images anywhere on Marabou, including profile photos, Pulse and chat.
• No unsolicited sexual messages or images. Ask before the conversation goes there, and accept the answer.
• No prostitution, escorting, sugar arrangements, or any transactional sex.
• No sharing of intimate images of anyone else, ever — with or without their consent to you personally.
• Marabou is not a hookup marketplace and is not a platform for adult content.

5. Being real

• Use recent photos of yourself. No celebrities, models, cartoons, or pictures of someone you wish you looked like.
• State your real age. Lying about age is a removable offence and, if you are under 18, an immediate one.
• No catfishing, no invented jobs, no borrowed lives.
• One person, one account.
• No accounts run on behalf of a business, brand or "agency".

6. Scams and solicitation

• No requests for money, gift cards, bank details or crypto.
• No investment, trading, forex or "mentorship" pitches.
• No advertising, MLM recruiting, OnlyFans promotion, or driving people to other platforms to pay you.
• No phishing, malware links, or attempts to move someone off-app immediately to avoid our safeguards.

7. Minors

Marabou is 18+. Anyone found to be under 18 is removed immediately. Sexual content involving minors is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and to law enforcement, and the account is permanently removed and preserved for investigators. There is no warning and no appeal for this. See our Child Safety Standards.

8. Violence and self-harm

• No threats of violence, glorification of violence, or content supporting violent or extremist organisations.
• No content encouraging self-harm, suicide or eating disorders.

9. Other people's privacy

• Do not screenshot private chats into Pulse or onto other platforms to mock someone.
• Do not post anyone's phone number, address, workplace or full name.
• Do not share what someone told you in confidence.

10. Photo rules

• Your face must be visible in at least one photo.
• No nudity, underwear-only shots, or sexual poses.
• No photos that are mostly other people — especially not children.
• No weapons, drugs, or hate symbols.
• No copyrighted or watermarked images you do not own.
• No text overlays advertising another platform or a phone number.

Every photo is checked automatically before it goes up and again after. Explicit photos are refused and each refused explicit photo is a strike; you are warned every time. Five strikes close your account for good, and the email on it cannot open a new one. Think we got it wrong? Email support@maraboudating.app from the address you signed up with.

11. What happens if you break a rule

Posts and comments are screened before they publish. If your post contains a slur or listed hate speech, it is blocked at the moment you press post — it never reaches anyone — and you are told which rule it hit. Other breaches in these Guidelines, colourism and texturism among them, are enforced by human review after a report rather than by an automatic filter, so please do report them.

Repeat breaches escalate, and you are warned before every step:

The ladder does not reset. Coming back from a suspension and doing the same thing tells us the suspension did not work.

Some conduct skips the ladder entirely and ends the account on the first instance: content involving minors, credible threats of violence, trafficking, sharing intimate images of others, and ban evasion.

12. Appeals

Automated systems get things wrong. A word can be innocent in one sentence and a slur in another, and no filter reads context perfectly.

If your post is blocked and you believe it was a mistake, tap "Request a review" on the message you receive. A person reviews it. If we were wrong, the strike is removed and it does not count towards a suspension.

If your account has been suspended, you can appeal from the suspension screen or by emailing support@maraboudating.app.

13. Reporting someone

Tap the ⋯ menu on any profile, post or chat and choose Report. Tell us which rule it breaks — it helps us act faster.

• Reports are confidential. The person is not told who reported them.
• Blocking is instant and does not wait for us. Block first, report second.
• Deliberately false reports to harass someone are themselves a breach.