How to behave in someone else’s conversation.

The one that matters most

Do not correct someone in a way that makes them stop talking. A learner mid-sentence is doing the hardest thing this app asks of anyone. Interrupting to fix a preposition, laughing at an accent, or switching to English to “help” are all ways of ending a person’s practice early.

Corrections are welcome. Give them after the thought is finished, keep them to the thing that actually blocked understanding, and let the person get back to speaking.

Not allowed, anywhere

• Harassment — bullying, threats, intimidation, following someone between lives to keep at them.
• Hate — attacking people over race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. Accent and nationality jokes land here more often than people think.
• Sexual or romantic solicitation. Tokmia is not a dating app and is not used as one. This includes sexual comments about another user, propositioning people in lives or messages, and using your profile as a personal ad.
• Anything sexual involving a minor. Permanent ban without warning, after we review the case carefully, and a report to the relevant authorities. See our Child Safety Standards.
• Recording or republishing other people without their consent. We do not record voice conversations, and neither should you. Screenshotting a chat to mock someone elsewhere counts.
• Sharing someone’s personal information — real name, address, workplace, accounts — without their permission.
• Impersonation, including pretending to be a teacher, a native speaker, or a different age than you are.
• Spam and promotion — advertising services, recruiting people to other platforms, mass-following, chain messages.
• Cheating the system — bots or scripts to farm coins, XP, streaks or referrals; multiple accounts; exploiting a bug rather than reporting it.
• Illegal activity of any kind.

If you host a live

Hosting is a real responsibility. A live takes its tone from whoever is running it.

• Say what the live is for in the title, and run it that way. A live titled for beginners that turns into fluent crosstalk has failed the people who joined it.
• Manage the stage. You have eight speaker slots, twelve on Pro. If two people are doing all the talking, bring someone else up.
• Use your tools. You can mute, remove and ban. Do it early — a live where someone is being unpleasant empties out fast, and the people who leave are usually the quiet ones you most wanted there.
• You are not our representative. Hosting does not make you staff, and you cannot act on our behalf or speak for us.

If you are learning

Not rules — just what tends to work:

• Listening counts. Sitting in the audience is a legitimate way to use Tokmia, for as long as you want.
• Say the wrong thing. Waiting until a sentence is correct in your head is how people spend a year in lives without speaking.
• Let people finish. A learner needs a few more seconds than a native speaker. Give them.
• Stay in the target language where you can. Switching to English is often kindness, and it is usually the wrong kindness.

How we enforce this

Depending on what was done and whether it has happened before, we may take actions such as:

• A warning — recorded against the account, and it counts if there is a next time.
• A 24-hour suspension — you cannot use the app for a day.
• A 7-day suspension.
• A permanent suspension — for serious breaches, or a pattern of smaller ones. Unused coins are forfeited and are not refunded.

Anything involving minors, credible threats of violence, or fraud goes straight to a permanent ban.

Reports go to a person. Choose a reason — Spam, Harassment, Inappropriate Content, Threats or violence, Sexual content or a minor at risk, Self-harm or suicide, Seems under 18, Fake Profile, Host abusing their powers, or Other. The most serious are prioritized for review. Reports made from inside a direct-message conversation attach that conversation automatically; reports made from a profile carry whatever you write, so be specific about what happened and where. Because voice is not recorded, a report about something said out loud is harder for us to act on than one about something typed. Report it anyway: patterns across several reports are what let us act.

What you can do yourself, right now

• Block anyone, from their profile. It works both ways and we never tell them.
• Leave. One tap. You never owe a live your presence.
• Close your inbox. Direct messages already require a mutual follow; you can also set them to nobody at all.
• Tell the host. Inside someone else’s live, they have the fastest tools.

More detail on all of this is on our Safety page.

If we got it wrong

Enforcement decisions are made by people and people make mistakes.

If your account is suspended, the app shows you an appeal form when you open it — write what happened and it goes straight to the moderation queue. If you were removed from a live by a moderator, that removal has its own appeal button in the app. Either way you do not need to find an email address.

For anything the in-app appeal does not cover, support@tokmia.com reaches a person.