DRAFT, pending counsel review. This document is an internal draft prepared on 2026-04-26 by the engineering team. It has NOT been reviewed by external legal counsel. Do not rely on it for legal advice. Effective date is a placeholder pending sign-off. Apostle Pty Ltd makes no representation that this draft satisfies any specific jurisdictional requirement until counsel-reviewed.

PYLON Community Guidelines

PYLON is a curated film space. We exist for the love of cinema and for the filmmakers who make it. The community surfaces, Q&A questions, watch-party chat, comments, and any other place where you can talk to other people on the platform, only work if they stay welcoming, focused and honest.

These Guidelines are the plain-language version of what we expect. They sit alongside the Terms of Service, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Trust and Safety Policy. Where the formal documents and these Guidelines disagree, the formal documents control, but in spirit they say the same thing.

Table of contents

1. The short version
2. How to be a good guest
3. Q&A questions
4. Watch parties
5. Spoilers
6. Self-promotion and commercial use
7. Mature themes
8. Reporting and how we respond
9. Strikes and account standing
10. Appeals
11. Contact

1. The short version

• Be respectful. Disagree without contempt. Argue about a film, not about another person.
• No harassment, no slurs, no threats. Not in jokes, not as irony, not at all.
• Don't dox anyone. No real names, addresses or workplaces of other users.
• Mind your spoilers. Hide them when in doubt.
• No selling, no spam, no bots. This is a film space, not a marketplace.
• No CSAM, ever. Zero tolerance.
• No piracy talk in the open. Don't link to or promote pirate streams, ripper tools, DRM-circumvention tools, or rehosts of PYLON content.

If you wouldn't say it in a small theatre full of people you respect, don't say it here.

2. How to be a good guest

Most of our community surfaces are built to amplify the conversation around a film: a director takes questions in a live Q&A, a curator explains why they programmed a film, a small group watches a short together. Treat these like rooms you've been invited into.

Do:

• engage with the work, the makers, and the curators;
• be curious, ask questions you actually want answers to;
• credit your sources if you reference an outside review or article;
• give other users the benefit of the doubt before assuming the worst.

Don't:

• pile on a user because they've said something you disagree with;
• hijack a Q&A with off-topic questions;
• dominate a watch-party chat;
• repost the same comment on multiple titles.

3. Q&A questions

When a film has an open Q&A session, you can submit questions to the filmmaker. Curators may pre-screen submissions for live Q&As; for asynchronous Q&As, all questions are visible to the filmmaker, who may answer or ignore at their discretion.

Good Q&A questions:

• are about the film, the filmmaking, the choices, the journey, the craft;
• are short enough to read in fifteen seconds;
• treat the filmmaker as a peer, not a celebrity, not a target.

Avoid:

• "have you seen X" / "what do you think of director Y", most filmmakers don't want to be drawn into commentary on others;
• demands for free advice on your own project;
• questions that contain insults dressed as questions ("loaded questions");
• questions that are obvious spam, gibberish, AI-generated filler, or self-promotion in disguise.

Filmmakers reserve the right to decline to answer any question. We reserve the right to remove questions that violate the AUP or these Guidelines.

4. Watch parties

A watch party lets a small group of subscribers stream a title together with a sidebar chat.

4.1 Hosts

If you host a watch party, you are the room's first line of moderation. Set the tone, mute disruptive guests, and end the party if it goes off the rails.

You agree:

• not to invite minors to a party where the title is rated MA15+ or R18+;
• not to record the chat or the playback for redistribution;
• to report serious violations using the in-product report flow; and
• to be available, in some form, while the party is live (so we can reach you if there's an issue).

4.2 Guests

If you join a watch party:

• the host's house rules apply on top of these Guidelines;
• chat messages are visible to all guests in the party;
• chat messages are subject to in-product moderation, the AUP and these Guidelines;
• screen-recording the playback or sharing the chat off-platform violates the AUP, see §2.2 ("DRM circumvention and redistribution") of the Acceptable Use Policy.

4.3 Recording

You must not record, screen-capture or otherwise reproduce a watch party for redistribution. The film, the chat and the live discussion are licensed for the host and guests to enjoy together, not to publish.

5. Spoilers

We don't have a hard rule about spoilers, film discussion lives or dies on being able to discuss the work, but we have a strong preference. Be considerate.

• For films released less than thirty (30) days before your comment, hide plot reveals behind a Spoiler tag (or a clear in-text content warning if the surface doesn't support tags). The in-product Spoiler control is the easiest path.
• For longer-released films, default to "treat the title as spoilable", most regular viewers will be okay, but call out a late-act reveal anyway.
• For watch-party chats during a live screening, just wait until the scene has happened.

Curators and filmmakers may set tighter rules for specific Q&A sessions or release-event surfaces. When they do, we'll show the rule on the surface itself.

6. Self-promotion and commercial use

PYLON is not a self-promotion platform. We respect that filmmakers have their own work to promote, and we're delighted when our licensed Creators participate in their own Q&As, but the Q&A is about the film on PYLON, not about driving traffic elsewhere.

You may not, on community surfaces:

• post links to your own film on another platform;
• post affiliate or referral links of any kind;
• promote a course, coaching service, agency, OnlyFans, Patreon, Substack, Discord, Telegram channel or similar;
• recruit for any commercial activity;
• conduct fundraising, including for film projects, charities, or political campaigns.

Filmmakers we have licensed Content from may include their personal website or festival page on their PYLON profile (set by us during on-boarding). Other links must come through PYLON.

If you are a filmmaker who would like to be considered for inclusion on PYLON, see the For Filmmakers page.

7. Mature themes

PYLON is a film service. Many of the films we license deal with mature themes, sex, violence, drug use, mental illness, political violence, religious extremism, racism, abuse, suicide. We classify these films per the relevant rating regime (Australian Classification Board, MPAA, BBFC, CNC, etc.) and we age-gate them.

Discussion of these themes is allowed and welcomed in the context of the films. What is not allowed:

• using mature themes as a smokescreen for hate speech, harassment, or content that targets a person or group;
• gratuitous detail or imagery in user posts that is unrelated to the film being discussed;
• attempts to share or solicit content that would itself violate the AUP, the Trust and Safety Policy or applicable law.

The age tier of a title is set by us based on the classification of the title and our editorial judgment. The age tier of a user is set by their date of birth and any age-verification we have performed. R18+ surfaces are not visible to under-18 users at all.

8. Reporting and how we respond

If you see something that violates these Guidelines or the AUP:

• use the in-product Report control on the offending content (Q&A question, watch-party message, comment, or profile);
• choose a reason from the dropdown, "harassment", "spoiler", "spam", "off-topic", "copyright", "minor safety", "other";
• if your report is sensitive (CSAM, threats of violence, doxxing), use [email protected] instead.

What happens next:

• we acknowledge in-product reports automatically and in writing for safety@ reports within twenty-four (24) hours;
• our Trust & Safety queue triages within seventy-two (72) hours, faster for severe matters;
• we act on the report (remove content, warn the user, suspend, or do nothing if the report is unfounded) and we record the outcome on our internal audit log;
• we usually do not tell you the outcome of someone else's case (we tell you only when we ourselves take action against your account).

For more on how reports flow, see the Trust and Safety Policy.

9. Strikes and account standing

We use a three-strike model for non-severe violations of these Guidelines and the AUP:

For severe violations, CSAM, threats of violence, harassment of minors, doxxing, repeat-infringer copyright, fraud, we may skip strikes and terminate immediately.

Strikes age out of the rolling-twelve-month window unless they were upheld through a final appeal decision; the latter remain on file indefinitely.

Account-standing information (number of strikes, suspensions, length of any suspension) is shown to you in Account → Standing. We do not show your standing to other users.

10. Appeals

If you receive a strike, suspension or termination and believe it is mistaken, email [email protected] within thirty (30) days. State the action and the reason for your appeal. We will:

• acknowledge within five (5) business days;
• review with a different reviewer than the one who decided the original action;
• respond within fourteen (14) business days; and
• record the outcome.

Appeal decisions are final, except where you have a statutory right to escalate (for example, EU users may use the Digital Services Act out-of-court dispute resolution channel under Art. 21 DSA).

11. Examples, what's okay, what's not

The following short illustrations are not exhaustive, but they represent the patterns we see most often in moderation and how we treat them.

11.1 Q&A: harsh critique versus harassment

Okay. "I found the second-act pacing slack, the long take in the kitchen lost me. Were you ever tempted to cut it tighter?"

Not okay. "Whoever cut this should be sacked. Director clearly has no idea what they're doing. Garbage.", this targets the person, not the work. Repeat instances are a strike.

11.2 Comments: spoilers

Okay. "[SPOILER] I didn't see the third-act reveal coming, loved how it recontextualises the opening." (with the spoiler tag, or after the 30-day window).

Not okay. "The ending where [character] dies is so well done." on a film released two weeks ago, with no warning, in the public title page. We hide the comment and warn.

11.3 Watch-party chat: the off-topic problem

Okay. A short tangent during a slow scene in a feature, ending when the next beat lands.

Not okay. Pasting the same political slogan ten times across five different parties; or chatting about an unrelated film at length while everyone else is trying to watch this one. Disruptive guests should be muted by the host first; we step in if the host doesn't.

11.4 Self-promotion

Okay. A licensed Creator answering a Q&A and saying "if you want to see more of this kind of thing, our next project is in post, sign up for the PYLON newsletter and we'll let you know when it lands."

Not okay. A subscriber posting a Q&A question that's actually "watch my Vimeo here" with a link, on every Q&A on the platform. We remove and warn first; repeat is a strike.

11.5 Mature themes

Okay. A long-form discussion of how a film handles depictions of war, including specific scenes, in a Q&A on a war film.

Not okay. Using a film about war as the venue for posts that glorify violence against a specific group of people in the real world. We remove and (depending on severity) strike or terminate.

11.6 Safety and minors

A user who appears to be under thirteen, by their own posts, by their attempt to verify into an under-13 age, or by another user's report, has their account paused immediately, contacted via the parent or guardian channel where possible, and ultimately deleted under our Children's Privacy Notice. We do not warn or strike here; the under-13 prohibition is a threshold rule.

12. A note on tone and intent

PYLON's community surfaces are intentionally small. We don't run a broadcast comments stream under every title. We don't run a public forum. We don't have ratings, vote-buttons, follower counts or infinite-scroll discovery. The community surfaces are: Q&A, watch-party chat, profile bios, curator notes that subscribers can react to. That's it.

This is a deliberate design choice. Most user-content moderation problems on streaming platforms are downstream of design choices that maximised engagement at the cost of conversation quality. We'd rather have fewer conversations that are better than many that aren't.

The Guidelines are written with that in mind. We are slow to add features that risk adding moderation surface area; when we do add one, we add it with a clear safety model and a clear escalation path.

If you're a user who wants the volume of comment activity that larger platforms offer, PYLON is unlikely to be the right home for that. If you're a user who wants to talk thoughtfully with other people who care about film, you're welcome here, and these Guidelines are how we keep the room worth being in.

13. Special-context notes

13.1 Curator notes

Curator notes are written by PYLON-appointed curators and reflect PYLON's editorial voice. Subscribers may react to a curator note with a bounded set of reactions; subscribers may not directly reply or comment under a curator note in the launch product. If that surface ships later, the Guidelines will extend to cover it.

13.2 Reactions

Where reactions are available (heart, "wow", "tough one", and similar bounded buttons), please use them honestly. Coordinated reaction-flooding to game a recommendation surface is treated as view-time manipulation under the Acceptable Use Policy §2.6.

13.3 Direct messaging

We do not currently offer direct messaging between subscribers. If we add it, the Guidelines will extend to cover it, and we will publish a separate notice about default privacy settings, blocking controls, and reporting flow before the surface goes live.

13.4 Filmmaker self-expression

Filmmakers we have licensed Content from often want to add a personal note, link or context to a title page or to a Q&A. Within reason, and within the spirit of these Guidelines, we welcome that. The Editorial team reviews any note that goes on a title page; Q&A self-expression is moderated as any other contribution would be.

14. Contact

• Report safety violations: [email protected]
• Appeals: [email protected]
• General questions about these Guidelines: [email protected]
• DMCA / copyright: [email protected]
• Privacy: [email protected]

Apostle Pty Ltd [REGISTERED ADDRESS: TBD] [ABN: TBD] · [ACN: TBD]

Sibling documents

• Terms of Service
• Acceptable Use Policy
• Trust and Safety Policy
• DMCA Policy
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy

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