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WhatsApp Channels Guidelines
WhatsApp Channels are a one-to-many broadcast service, separate from private messaging, designed to help people follow information from people and organizations that are important to them. Channel admins should be mindful of the following guidelines so their updates are appropriate for a general audience.
Channel admins should be respectful of their followers and avoid sending too many or low-quality updates which could lead recipients to unfollow their Channel. Channel admins should provide a title for their Channel that reflects the Channel content and helps users make informed choices about which Channels they would choose to follow.
WhatsApp reserves the right to take action against Channels that violate the following guidance:
- Do not share illegal content or engage in illegal activity of any kind. This includes content that sexually exploits or endangers children (including child sexual abuse material), or content that supports designated terrorist, hate, and criminal organizations or individuals. Do not share intellectual property you don’t have a right to use.
- Do not share content that could cause serious harm to people. This includes content that constitutes a credible threat to public or personal safety, incitement of violence, organization or coordination of violent or criminal activities, or content that encourages suicide or self-injury. Channels should not facilitate the exploitation of people, including through human trafficking, or share content that depicts, threatens, or promotes sexual violence, sexual assault, or sexual exploitation.
- Do not engage in fraud. This includes activity or content that purposefully deceives, impersonates, or willfully misrepresents or otherwise scams, defrauds, or exploits WhatsApp or our users.
- Keep content age-appropriate for WhatsApp’s user base. For example, Channels should not include imagery that is excessively violent or graphic, or that contains sexually explicit content or pornography, as restricted by app stores. Channels should not be used to facilitate commercial sexual services, or to offer and/or transact in regulated or restricted goods.
How We Detect Violations of the Guidelines
WhatsApp reserves the right to take action on Channels, utilizing automated tools, manual review, and user reports, to detect abuse.
We encourage users to report any Channel or specific updates within a Channel that potentially violate these guidelines. You can learn more about how to report a Channel on WhatsApp here.
In addition, WhatsApp will review and respond to valid legal orders from authorities in countries where we operate.
Actions We May Take
When we detect abuse, we reserve the right to take action, including:
- Warning Channel admins of violations of these guidelines
- Suspending further delivery of updates to users
- Removing Channel updates from our servers
- Removing violating content from Channel profile fields (including the Channel picture)
- Revoking a Channel’s invite link
- Suspending a Channel, and/or
- Banning Channel admin(s) from our Service
We may take additional actions as reflected in the Supplemental Terms of Service for WhatsApp Channels.