Community Guidelines

The principle

Wayfound only works if the social proof on it is real. The single most important rule is: don't fake stays. Everything else flows from that — be honest, be respectful, don't try to game the system, and treat other travelers the way you'd want to be treated.

What's allowed

• Logging hotels you actually stayed at — verified by card, email, GPS, or a Wayfound-issued booking is best, but a manual log with a Self-reported badge is fine too.
• Honest reviews and ratings. Praise hotels you loved; warn travelers about hotels you didn't.
• Photos you took, or photos you have permission to share.
• Trip drafts, wishlists, friend tagging (with respect for what your friends share back to you).
• Constructive feedback to other users in comments.

What's not allowed

Fake stays & trust manipulation

• Logging stays you didn't actually take, including stays at hotels where you only briefly visited the lobby or restaurant.
• Coordinating with other users to bulk-log the same hotel.
• Creating multiple accounts to inflate stay counts.
• Submitting altered receipts, booking confirmations, or transaction histories to obtain a Verified badge.

Harassment, threats & doxxing

• Harassing, threatening, or intimidating other users or hotel staff.
• Posting another person's private information (home address, phone, email, place of work, government ID, etc.) without their consent.
• Coordinated pile-ons or brigades against a person or property.
• Impersonating another person, hotel, brand, or Wayfound itself.

Hate, discrimination, violence

• Content that attacks or dehumanizes people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or serious medical condition.
• Praise, support, or representation of terrorist organizations, criminal organizations, or organized hate groups.
• Threats or incitement of violence against any person or group.

Sexual content

• Sexually explicit imagery or text.
• Any content that sexualizes minors. This is reported to NCMEC and law enforcement and results in immediate, permanent account termination.
• Non-consensual intimate imagery ("revenge porn") of any person.

Illegal activity

• Buying, selling, or trading illegal goods or services through Wayfound.
• Coordinating travel for illegal activity (including human trafficking — see FOSTA-SESTA).
• Sharing or facilitating account credentials, points-program account access, payment-card data, or loyalty-program identity theft.

Spam & abuse of the platform

• Bulk follows, follow-unfollow scripts, automated commenting, or other engagement manipulation.
• Commercial spam, link-spam, off-platform promotion.
• Scraping, crawling, or bulk data extraction by any means other than a Wayfound-provided API with our written permission.
• Probing, scanning, or testing the security of the Service except through a coordinated disclosure program; see legal@wayfoundsocial.com.

Intellectual-property infringement

• Don't post content you don't own or don't have permission to share.
• If you believe content on Wayfound infringes your copyright, follow the DMCA Notice & Takedown procedure.

Misuse of the social graph

• Logging companions' identities or stays without their permission.
• Re-sharing other users' private content outside the audience that user authorized.
• Using Wayfound to build a database of travel behavior of any person other than yourself.

Hotel and provider conduct

• Reviews must reflect your honest experience. Don't accept payment, comps, or other inducement in exchange for a positive review without disclosing the material connection clearly within the post (FTC requires "clear and conspicuous" disclosure — phrases like "comped stay" or "hosted by [hotel]" work).
• Don't post reviews of properties you haven't stayed at — including competitive negative reviews.
• Property owners and staff: don't pose as guests, and don't bulk-suppress legitimate negative reviews of your own property.

Reporting & enforcement

Every post, review, comment, and user profile has a "Report" affordance under the "···" menu with categories: fake stay, spam or promotional content, harassment or bullying, inappropriate photo, impersonation, or other.

We review reports on the following SLAs:

• Harassment or threats — within 4 hours
• Fake stay — within 24 hours
• Spam or promotional — within 48 hours
• Other — within 72 hours

Reports involving threats of violence, child sexual abuse material, or doxxing are escalated immediately and handled outside the standard queue. We may also use automated signals to surface likely-fraudulent stay clusters; flagged content goes to admin review, not to automatic action.

Actions we may take

• Remove the content with notification to the author.
• Issue a warning strike against the account.
• Restrict the account (limit who can see posts, disable comments, etc.).
• Suspend the account for a set period.
• Permanently terminate the account, including for first-strike severe violations (CSAM, doxxing, credible threats).
• Refer the matter to law enforcement where required.

We log every moderation decision and the rationale. If your content was removed or your account suspended, you'll receive an in-app notification and an email explaining what rule was violated and what was removed. You can appeal by replying with context; appeals are reviewed by a different admin than the original decision-maker (segregation of duties). Expected response time on appeals: 72 hours.

Government and emergency requests

We respond to lawful, properly-scoped legal process. We do not respond to informal law-enforcement asks for user data outside the legal-process channel. For emergency disclosure requests involving risk to life, the on-call team can act within hours under documented criteria. We publish a transparency report annually starting in our second year of operations.

Changes

We may update these Guidelines as the product and community evolve. Material changes will be announced in-app.

Contact

Trust & Safety: legal@wayfoundsocial.com
Security disclosure: legal@wayfoundsocial.com
Appeals: reply to the moderation email you received, or write to legal@wayfoundsocial.com.