Content & Review Guidelines (DRAFT – attorney review)

This document is a draft for attorney review. It is not in effect and is not legal advice. It is the public review policy for YayNo™, a service of Latitude 65 Technologies LLC.

What a review is for

A YayNo review is a customer's honest account of a real experience with a business. Verification shows the reviewer was a customer. It does not mean every sentence has been fact-checked.

Verification methods

• Scanned onsite: a live QR code at the business that changes after every scan and expires in 15 minutes, or a numbered single-use visit code. It unlocks one review for 48 hours.
• Receipt verified: an uploaded receipt, invoice, or contract, checked automatically and confirmed by the business or a moderator. The business can confirm a purchase but cannot reject one.
• Invited: a single-use link sent to the business's complete customer list for a period, not a hand-picked list of happy customers.
• Printed Yay / No cards (`/r/{slug}?v=yay` and `/r/{slug}?v=no`) and counter codes only preselect Yay or No. The customer can switch before submitting. The card does not, by itself, skip verification.
• Tapped at the counter: a Yay or No code at the business. It counts as verified only inside the geofence or with a live rotating counter code. Otherwise it is stored as unverified and left out of the score.

Review guidelines

• Write about your own experience as a customer. Say what happened. Opinions are allowed, including negative ones.
• Don't include hate or slurs, threats or harassment, someone else's private information, illegal content, or another person's copyrighted material.
• Don't pretend to be a customer, don't review a business you're connected to, and don't hide an incentive.
• You can edit your review or withdraw it. Withdrawing is available only to the account that wrote it.
• We do not edit your words. If a review breaks this policy, a moderator may remove it. That decision is logged.

Not allowed

• Fake reviews, reviews written by AI pretending to be a customer, or reviews of experiences you did not have.
• Undisclosed connections to the business (owner, employee, family member, competitor, or paid promoter).
• Incentives tied to a particular rating. Any incentive must be offered regardless of the rating and must be disclosed on the review. (See the FTC Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, 16 CFR 465.4 and the FTC Endorsement Guides.)
• Hate, threats, harassment, or incitement of violence.
• Another person's private personal information (phone number, home address, health or financial details, government-ID numbers).
• Illegal content, sexual content involving minors, malware, or spam.
• Impersonation, or uploading documents that are not yours to fake a visit.

What we don't remove

Honest negative reviews. Disagreeing with an opinion, or a business asking, is never grounds for removal. Businesses can't pay to remove, hide, or reorder reviews. A business account has no control to remove, hide, or request removal of a review. Only the author can withdraw their own review. A business may respond publicly, and may file a policy dispute, through the dispute process — not by paying a fee.

Reporting and blocking

Anyone with an account may report a review from the review's page. Reports are reviewed by a moderator. You may also block another user so that you see less of their activity. Reporting or blocking does not by itself take a review down. A claimed listing cannot use a report as a removal request; it files a policy dispute instead, and that also leaves the review up.

Disputes

A claimed business can file one dispute per review, on these grounds only:

• Hate speech or slurs
• Defamation or a false statement of fact about the owner personally (not a disagreement with an opinion about the business)
• Threats or harassment
• Private or personal information (doxxing)
• Not a real or verified customer, a fake review, or a conflict of interest
• Spam or off-topic
• Illegal content
• Intellectual property infringement

The dispute needs that category plus an explanation, and may include private evidence. It puts the review in the moderation queue with a status of open, under review, upheld — removed, or rejected — kept. The review stays visible the whole time it is open or under review. We notify the business of the outcome. We notify the author when the dispute is filed and when it is decided, and the author can respond or edit. If the author does not respond, the review stays up. A moderator upholds or rejects. Nothing about this flow is for sale. Removing a review requires a moderator decision note. Abusing disputes can lead to the account being suspended.

Legal takedowns

Court orders and DMCA notices are a separate admin process. They are not something a business can file from the dashboard to suppress a review. See the takedown page and the DMCA policy. A DMCA agent is not yet registered.

Moderation

We may remove content that breaks these guidelines or the law, or that we are legally required to take down. We do not edit a review to change its meaning. We plan to use automated tools (including a vendor moderation API, when enabled) to flag likely policy violations; a human reviews actions that take down a review, and auto-approval of identity claims is off in version 1. A negative opinion is not itself a policy violation.

App-store user-generated content

These guidelines, the in-product report flow, and moderator tools are intended to meet Apple App Store and Google Play expectations for user-generated content (a published policy, a way to report, and action on reports). Counsel and the company should re-check the live guidelines before any store submission.

Other drafts: Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · Content & Review Guidelines · Content & Review Guidelines · Business Terms · Founding 1,000 terms · Refunds · Legal Takedown & Dispute Process · DMCA Policy