MealLoop Terms of Use

Part 3 — Community Space (rules and moderation)

Foreword — Unlike the rest of MealLoop, which remains strictly private to your household, the community space is a public space: recipes you choose to publish there, as well as the reviews (rating and comment) you leave under published recipes, become visible to other users of the app. Publishing or reviewing in this space is entirely optional; by default, none of your data is sent there. The rules below apply only to this voluntary public sharing.

In this Part 3, the word "contribution" means either a published recipe or a review: unless stated otherwise, the rules on publishing, reporting, moderation and sanctions apply to both in the same way.

A. Community rules

A.1 What you actually publish

When you share a recipe in the community space, only a frozen copy (snapshot) of the recipe itself is published: its title, description, ingredients, steps, any photos, and the community nickname you chose. No private household data is published: not the members, not the meal calendar, not the shopping lists, not the pantry, not your personal notes, not the change history. The published copy is independent of your private recipe: later editing or deleting it in your household does not affect the community version, and vice versa.

So that published recipes are readable by the whole community, their title, ingredients and steps are automatically translated into the app's other language at the time of publication (see Part 1, sections 2.10 and 5). This translation only covers content you have voluntarily made public.

A.2 Reviews (rating and comment)

You can leave a review on a recipe published in the community space. A review consists of a 1 to 5 star rating and an optional comment: feedback, a preparation tip, a variation.

• This is not a discussion space. It is not possible to reply to someone else's review: no threads, no replies, no mentions. A review is addressed to the recipe, never to another user.
• One review per person per recipe, which you can edit at any time, without limit: changing your rating or your comment takes effect immediately. You cannot rate a recipe you published yourself.
• If you delete your review, you can leave a new one on the same recipe later, after a waiting period of a few days. This delay exists solely to prevent a rating from being changed back and forth to influence the rankings; it never applies to simply editing an existing review, and it is lifted automatically if the recipe is republished by its author in the meantime.
• A review is public as soon as it is published: the rating, the comment, your community nickname, the date and the version of the recipe concerned are visible to all users of the app. Do not write any personal information in it — yours or a third party's — that you do not want to make public.
• You remain responsible for what you write. The prohibited content listed in A.3 applies in full to reviews, as does the prohibition on any insulting or harassing statement, or any statement targeting another person personally, and on publishing another person's personal data. A rating must not be used to penalise the author for reasons unrelated to the recipe.
• You can delete your review at any time. The author of a recipe can request the removal of an abusive review under their recipe by reporting it, but can neither edit nor delete it themselves.
• Reviews are subject to the same post-moderation, reporting and sanction regime as published recipes (section B), including automatic filtering of clearly prohibited terms at the time of publication.
• A review does not constitute medical, dietary or health advice, and binds only its author: the warnings in Part 2, section 8, also apply to any information a review may contain (allergens, food safety, nutritional values).
• Recipes you save to find again later form a private list, visible only to you: it is not a public signal and is not taken into account in recipe rankings.

A.3 Prohibited content

By publishing a recipe or a review in the community space, you agree not to share content (text, image, or link) falling into the following categories:

• Hate and discrimination — statements or images inciting hatred, violence, or discrimination, or that are degrading, toward a person or group (in particular on the basis of origin, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability).
• Sexual or shocking content — content of a sexual or pornographic nature, or gratuitously violent, graphic, or likely to offend, unrelated to sharing recipes.
• Dangerous to food safety — instructions, ingredients, or practices presenting a proven health risk (toxic foods, dangerous dosages, absence of a warning on an at-risk preparation, encouragement of dangerous eating behaviors).
• Plagiarism and copyright infringement — recipes, text, or photos protected by a third party's copyright reproduced without authorization, or photos depicting an identifiable person without their consent.
• Spam and advertising — repetitive, promotional, commercial, misleading content, or content linking to sites or products unrelated to recipe sharing.
• Harm to persons — insults, harassment, threats, degrading statements aimed at another user, or publication of a third party's personal data (name, address, contact details) without their consent.

You remain responsible for the content you publish. By publishing it, you confirm that you hold the rights to it and grant MealLoop the limited license, necessary only for the operation of the service, to host it, translate it automatically and display it in the community space.

B. Moderation policy

B.1 Post-moderation

The community space operates on post-moderation: your contribution (published recipe or review) is visible as soon as it is published, without prior review. The community and the moderation team act after the fact to handle content that breaches the rules above. This approach favors smooth sharing, but means problematic content may remain briefly visible before being handled. Automatic filtering of clearly prohibited terms applies upstream, when publishing a recipe as well as a review; it does not replace human moderation.

B.2 Community reporting

Every published recipe and every review can be reported by any user, via a dedicated button, indicating a reason (spam, inappropriate or shocking content, food safety danger, plagiarism / copyright, harm to a person, other). A given user can only report a given contribution once. Reporting is a community safety tool; misuse of it (repeated, unfounded, or harassing reports) can itself result in measures against its author.

B.3 Automatic threshold-based hiding

When a contribution exceeds a threshold of reports from distinct users, it is automatically hidden from the public pending human review. This hiding is a precautionary, reversible measure: it is never a permanent deletion or a sanction against the author. A moderator then re-examines the content and either restores or removes it. Hiding a recipe does not delete the reviews attached to it: they simply stop being visible for as long as the recipe is.

B.4 Removal by a moderator

A moderator can hide or remove a recipe or a review that breaches the rules, as well as dismiss unfounded reports. Every moderation action is logged (who took the action, the content concerned, the reason, the date) for traceability, fairness, and handling of appeals.

B.5 Graduated sanctions against the author

When the same author repeatedly breaches the rules, graduated and proportionate sanctions may be applied:

• Warning — notification of the breach, with no restriction.
• Temporary publishing suspension — the author can no longer publish recipes or leave reviews in the community space for a set period.
• Ban from the community space — removal of access to community publishing, on a lasting basis in the event of serious or repeated abuse.

These sanctions only concern the community space. They in no way affect your MealLoop account, your household, or your private data (catalog, calendar, shopping, pantry): a user sanctioned or banned from the public space retains full private use of the app. Manifestly illegal content may be removed immediately, independent of this graduated scale.

C. Retention of moderation data (GDPR / FADP)

• Withdrawing your publications — you can withdraw a recipe you published in the community space, or delete a review you left, at any time; the content then stops being visible to other users and the rating stops counting towards the recipe’s average. In the case of a review, a note reading "This comment was deleted by its author" remains in its place, without your nickname or your text: it exists only so that the remaining reviews do not appear to have been reworked.
• Account deletion — deleting your account cascades to remove your community publications. Your reviews are anonymized: nickname and comment erased permanently, leaving only the star rating, detached from any account and from any data that could identify you; it remains counted towards the recipe's average.
• Moderation data — reports and the audit log of moderation actions are kept for a limited and justified period (handling reports, preventing repeat offenses, handling appeals, and, where applicable, legal obligations), then deleted or anonymized. This data is not kept indefinitely; it is only accessible to the moderation team. Where content deleted by its author had been the subject of a report, a trace of it may remain in that log, in anonymized form, for as long as the report or any appeal is being handled.

D. Notice and appeal (DSA alignment)

Consistent with the requirements applicable to online services in the European Union (Digital Services Act):

• Reasoned notice — when one of your content items is hidden or removed, or you are subject to a sanction, you are informed of it, along with the reason for the decision.
• Right to contest — you can contest a moderation decision concerning you. The challenge is reviewed, where possible by someone other than the person who made the initial decision, and the content or access is restored if the challenge is well-founded.

E. Acceptance of the rules on first publication

Before your first contribution to the community space — first published recipe or first review — the app asks you to accept these rules. This acceptance is recorded. The consent checkbox displays the following wording:

I have read and accept the MealLoop community rules.