Laybell Community Guidelines

1. The Spirit of Laybell

Effective Date: July 27, 2026. Last Updated: July 27, 2026.

Laybell is a place to share your sound and your story. You can post to your feed, share 24-hour stories, create reels and slideshows, comment, like, save, share, follow people, send direct messages, build public and private playlists, and upload your own music and audio. When someone else uploads a song, you can attach it to your own posts and stories with our "use this song" feature.

These Community Guidelines (the "Guidelines") are the friendly, plain-English companion to our Terms of Service. They explain and illustrate the standards in our Terms so the community stays creative, safe, and welcoming. The Terms of Service are the binding agreement and control in any conflict; these Guidelines supplement and are governed by the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy. Capitalized words like the Service, Content, User Content, Audio Content, Ad Creative, and Attributed Uses have the meanings given in the Terms.

These Guidelines apply to everything on Laybell. That includes your feed posts, stories, reels, slideshows, comments, direct messages, playlists, profiles, uploaded audio, and any ad creatives. Wherever Content appears on the Service, these Guidelines apply.

Our hope is simple. Make great things, treat people well, and respect the rights of others. The rules below are how we keep that promise to one another.

2. Who Can Be Here

Laybell is for people who are at least 13 years old. The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly allow them to use it.

• You must be at least 13 to have an account.
• If you are 13 to 17, you may use Laybell only with the verifiable consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian.
• Advertisers who use our paid promotion tools must be at least 18.
• Lying about your age or eligibility is a violation. This includes giving a false age to get around the 13+ requirement or to reach adult features or content, and it may result in content removal or account termination.

The full eligibility and age requirements, including the verifiable parental consent rules, live in the Terms of Service. Please read them for the complete details.

3. Respect People

Laybell only works when people feel safe being themselves. Disagreement is fine. Cruelty is not. The following are not allowed:

• Harassment or bullying, including targeting, demeaning, or repeatedly contacting someone who does not want to hear from you.
• Hate speech, slurs, or attacks against people based on protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, age, sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
• Threats of violence, or content that incites, encourages, or celebrates violence against any person or group.
• Doxxing, meaning sharing someone's private or identifying information, or sharing contact information you have no right to share, without their permission.
• Sharing or threatening to share intimate or sexual images of someone without their consent, sometimes called revenge porn. Non-consensual sexual or intimate content is never allowed, and our allowance for tasteful or artistic nudity never covers it.
• Encouraging, promoting, or instructing self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. In the United States, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Anywhere else, please contact your local crisis line or emergency services. You are not alone. Where someone may be at imminent risk, we may surface safety resources or contact the appropriate authorities.

4. Protect Minors

Protecting young people is something we take with absolute seriousness. There is zero tolerance here, with no exceptions.

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is strictly prohibited.
• Any sexualization of minors, in any form, real or simulated, is strictly prohibited.
• Grooming, or any attempt to exploit, endanger, or sexually solicit a minor, is strictly prohibited.
• Inappropriate contact with a minor by an adult, including attempts to isolate, manipulate, or arrange offline contact with a minor, is not allowed.

We use automated and manual measures to detect this material. Violations are removed immediately, the account is banned, and the matter is reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as required by U.S. law (18 U.S.C. 2258A), and we cooperate with law enforcement. Sexual content of any kind must always be kept away from minors.

Parents, guardians, or anyone with an urgent safety concern about a minor can contact us directly at support@laybell.app. Privacy requests about a minor can go to privacy@laybell.app.

5. Mature Content

Laybell makes room for grown-up creativity, within clear limits. Laybell is a 13+ community and is not an adult app, so even permitted mature content must follow the limits below and must never be shown or directed to anyone under 18.

• Mature, suggestive, and adult themes are allowed, and so is tasteful and artistic nudity.
• Pornography and sexually explicit content are not allowed.
• Shock content, gore, and extreme or graphic violence are not allowed.
• Sexual content must be kept away from minors at all times.

Where the line is

Nudity in an artistic, educational, documentary, or otherwise non-sexualized context may be allowed. Depictions of sexual acts, sexually explicit or gratification-focused material, and content whose primary purpose is sexual arousal are not. We decide borderline cases at our discretion, and we will not always draw a perfect bright line, but this is the standard we apply.

Keeping it away from minors

You must not direct sexual or adult content at minors, share it with a user you know or should know is a minor, or place it where it is intended for or primarily targets minors. Where the app gives you a control to mark or flag mature content or nudity, you must use it. Laybell may label, age-gate, restrict, or remove mature content, and we do not knowingly show sexual or adult content to users we know to be under 18. Adult themes and tasteful or artistic nudity are permitted only in age-appropriate contexts, and posting such content where minors can see it is a violation.

6. Keep It Legal and Safe

Laybell is not a venue for illegal activity or for putting other people at risk. The following are not allowed:

• Illegal activity of any kind, or content that promotes or facilitates it.
• The sale, solicitation, or promotion of regulated, dangerous, or illegal goods or services, including drugs, drug paraphernalia, weapons, firearms, ammunition, and explosives.
• Fraud, scams, deceptive schemes, or attempts to trick people out of money or information.
• Malware, phishing, or any code or link designed to harm, deceive, or steal from others.

Some categories, such as alcohol, tobacco and vaping, and gambling, may appear as ordinary content within the law, but the sale or solicitation of them to or among users may be restricted or removed at our discretion, and they may never be advertised. See Section 10 for our advertising rules.

To help protect you, Laybell screens links shared on the Service, including links in profiles, direct messages, and ads. We may show you a links destination and a warning before you leave Laybell, and we may block links we identify as malicious, deceptive, or otherwise unsafe. These tools are automated, are not perfect, and are not a guarantee, so always use your own judgment before opening any link or sharing personal information. You remain responsible for the links you post, and as explained in the Terms of Service we do not control and are not responsible for third-party websites or their content.

7. Respect Rights and Music

Music is the heart of Laybell, and all of it is uploaded by users. There is no licensed catalog, so the rights are your responsibility.

• Only upload Content and Audio Content that you created or that you have all the rights to use, including the music, recordings, images, and video in your posts.
• The "use this song" feature is for sharing audio within Laybell. It does not give you rights to use that audio anywhere else, and it does not transfer ownership.
• When you upload audio, other users can attach it to their own posts and stories. If they do so before you delete it, those existing uses (Attributed Uses) may remain on Laybell even after you delete your original, as explained in the Terms.
• Do not post Content that infringes anyone's copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property or publicity rights. This includes imitating or synthesizing a real person's voice, likeness, or identity without their permission.

Copyright complaints are handled through our DMCA notice-and-takedown process, with a registered agent and a repeat-infringer policy. The full procedure, including how to send a notice to dmca@laybell.app, is described in the Terms of Service.

Originality and reposting

Laybell is for people who make things. Sharing other people’s work is also part of the app, and nothing in this section restricts our own sharing features. This section is about something narrower: Content lifted from somewhere else and posted as a feed of its own.

Originality is often a matter of judgment, so we treat it mainly as a distribution question rather than a removal one. Under the Terms we may decline, remove, or limit the reach of Content. For the standards below, our normal response is to limit reach, which means the post stays up but is not recommended as widely. We remove Content under this section only when it also breaks another rule, such as the rights rules above or the spam rules in Section 8.

• Third-party watermarks. Do not post Content carrying another platform’s watermark, username bug, or end card, for example a TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or Snapchat overlay. Work you made is welcome here no matter where else you posted it. Export a clean copy without the other platform’s branding.
• Bulk duplicates. Do not post the same or near-identical Content over and over, across multiple accounts, or on a schedule designed to flood a feed, hashtag, or community. Sharing your own work more than once is fine. Mass-posting to occupy space is not.
• Wholesale re-uploads. Do not build an account mainly out of other people’s Content reposted as your own feed with nothing meaningful added. Compilations, reactions, edits, commentary, and remixes are welcome when you have the rights and you have genuinely added something of your own.

This section never applies to two things. First, our own sharing features: attaching another user’s audio with “use this song”, the attribution that links back to the original uploader, and resharing a Laybell post with the repost button are all intended uses of the Service and are never treated as unoriginal. Second, your own back catalogue: work you created is yours to post whenever you like, including work you have published elsewhere, as long as it does not carry another platform’s watermark.

Originality and rights are separate tests, and both apply. Having permission to use someone’s work does not make the post original, and adding something of your own does not give you rights you do not have.

8. Be Authentic: No Impersonation or Deceptive AI

Trust depends on real people and honest activity. On Laybell, streams, views, likes, badges, and points are engagement metrics defined in the Terms. They have no monetary value, and gaming them is purely an integrity issue. The following are not allowed:

• Impersonating another person, brand, or organization, or pretending to be someone you are not.
• Fake accounts, or creating accounts to deceive or mislead.
• Spam, including repetitive, unwanted, or junk content and messages.
• Fake engagement, such as bots or bought or automated likes, comments, follows, saves, shares, views, or streams.
• Manipulating, gaming, or circumventing the stream-credit, view-counting, or anti-fraud systems, including spoofing or resetting the device identifier to defeat usage caps.
• Scraping, crawling, or otherwise accessing the Service through automated means without our permission.
• If you are paid or given anything of value to post content, you must clearly disclose it (for example, "#ad" or "Sponsored"), as required by the Terms.

Impersonation and synthetic media, including AI

Do not use Laybell to impersonate anyone, or to mislead people about who created, performed, or endorsed something. This applies to real people, to recording artists, musicians, and public figures, and to brands and organizations, and it applies equally to human-made content and to AI-generated, AI-voice-cloned, or deepfaked content. What matters is the intent to deceive: passing your content, account, or identity off as someone else, or as something they made, said, performed, or endorsed.

• Do not impersonate a real person, artist, band, brand, or organization, or set up an account or post content designed to make people believe you are them or that they are behind it.
• Do not post AI-generated, voice-cloned, deepfaked, or imitation audio, music, video, or images that are made to sound or look like a real, identifiable artist or person in a way that could mislead people into believing it is genuinely them. For example, an AI-generated track made to pass as a real artist’s vocals or as their new release is not allowed.
• Do not use a real person’s or brand’s name, likeness, voice, logo, or persona to falsely suggest their identity, sponsorship, endorsement, affiliation, or involvement.
• If you post synthetic or AI-generated media that depicts a real, identifiable person, you must clearly and conspicuously disclose that it is AI-generated or not real.
• Clearly labeled parody, satire, commentary, criticism, or fan content is allowed when a reasonable person would not mistake it for the real person, artist, or brand, and when it does not use their actual recordings or otherwise infringe their rights. Calling something a parody does not excuse content whose real purpose is to deceive.

Impersonation and unauthorized synthetic depictions can also violate publicity, trademark, and copyright rights (see Section 7). You can report impersonation in the app, and affected people or rights holders can also reach us through the reporting and DMCA or publicity-rights process described in the Terms of Service. We may remove or label the content and act on the account under Section 12.

9. Do Not Abuse the Platform

Help us keep Laybell running smoothly and fairly for everyone. The following are not allowed:

• Evading a ban, suspension, or other enforcement action, including creating new accounts to get around it.
• Interfering with, disrupting, or overloading the Service, its security, or its infrastructure.
• Selling ad placements or running paid promotion on Laybell outside our official Ad Manager and Spotlight tools.

Paid promotion happens only through our self-serve Ad Manager and Spotlight, which are paid for with Laybell Credits. Buying reach, engagement, or placement anywhere else is not allowed.

10. Advertising Rules: Clean Ads Only

Laybell offers paid promotion through a self-serve Ad Manager, with feed, reels, and audio ad campaigns that use a budget, and through Spotlight, a paid boost for a post. Both are purchased with Laybell Credits. Advertisers must be at least 18.

We keep ads clean. The following ads are prohibited:

• Illegal, deceptive, or misleading ads.
• Adult or sexual ads.
• Alcohol.
• Tobacco, vaping, and e-cigarettes.
• Recreational or illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia.
• Gambling and betting.
• Weapons, firearms, ammunition, and explosives.
• Political, electoral, and issue ads.
• Any other category we determine to be regulated, sensitive, unsafe, or otherwise inconsistent with these Guidelines.

Advertiser responsibilities

• Ads must be truthful and must not impersonate any person, brand, or organization.
• Ads must comply with all applicable advertising laws and required disclosures.
• You are solely responsible for your ad content, claims, and rights clearances, as set out in the Terms.

All of these Community Guidelines apply to ads as well. We may review, label, reject, pause, or remove any ad at our discretion. Questions about advertising can go to support@laybell.app.

11. Reporting and Safety Tools

You help keep Laybell safe. We give you tools to take action, and we review what you send us.

• Report content that breaks these Guidelines.
• Report accounts that violate these Guidelines or the Terms.
• Report ads that break these Guidelines.
• Block users you do not want to interact with.
• Archive your own content to take it out of view.
• Hide your account, or delete your account, as described in the Terms.

We review reports and take action where appropriate. Reporting something does not guarantee a specific outcome, but every report helps us understand and protect the community.

What happens to a report: we keep a record of the report and a copy of what was reported so our team can review it, even if the content or account is later deleted. Content that is under review, under investigation, or subject to a legal hold may be preserved and cannot be deleted until the matter is resolved. We may also share reports and preserved content with law enforcement where the law requires it, including reporting child sexual abuse material to NCMEC.

12. How We Enforce These Guidelines

These Guidelines apply to all Content and every surface of the Service, including feed posts, stories, reels, slideshows, comments, direct messages, playlists, profiles, uploaded audio, and ad creatives. Enforcement is tiered and discretionary. Depending on the severity of a violation and your history on Laybell, we may take any of the following actions, and we decide which response fits each situation.

• Warn you about the issue.
• Remove the Content involved.
• Limit or remove access to certain features.
• Restrict your account.
• Suspend your account.
• Permanently terminate your account.
• Adjust, reset, or invalidate engagement metrics such as streams, views, or follows obtained through abuse.

There is no fixed public strike count. We respond based on what we see. Severe violations, such as CSAM or credible threats of violence, result in immediate content removal and a permanent ban, and may be referred to law enforcement.

Where required or permitted by law, we may preserve and disclose information, including account and Content information, to law enforcement or other authorities. Where required by law, including the EU Digital Services Act, we provide a statement of reasons for enforcement actions and offer the internal complaint-handling and out-of-court dispute options described in the Terms of Service.

13. Appeals

If you believe we made a mistake with an enforcement decision, you can contact us at support@laybell.app to ask us to review the decision. Explain what happened, and we will take another look, though we cannot promise a particular result. Where required by law, including the EU Digital Services Act, you may also have a statement of reasons and additional appeal or out-of-court options. More on how enforcement and appeals work, including those rights, is set out in the Terms of Service.

14. Relationship to the Terms and Privacy Policy

These Community Guidelines explain and illustrate the standards in our Terms of Service. The Terms of Service are the binding agreement and control in any conflict. These Guidelines supplement and are governed by the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, and they are not a substitute for them. To understand how we collect and use information, please read the Privacy Policy.

15. Changes to These Guidelines

Laybell grows and changes, and these Guidelines may change too. When we make updates, we will revise the Effective Date and Last Updated date above. To the extent permitted by law, your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the current version, except where applicable law requires your affirmative consent.

For material changes, and for users with mandatory local rights, including in the EU and UK, the notice and consent rules in the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply and control. We encourage you to check back from time to time.

16. Contact Us

We are here to help. Reach out anytime.

• General questions, support, appeals, and advertising: support@laybell.app
• Privacy questions: privacy@laybell.app
• Copyright and DMCA notices: dmca@laybell.app

Laybell LLC, a Maryland limited liability company. Thanks for being part of Laybell and for helping keep it a great place to be.