Community Guidelines
Last updated: 2026-08-28
ASL Dating exists for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and ASL community. These guidelines are the short version of what keeps it worth being part of. They apply to every part of your account — your profile, your photos, your intro video, your chats, and your video messages — and breaking them can cost you your account.
Be yourself
Real photos, real age, one real person. No pretending to be someone else.
Use recent photos that are actually of you. Be honest about your age, your Culture & Language, and your ASL skill level — nobody here is judging a beginner, and pretending to sign better than you do only makes the first conversation awkward.
Do not use someone else's photos, and do not build a profile around a person who is not you.
Do not impersonate anyone — not a real person, not a celebrity, not as a joke.
Photos that have been generated or heavily altered to show a different person are treated as a fake profile.
Empty profiles with a single blurry photo and no words are what a scam account looks like. Give people something real to respond to.
Honor Deaf culture
This is an ASL space. Treat ASL, identity, and the people here with respect.
This app was built for this community, and that shapes what is acceptable in it.
Every skill level belongs here. Fluent signers, people still learning, and hearing allies are all welcome. Correcting someone's signing unkindly, or mocking their level, is not.
Deaf identity is culture and language, not a medical condition. Do not treat it as one, do not ask anyone to justify how they identify, and do not make assumptions about what somebody can or cannot hear.
No audism, no ableist jokes, no "inspiration" framing. Nobody here is a lesson for anyone else.
The Deaf community is not one thing. Signing styles, upbringings, schools, and identities differ — including Hard of Hearing, Oral Deaf, Late-Deafened, CODA, and hearing members. Treat that variety as the point rather than a problem.
No explicit content
Not on profiles, not in chat, not in video messages. Anywhere on the Service.
Nudity, sexual content, and anything gratuitously degrading are not allowed anywhere on ASL Dating — not on your profile, not in an intro video, and not in a private chat or video message. A private conversation is not an exception.
Your profile is public to the community — photos, intro video, and bio are shown to members who have not matched with you and did not choose to see them.
Never send explicit content to anyone, asked for or not. Not in a chat, not in a video message, not "to see what they say". An unsolicited explicit message is a report category, and a report in that category suspends the account it is made against automatically.
Photos and videos are not private from review once they are reported. When a report is made, the images and video messages it concerns can be opened and read at ASL Dating in order to act on it, and are kept as evidence for as long as the Privacy Policy says.
Do not pressure anyone for photos or video, and do not keep asking after a no.
Never share, forward, or post an intimate image of another person. Not to a friend, not to a group, not ever — consent to receive something is not consent to keep it or pass it on.
Threatening to share an image to get money, more images, or compliance is sextortion. It is a crime, and it is grounds for permanent removal.
Communicate like there is a person on the other end
No harassment, no slurs, no pressure. A no is a no the first time.
Not everyone will be a match. Being told no, or being unmatched, is not something to argue with.
No harassment, threats, bullying, intimidation, or stalking — in the app, or after moving to another platform.
No hate speech, slurs, or targeting based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, body type, or hearing status.
Do not publish anyone's private information — their address, workplace, other accounts, or anything else they did not choose to share.
If someone simply is not what you are looking for, unmatch. The report button is for harm, not for taste.
Do not cause harm
No threats, no violence, no sexual contact without consent, and nothing involving a minor. These end the account.
Nothing here may promote or organize violence, terrorism, or violent extremism.
No graphic violence, gore, images of death or serious injury, or weapons shown to intimidate.
Nothing that encourages or gives instructions for self-harm, suicide, disordered eating, or a dangerous "challenge".
That rule is about what is posted, not about asking for help. If you are struggling, reach out to someone. In the United States you can call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which handles text conversations.
If someone has hurt you — here or in person — reporting it is welcome, and reporting also blocks them so they cannot reach you again.
Watch out for money
Nobody here should be asking you for money. If they are, report them.
Romance scams are the single most common way people are hurt on dating apps, and they do not start with a request for money. They start with a fast, intense connection and a story that arrives later.
Never send money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency to someone you met here, however convincing the emergency is. Never share bank details, card numbers, or account passwords.
Anyone steering you toward an investment, a trading platform, or a "guaranteed" opportunity is running a scam. There is no exception to this.
Someone who cannot ever video chat, who needs to move you to another app immediately, or whose story keeps shifting is worth reporting rather than testing.
Do not ask other members for money either — soliciting funds, donations, or gifts is not allowed here.
Keep your own contact details out of your profile and photos. Your phone number, email, address, and payment handles are exactly what a scammer needs, and once they are sent they cannot be taken back.
Make connections, not sales
This is not a place to advertise, recruit, or sell anything — including yourself.
ASL Dating is for meeting people. It is not a marketplace or a marketing channel.
No promoting a business, product, service, or event.
No recruiting for multi-level marketing, dropshipping, or crypto schemes.
No fundraising, donation links, or "support my page" requests.
No growing a following — sending people to another platform is not what a profile here is for.
No sex work, escorting, or any transactional arrangement, however it is phrased.
Adults only
18 or over, always. Reporting a suspected minor is the single most important report you can make.
Everyone here must be 18 or older. There is no exception, no "nearly 18", and no account for anyone under that age.
Do not post photos of unaccompanied minors, and never any image sexualizing a minor.
If you believe a member is under 18, report it. That category suspends the account automatically.
Reports involving a minor are preserved as evidence rather than deleted with the account, and are referred to the authorities where the law requires it. This is the one place where nothing is discretionary.
Follow the law
Anything illegal offline is not allowed here either.
Nothing illegal may be offered, sought, or arranged here — drugs, controlled substances, weapons, stolen goods, counterfeits, or any other unlawful item or service.
No human trafficking or sex trafficking, and no solicitation of prostitution.
Do not use the Service if a court order, sentence, parole or probation condition, or registration requirement prohibits you from using dating services or contacting people online.
One person, one account
One account each, and it is yours alone. No sharing it and no running several.
An account belongs to one person. Do not share it, sell it, or hand it on.
Do not run a second account. If your account was removed, making a new one to get around that is ban evasion and the new account goes too.
Do not create accounts for other people, or on anyone's behalf.
Post your own content, and leave other people's alone
Post what is yours. Never share, forward or post an intimate image of another person.
Post only what is yours to post. Do not use copyrighted photos, images from the internet, or someone else's pictures of themselves.
Do not screenshot, record, or re-share another member's messages, photos, or videos without their consent. This gets treated seriously here.
Understand the limit of that rule, though. It is a rule, not a technical control. Any phone can photograph its own screen, and no app can prevent it. Treat anything you send as something the other person can keep — and decide what to send on that basis.
Video messages and intro videos
Recorded in the app, seen by real people. The same rules apply as everywhere else.
Video is how a lot of this community would rather communicate, so it gets its own rules.
Only you appear as you. No third-party recordings, no deepfakes, no impersonations.
Never appear nude, partly nude, or sexually explicit on camera, and never send explicit material in a video.
No threatening, harassing, or abusive content — signed, spoken, written on screen, or gestured.
Video records sound as well as picture. Even where you are signing rather than speaking, whatever is audible around you is captured and sent. Say what you would be comfortable with the recipient hearing, or turn the microphone permission off in your device settings, which turns video messages off with it.
Send video to matches you are comfortable with. As with anything else, the person receiving it can capture it.
Do not game the Service
No bots, no scraping, no working around limits, bans, or the paywall.
No bots, scrapers, scripts, or automated tools of any kind.
No outside apps or artificial-intelligence tools plugged into the Service or used to collect member content.
No spam, no mass-identical messages, no chain messages.
No false or retaliatory reports. Reporting someone who has done nothing wrong wastes the one thing that protects everyone here, and it can end your own account.
Do not try to evade a suspension, a block, or a rate limit, and do not probe or attack the app or the systems behind it.
Be civil with support. It is answered by one person, and abuse there is a violation like any other — though a cancellation, a refund request, or a safety report is always accepted and acted on regardless.
Stay active, or the account is closed
An account nobody uses is eventually removed, and we will tell you before that happens.
An account with no sign-in for two years may be closed and its data deleted. That is not a punishment — an abandoned profile still appears in other members' decks and still holds personal information that no longer needs to exist. Signing in resets it. If you have a paid subscription, it is separate and must be canceled through the App Store or Google Play.
What happens when a guideline is broken
Reports are confidential. Every category suspends an account immediately — subject to limits that stop one account driving repeated suspensions — and you can appeal within 72 hours.
Tap ⋮ in any chat, match, or profile to Report & Block. Reporting a member also blocks them, so they cannot reach you while anything is looked at.
A report in any category the form offers suspends the reported account automatically — inappropriate or explicit content, threatening or violent messages, harassment or bullying, hate speech or discrimination, an underage user, grooming or targeting a minor, sex trafficking or exploitation, a scam or fraud attempt, or a fake, spam, or bot account.
That automatic step is subject to limits that stop one account driving repeated suspensions of others. Where a limit holds it back, the report is still recorded and still counts — suspension follows once a second member has a report pending against the same account.
How many reports one account can file in a short period is also capped. Reports in the three child-safety categories are never capped, and a report that can't be filed in the app is always accepted at support@asldatingapp.com.
Removing a single photo, video, or message, banning an account permanently, and blocking its phone number happen on review rather than automatically. Whether and when a review happens is discretionary, and no response time is promised.
A permanent ban also blocks that account's phone number from registering again. That is not identity verification, and it cannot guarantee somebody does not return on a different number.
Appeals: 72 hours from the suspension, from the appeal form on the suspension screen or by email to support@asldatingapp.com. A timely appeal is read by a person. One sent later may not be considered.
To raise a safety issue directly: support@asldatingapp.com.
Meeting in person
Meet in public, tell someone where you are going, and arrange your own way home. Nobody here has been background-checked.
Nobody here is background-checked, and identity is not verified beyond confirming that a text message reaches a phone. What a profile says is what that member says about themselves.
Meet somewhere public the first few times, and stay there.
Tell someone you trust where you are going, who with, and when you expect to be back.
Arrange your own transport, both ways.
Video chat before meeting, if you can. It is the cheapest way to find out whether someone is who they say.
Trust your instincts. Leaving early needs no explanation and no apology.
These guidelines describe how ASL Dating is meant to work and are updated as the community grows. They are not a warranty, a service level, or a promise of protection — Sections 11 and 14 of the Terms of Service explain what is and is not undertaken here.
Thanks for being part of it. 🤟