How We Think About Harassment on Whatnot (with New Policy Updates)
Whatnot began as a place for collectors and enthusiasts to connect over their passions. Over the years, it’s been wonderful to see those connections grow into vibrant communities, whether through everyday streams, charity raid trains, or real-life meetups. Whatnot is, and continues to be, a place to connect and belong.
Strong communities thrive when people feel safe, welcome, and comfortable inviting their friends and growing businesses together. Harassment undermines this sense of safety and belonging, discouraging participation and investment, which is why we have strict rules against it.
We recognize that harassment can feel different for different people. What one person sees as customer feedback another might experience as an attack. That can be a tricky nuance when someone reports harassment to us. We have high standards for behavior, and also want people to engage in reasonable and valid criticism. We’re always trying to strike the right balance, andwant to share our thinking that got us to our current approach.
Our approach
Some behaviors are not permitted on the platform, period. That can include harassing behaviors like targeted personal attacks, threats, or wishes of physical harm. If you see harassment, we want you to report it to us so that we can act.
We have a system in place so that when we get reports, we are able to do deeper investigations, watch how sellers are doing over time, and if needed, take action on a seller’s account. If you had a bad experience related to a purchase, you can also leave a seller rating and review to share your experience with others.
When we learn about potential harassment through reports or monitoring, we look at what was said, how often it’s happening, and where it’s happening.
There are some things that will always be harassment even if done once. For example, wishing harm on an individual, disparaging someone for their appearance, or creating alternate accounts to target or troll an individual. If we find you doing it, you’ll get an enforcement action on your other accounts as well.
Repeatedly targeting someone isn’t allowed. Something can start off as fair feedback, but when done repeatedly, or is the focus of your stream, it is no longer fair and can become harassment.
We look at where behavior happens. Outside of Whatnot, facts can be harder to verify, and norms may vary. Your group chat with friends is different from a Whatnot show with thousands, so for the most part, we won’t take action for behavior occurring off of Whatnot. But, if we have verifiable evidence ofoff-platform abuse organizing to occur on Whatnot,we may take enforcement action on Whatnot accounts. There may also be very rare cases where we’d take action for hate and harassment off platform – this would be if we believe that something is so severe that it threatens the long term health of our community not to act.
How our definition of harassment is expanding
We've been paying close attention to what buyers and sellers have to say about feeling safe on Whatnot. We heard clearly that our current harassment policy, while covering personal attacks and threats, wasn't addressing all the behaviors that can make someone feel harassed. Specifically, we realized that repeated and extended negativity towards someone's business practices was a problem.
We've taken your feedback to heart, and we're expanding our definition of harassment to include this kind of behavior. Even if you're talking about how someone runs their business, repeatedly targeting them is not okay. For example, we'll consider it harassment if you spend your entire stream criticizing another seller, or if you start campaigns to expose them.
We get that sometimes you might have concerns about how someone is conducting their business on Whatnot. The best way to address those concerns is to report it to us directly so we can investigate and take action, or write a review if you’re interested in sharing your experience with others. We also recognize that there might be times when a situation is newsworthy or involves a public figure, and we'll take that into consideration when we review reports.
You can read our policy on harassment in more detail here.
Tools to control your experience
We also offer a layer of tools you can use to refine your own experience. You can block a user if you’re not enjoying your interactions. You can also remove people you don’t want from a chat, mute certain keywords in your chat, and designate moderators to help you tailor the chat how you want. We know it’s important for you to shape your community in a way that makes you feel safe, and we’re continuously making improvements to our tools to help you do so.
What’s next
We’ll keep working to refine our policies and tools over time. If you have questions or feedback, we’ll be going live today, 8/21, at 9 am pst on the @whatnotsellers channel to talk about the changes and hear from you.
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