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Community Guidelines

The behavioural standard for rooms, chat, reviews and every other shared space.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

ACADA is a place to teach and learn any subject the law allows. We do not remove courses or conversations for being controversial, unpopular or something we disagree with. We do remove what the law forbids, we keep shared spaces usable for the people in them, and we protect the platform's payments and reviews from being gamed. Break a rule and you get a written warning first; keep breaking it and you lose the account.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. Who this applies to

Everyone with an ACADA account, everywhere on ACADA: courses and everything in them, course rooms and other rooms, direct messages, reviews, assignment submissions, profiles and portfolios, press articles, and anything you upload. It applies the same way to students, instructors, collaborators, affiliates and journalists.

Throughout this document, legal means legal under the law of the United States. If a court or authority in another country sends us a valid order about content that is legal here, we comply with the order, which may mean removing or restricting that content, and we tell the person who posted it.

2. What we expect

Teach what you know. Learn what you want. Say what you think. Treat the people you share a room with as people. The rest of this document is the short list of exceptions.

3. Any legal topic is allowed

A course, lesson, article or discussion may be about any subject. Religion, politics, medicine, law, money, drugs, weapons, sexuality, security and history are all fine, and so is a position on any of them that most people would find wrong or offensive. We do not review courses for accuracy before they are published, and we do not remove content because someone disagrees with it.

The limits are in section 4 and, in full, in the Prohibited Content policy. Everything else stays up.

4. Content that is not allowed anywhere

Illegal content. Content that breaks the law is removed as soon as we find it. This includes: any sexual content involving a minor, whether photographic, drawn or written; intimate images of a person shared without their consent; a genuine threat to hurt someone, or encouragement to hurt someone; material that supports a terrorist organisation; content that infringes someone's copyright or trademark, which is handled under the Copyright & DMCA policy; content a court has found to be defamatory; and selling, sourcing or arranging anything it is illegal to sell, such as controlled drugs, weapons you may not sell, counterfeit goods or stolen data.

Sexually explicit content. Pornography, explicit imagery or video, and sexual services are not allowed even where they are legal. Sex education, anatomy, medicine and art are fine, including nudity, when the material is not sexual.

Instructions for committing crimes against other people. Content whose purpose is to help someone hurt, rob, defraud, stalk or break into the property or systems of others is removed even where the words themselves are legal to publish. A course on how locks work is fine; a course on getting into a particular building you have no right to enter is not. A penetration-testing course that teaches how to test systems you own or are authorised to test is fine; a course on getting into a bank's systems is not. Harm reduction, history, journalism and safety training are all fine.

Content that harms people without breaking a law. Hateful content that calls for violence against people, dehumanises them or calls for their exclusion for who they are; content that encourages self-harm; instructions likely to cause serious physical harm, such as making explosives or illegal weapons; and real violence or cruelty shared for its own sake are removed too. The Prohibited Content policy defines each of these, with what stays allowed, and is the full list.

5. Conduct in shared spaces

Rooms, chat, direct messages, reviews, comments and profiles are shared with other people. Four rules keep them usable.

  • Do not target a person. No threats, no abuse aimed at someone, and no continuing to message or mention a person after they have asked you to stop or blocked you. Arguing with someone's ideas is fine. Telling a student in the course room that they are stupid, every time they post, is not.
  • Do not post someone's private details. No home addresses, phone numbers, private photos, identity documents or account details, whether they belong to another ACADA user or to anyone else. Sharing an instructor's public course page is fine. Sharing their home address is not.
  • Do not spam. No repeated unsolicited promotion, no mass or automated messaging, and no bots. An instructor who emails a student's shared address about anything but that course, or after the student withdrew it, is spamming. Mentioning your own course once when it answers a question is fine. Pasting its link into ten rooms is not.
  • Do not impersonate. No pretending to be a real person, an organisation, or ACADA staff. Parody that is clearly labelled as parody is fine.

Room owners and the roles they appoint can also mute or remove members under the room's own rules, which sit within these guidelines and cannot override them.

6. Platform integrity

Four things are legal but break the platform, so they are not allowed.

  • Reviews must be honest. No paying for, trading or otherwise incentivising a review, and no reviewing your own course or a course you collaborate on. The details are in the Reviews & Ratings policy.
  • No gaming XP, streaks, leaderboards or achievements. Scripts, fake accounts and repeated pointless actions to earn points are all out.
  • Payments for ACADA courses go through ACADA. Do not steer students to pay you directly, or offer the same course elsewhere to avoid the revenue split you agreed to in the Instructor Agreement.
  • One account per person. No extra accounts to reuse free trials, discount codes or referral rewards, or to get around a restriction on another account.

Payment fraud, scams and deceptive offers are covered in the Fraud & Scams policy.

7. Lawful content we may take off the marketplace

Some content is legal and stays published, but we would rather not put it in front of people who are browsing. We may unlist a course when one of the following is true:

  • it attacks people for who they are;
  • it is graphic or distressing;
  • a payment or hosting partner's rules require it; or
  • it is the subject of a legal complaint we are assessing.

An unlisted course stays published. Anyone with the link can open it and enroll, and enrolled students keep everything. It no longer appears in browsing, search, recommendations or the sitemap. We tell the instructor the reason, and the decision can be appealed under section 9.

8. What happens when a rule is broken

Illegal content is removed as soon as we find it. The account may be closed at once. Sexual content involving a minor is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as US law requires, and we keep a copy for law enforcement where the law requires it.

Every other rule in this document is enforced in steps:

  1. We remove the content and send a written warning that says what broke the rule, what we did, and what happens next.
  2. If it happens again, or the breach is serious, we restrict the account: messaging, following, enrolling, publishing press articles or creating courses, depending on what was misused. A course may also be unlisted or hidden from new enrollments.
  3. If it continues, we close the account.

Some breaches skip the ladder and close the account the day we confirm them: threatening someone, posting someone's private details or intimate images, running a scam, and the rest of the list in section 5 of Account Enforcement & Appeals. Where a breach is serious but not on that list, we may start at step 2, and the notice says so.

When we hide or delete a course for breaking these guidelines, students who paid are refunded: a monthly subscriber gets the current month back, and a lifetime buyer gets a refund in proportion to the part of the course they had not completed. The details are in the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy.

The full enforcement process is in the Account Enforcement & Appeals policy.

9. Reporting and appeals

To report something, use the Report button on the course, profile, message, review or submission, or write to support@acada.ac. A person looks at every report, and you are told when it has been dealt with.

To appeal a warning, a restriction, an unlisting or a removal, use Appeal this decision beside it in Settings, under Account standing, within 30 days. A closed account cannot sign in, so it appeals at acada.ac/appeal with the reference in the closure email. A reply to the email about a decision is not an appeal. A person who was not involved reviews it and replies within 5 business days.

10. Changes to these guidelines

When we change these guidelines, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds a rule or a consequence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect.

11. Related policies