Safety Policy
Version 2025-01-01
Not an emergency service
OnBetterTerms cannot dispatch help, does not contact emergency services, and does not monitor accounts in real time. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number.
What we detect
Content you write may be assessed for indications of serious risk — including suicidal ideation, self-harm, credible threats to others, domestic violence, sexual violence, coercive control, stalking, child-safety concerns, and medical emergencies.
Assessment is based on structure — expressed intent, specific plan, access to means, timeframe, identified target, immediacy, repetition, and whether the writing should be read literally — rather than keyword matching. Uncertain assessments do not escalate.
What we do
Depending on assessed severity we may surface crisis resources, suspend ordinary relationship guidance, suggest contacting someone you trust, and — for the most serious cases — queue the relevant entry for review by a person holding a restricted safety role.
The privacy exception
Your private notes stay private from the other person in this space. That does not change. There is one limit worth knowing about. If something you write suggests someone is in immediate danger, we may show you crisis resources, and in a small number of serious cases a reviewer on our team may look at the relevant entry. That access requires a restricted role and is recorded in an audit log. We are not an emergency service. We cannot call anyone for you, and we do not contact the police. If someone is in danger right now, contact your local emergency number.
What we never do
- We never notify another member of your space that a safety concern was raised.
- We never disclose safety-planning content to another member.
- We never treat violence or coercion as a two-sided disagreement.
Access controls
Safety records are readable only by accounts holding the safety-reviewer or platform-administrator role. Support and analytics accounts cannot reach them. Each access writes an audit record before the content is decrypted, and a reviewer opens one case at a time — there is no view that lists the contents of the queue.