Child Safety Standards

Last updated: 17 July 2026

These are the child safety standards for Zero Debate, the text-based debate app published by Abhishek Awasthi. They set out our zero-tolerance position on child sexual abuse and exploitation, how we prevent it, how to report it, and who to contact.

1. What is prohibited

Child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) is absolutely prohibited on Zero Debate. There is no context, no debate topic, and no argument that makes it acceptable. Specifically, the following are banned outright:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — creating, possessing, sharing, linking to, requesting or advertising it, in any form.
• Sexualisation of minors — any content that depicts, describes or presents a person under 18 in a sexualised way, including text, fictional writing, drawings and AI-generated material.
• Grooming — befriending or building trust with a minor, or someone believed to be a minor, for sexual purposes.
• Sextortion — threatening to expose intimate imagery of a minor to coerce them into anything.
• Child trafficking — advertising, recruiting or facilitating the trafficking or sexual exploitation of a minor.
• Inappropriate contact with minors — any sexual approach to a user who is, or appears to be, under 18.
• Normalising or advocating CSAE — content that promotes, glorifies or argues in favour of the sexual abuse of children. Zero Debate is a debate platform; this is explicitly not a debatable position.

These rules also form part of our Terms of Service. Breaking them results in immediate and permanent removal.

2. How we prevent it

We would rather tell you what the product actually does than list controls we do not have:

• 18+ only. Our Terms require every account holder to be 18 or over. Accounts we identify as belonging to a minor are removed.
• Text only, with no image or video sharing between users. Zero Debate has no camera, no microphone, no photo attachments in debates, comments or chat. There is no mechanism by which one user can send an image to another, which removes the primary vector for sharing abuse imagery.
• No private messaging. There are no direct messages on Zero Debate. Debates, comments and audience chat are visible to other users, so there is no private channel in which grooming can happen unobserved.
• Reporting and blocking. Every user, debate, comment and chat message can be reported from inside the app, with a dedicated Child safety category. Any user can be blocked.
• Automated word filtering on audience chat and comments, backed by a maintained banned-word list. To be precise about its limits: this is a word list, not an AI classifier, and it does not detect grooming on its own.
• Human review. Reports go to a moderation queue reviewed by our team, with the power to remove content, suspend and permanently ban accounts.

3. How to report

In the app — tap the ⋯ menu on any debate, comment, chat message or profile, choose Report, and select Child safety. You can add details, and you do not need to leave the app to do it.

By email — write to contact@zerodebate.com with "CHILD SAFETY" in the subject line. Include links or usernames if you can, but report it even if you cannot — an incomplete report is far better than none.

Please do not download, save, screenshot or forward suspected CSAM to us. Possessing or transmitting that material is itself a serious crime, including when done to prove a report. Send us the link, username or debate reference and we will retrieve what is needed.

4. What we do about it

Reports flagged as child safety are treated as our highest priority.

1. Prioritised review. Child safety reports jump the moderation queue and are reviewed ahead of everything else.
2. Immediate removal and permanent ban. Where a report is substantiated, the content comes down and the account is permanently banned with no appeal. This is not a warn-first category.
3. Evidence preservation. We preserve the relevant account data and content for law enforcement rather than destroying it, even where our normal policy would delete it.
4. Reporting to authorities. We report apparent CSAE to the appropriate authorities, and cooperate with valid law enforcement requests and legal process.
5. Minor accounts. If we find an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete the associated personal data.

5. Child safety point of contact

6. Legal compliance

We comply with applicable child safety laws in the jurisdictions where Zero Debate operates. For India, that includes the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which criminalises publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, including their requirements on removing such material and on grievance redressal.

We also meet Google Play's Child Safety Standards policy requirements, including publishing these standards, providing an in-app CSAE reporting mechanism, and naming a child safety point of contact.

Our Grievance Officer is named in the Privacy Policy. Complaints are acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 15 days, as the IT Rules require — child safety reports are actioned far faster.

7. Review

We review these standards at least annually, and immediately after any child safety incident or any material change to how Zero Debate works. The date at the top of this page reflects the most recent review.

Questions about these standards: contact@zerodebate.com.