What we do to keep this a language app.

Direct messages

You have to follow each other before either of you can send a message. Not one of you — both. Until that happens, the message doesn’t send.

This is not a privacy setting buried three screens deep with a permissive default. It is the only way DMs work in Tokmia. In your settings there are exactly two options for who can message you:

• Friends — people you follow who also follow you back. This is the default and it is as open as it gets.
• No one — incoming messages off entirely.

There is deliberately no third option. An inbox that strangers can write to unprompted is the mechanism by which a language-exchange app becomes a dating app, and once that reputation exists it doesn’t come off. Refusing to build the setting is cheaper than moderating its consequences.

Blocking

Blocking someone is one tap from their profile, and it does several things at once:

• It works in both directions. A block you set stops them reaching you and stops you reaching them. There is no version of this where the block only half-applies.
• It removes the follow relationship both ways, along with any pending follow request. This is what actually closes the message channel, since messages depend on a mutual follow.
• It is silent. We don’t tell the other person. Their messages fail with the same ordinary error anyone would see, their view of your profile behaves as though the account simply isn’t there, and nothing in the app confirms what happened. Someone who can tell they’ve been blocked has a reason to make a second account.

Unblocking does not put the follows back. If you both want to reconnect afterwards, you follow each other again from scratch.

Blocked people in someone else’s live

If you block someone, they are kept out of lives you host. They are not ejected from lives hosted by other people.

This is a deliberate choice and worth explaining, because the alternative sounds better than it is. If a block removed someone from any live you were both in, then blocking would become a way to control who can attend public conversations — block fifty people, then sit in the busiest lives and thin them out. That is a tool worth having if you want to harass someone, and it does more damage than it prevents.

So in shared spaces the block degrades from exclude to hide. Their chat messages don’t reach you, live or in the history you scroll back through. Their mentions don’t notify you. Their gifts and invites don’t arrive. Inside somebody else’s live, the tool for removing a person is the host’s, and hosts can kick and ban.

One honest exception: audio is not filtered. If a blocked person speaks on stage, you hear them. Silently dropping one speaker’s voice produces unexplained dead air in the middle of a conversation, which reads as a broken app rather than a protected one — and it tells everyone in the live something about you. If someone you’ve blocked takes the stage, leaving is one tap.

Matched one-to-one practice is the exception to all of the above: there, a block prevents the pairing outright, in both directions. Refusing a single pairing denies nobody access to anything, and in a two-person call there is nothing to hide behind.

Reporting

Every profile has a report action. You choose a reason:

• Spam — unwanted content or promotional material
• Harassment — bullying, threats, or hateful behavior
• Inappropriate content — offensive material
• Threats or violence
• Sexual content or a minor at risk
• Self-harm or suicide
• Seems under 18 — someone too young to be on Tokmia
• Fake profile — impersonation or false information
• Host abusing their powers — from inside a live
• Other, with a description

Reports about a minor at risk, self-harm, threats and under-18 users are prioritized for review.

Reporting someone from a direct-message conversation attaches a snapshot of that conversation automatically, so a moderator sees what you saw. Reporting from a profile sends your chosen reason, whatever you write in the description box, and a copy of the profile as it looked when you reported it. If it happened in a specific message or live, say so — it genuinely helps.

You can report someone you have already blocked. Blocking never removes your ability to report, and it never deletes the conversation you might need to point at.

We don’t record your calls

Voice in Tokmia is not recorded. Not lives, not one-to-one sessions. Not for moderation, not for training anything, not held briefly and discarded.

We considered it, because recording is how you build convincing evidence for voice-related reports, and some apps in this category do it. We decided against it. Recording every conversation in dozens of countries means storing sensitive audio of people who did nothing wrong, under consent rules that differ by jurisdiction, and it changes what a practice session feels like — people speak differently when they know a permanent copy exists, and a language learner already has enough reasons to stay quiet.

The cost of that decision is honest: a report about something said out loud is harder to act on than a report about something typed. If someone is behaving badly on stage, the fastest remedy is the host’s — kick, ban, end the live — and reporting the account is what escalates it beyond that live.

Automated checks on text

Text that goes into our AI features is screened before it is processed, and content that trips the classifier is rejected rather than passed on. This applies to written input, not to speech.

What you control

• Who can message you — friends, or no one.
• Your online status — hide it, and “last seen” goes with it.
• Profile visibility — activity, achievements and communities can each be shown to everyone, to friends, or to nobody.
• Browse privately (Pro) — visit profiles without appearing in their viewer list.
• Your account — deactivate it temporarily, or delete it permanently, both from settings in the app. Deletion is not a support ticket you have to chase us for.

The rules themselves

What is and is not allowed, and what happens when someone breaks it, is set out in our Community Guidelines.

Age

Tokmia is for adults aged 18 and over, as set out in our Terms of Service. What we do about child sexual abuse and exploitation, is in our Child Safety Standards. Where local law requires an older minimum, that law applies.

Something went wrong

If you’ve been harassed, if a report hasn’t been dealt with, or if something here doesn’t match what you’re seeing in the app, write to support@tokmia.com. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first — we are not able to intervene in that.