Platform Rules

Acceptable Use Policy

Version 1.3 · Effective 2026-05-28 · Last updated 2026-05-28

What you can and cannot do on Social Bounty — the rules that keep the platform safe, fair, and lawful for everyone who uses it.

Working draft. This document is a first draft intended for internal review. It must be reviewed by an admitted South African attorney before it governs a live user relationship.
On this page10 sections

1. Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) forms part of the Terms of Service of Social Bounty (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/301053/07, the Platform, we, us, or Social Bounty). It applies to every person who accesses or uses socialbounty.cash, whether as a brand, a hunter (participant), a visitor, an administrator, or any other role.

By using the Platform you agree to follow this AUP. If you are using the Platform on behalf of a company or other juristic person, you warrant that you have authority to bind that entity to these rules. Breach of this AUP is a breach of the Terms of Service and may result in the consequences described in the Enforcement section.

Capitalised terms not defined here have the meanings given to them in the Terms of Service.

2. General principles

Social Bounty exists so that brands can publish bounty briefs and hunters can earn by delivering genuine, high-quality social-media content. The rules below follow from three simple principles:

  • Act in good faith. Be honest with the brands, hunters, and Platform team you interact with. Do not try to game the system.
  • Respect other people. Treat fellow users, third parties who appear in your content, and the Platform team with basic dignity. No harassment, no abuse, no bullying.
  • Follow the law. Obey South African law, the law of any jurisdiction that applies to you, and the terms of service of any third-party platform (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, etc.) that your content appears on.

If something is not expressly listed below but clearly violates one of these principles, we still reserve the right to act on it.

3. Prohibited content

You may not upload, submit, publish, link to, or otherwise make available through the Platform any content that:

  • Is unlawful under South African law or the law of any jurisdiction where the content is produced, hosted, or likely to be viewed, including content that breaches the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996, the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020, or any statute regulating advertising, medicines, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, or financial services.
  • Infringes intellectual property rights of any third party, including copyright, trade marks, trade-dress, trade secrets, performers' rights, or rights in confidential information. See our IP & Copyright Takedown Policy for how we handle infringement reports.
  • Constitutes child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in any form, or sexualises anyone under the age of 18. We operate a zero-tolerance stance: such content will be removed immediately, the offending account terminated, and the matter reported to the South African Police Service and, where required, preserved and referred under the Films and Publications Act and the Cybercrimes Act.
  • Is hate speech. Content that advocates hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, HIV status, or any other ground protected under section 9 of the Constitution, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm, is prohibited. We apply the test set out in section 10 of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 and relevant Constitutional Court authority.
  • Harasses, bullies, intimidates, or threatens any person, including sustained campaigns, pile-on behaviour, or targeted content intended to humiliate.
  • Doxxes or exposes personal information of another person (including home or work address, private phone number, ID or passport number, financial account details, or real name where the person uses a pseudonym) without their informed consent and a lawful basis.
  • Contains malware, phishing links, or malicious code, including keyloggers, credential harvesters, cryptominers, or URLs that redirect to any of the above.
  • Makes misleading brand or product claims, including unsubstantiated health, financial, performance, or endorsement claims. Brands are responsible for the factual accuracy of their briefs; hunters are responsible for executing briefs honestly.
  • Depicts a deepfake or synthetic impersonation of a real, identifiable person without their prior written consent. Satire that is clearly labelled and does not seek to deceive may be permitted at our discretion.
  • Breaches the terms of service of the target social platform. A bounty brief must be lawful and permissible on the platform where it will be published. If Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X would remove the content under their policies, we treat it as unfit for the Platform.

4. Prohibited behaviour

Beyond prohibited content, the following conduct is not allowed on or through the Platform:

  • Sybil and multi-account fraud. Creating multiple accounts to increase submission limits, circumvent suspensions, manipulate reputation, or otherwise evade Platform controls.
  • Metric manipulation. Buying, selling, exchanging, or otherwise inflating likes, views, comments, followers, or other engagement. Use of bots, click farms, or automated engagement services to satisfy bounty metric thresholds.
  • Impersonation. Pretending to be a brand, another hunter, a member of the Platform team, or a public figure. Creating accounts that imitate an existing account's name or branding in a manner likely to deceive.
  • Collusion. Coordinating with a brand reviewer, another hunter, or a Platform team member to manipulate approvals, reviews, or payouts. Offering or accepting side payments to influence a review decision.
  • Scraping or unauthorised data extraction. Using crawlers, automated harvesters, or scripted access to extract data from the Platform beyond what our public API and product interfaces permit.
  • Unauthorised access attempts. Trying to access any account, system, or data you are not authorised to access, including probing for vulnerabilities without prior written authorisation. This includes conduct that would breach sections 2, 3, 5, 6, or 7 of the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.
  • Reverse engineering. Decompiling, disassembling, or otherwise attempting to derive source code from the Platform except to the extent expressly permitted by law.
  • Denial of service. Conduct intended to degrade, disrupt, or overload the Platform, including volumetric attacks, application-layer flooding, or deliberate abuse of expensive endpoints.
  • Rate-limit evasion. Rotating IPs, spoofing headers, or otherwise circumventing Platform rate limits or anti-abuse measures.
  • Purchasing engagement. Paying for fake followers, comments, or other engagement on accounts used to satisfy bounty requirements.
  • Using non-consenting third parties. Featuring identifiable people in bounty content (friends, family, minors, bystanders, strangers filmed in public) without having obtained the lawful consent or release appropriate to the jurisdiction and the use. Minors require a parent or guardian's informed consent.

5. Authenticity of submissions

Social Bounty's value depends on submissions coming from real people working with real audiences. The following authenticity rules apply:

  • Submissions must originate from the real social-media accounts you declared at signup and that are linked to your Platform profile. Content published from a different account (for example, one that does not match the handles on your profile) will not pass verification and may be flagged as fraudulent.
  • You must be the actual operator of the declared accounts. Submitting content published by someone else, under someone else's handle, or through a re-seller arrangement is not permitted.
  • If the bounty brief requires human-made content (original photography, voice-over, on-camera performance, etc.), you may not substitute AI-generated content for it.
  • If the bounty brief does not expressly require human-made content, you may use AI-generated or AI-assisted content, but you must disclose the use of AI inside the submission (for example, by noting "generated with AI" in the submission notes) so the brand can make an informed review decision. The social platform's own disclosure rules for AI content also apply.
  • Edited, composited, or touched-up content is permitted for normal creative reasons (colour, sound, pacing). Content edited to misrepresent the performance of a post (fake view counts, fabricated metrics, altered comments) is not.

6. Reporting a violation

If you see something on the Platform that breaches this AUP, please tell us. The more specific your report, the faster we can act.

  • General abuse reports: abuse@socialbounty.cash. Until this mailbox is live, please use hello@socialbounty.cash with the subject line "Abuse report".
  • Intellectual property infringement: follow our IP & Copyright Takedown Policy.
  • Structured complaints (including CPA-protected rights): see Complaints & Dispute Resolution.
  • CSAM or imminent physical-harm threats: also report directly to the South African Police Service (10111) and, where appropriate, to the Film and Publication Board. We will cooperate with valid law-enforcement process.

Useful information to include: the URL or identifier of the offending bounty, submission, or profile; a description of the conduct; any screenshots or other evidence; and your own contact details in case we need to follow up.

7. Enforcement

We enforce this AUP using a tiered ladder. What action we take depends on the severity of the breach, whether it is a first offence, and whether it puts other users, the Platform, or third parties at risk.

  1. Warning. For a first or low-severity breach we may issue a written warning explaining what is wrong and asking you to correct it within a defined timeframe.
  2. Temporary suspension. We may suspend your account for a defined period. Pending submissions may be put on hold; pending rewards may be held in escrow until the suspension is lifted.
  3. Termination. For severe or repeated breaches, or a single breach that creates material risk (CSAM, fraud, malware, a serious security event), we may terminate your account.
  4. Forfeiture of pending rewards. Where a submission was obtained through fraud, bot engagement, plagiarised or infringing content, or other material breach, rewards associated with that submission may be forfeited or reversed. Financial penalties and any deduction rights are set out in the Terms of Service.
  5. Removing a required post in breach of a visibility requirement. Where a bounty required a post to stay publicly accessible for a set duration (a fixed maximum of up to 90 days) and the hunter removes or hides it during that window, this is an enforcement trigger in its own right — separate from fraud. If the removal happens after the hunter has been paid, the hunter is required to restore the post or repay the net amount they received (a restitution obligation, not a penalty); we may set off that amount against the hunter's future bounty earnings; and we may suspend or permanently close the account if the breach is not cured within the 7-day restoration window. The full mechanism is in clause 12 of the Terms of Service and clause 7.2 of the Payout & Escrow Terms.
  6. Audit trail. Every enforcement decision is logged. The audit trail records who took the decision, when, why, and what material was considered. We retain that record for at least 7 years. You may request a copy of the record concerning your own account through our Information Officer. Where a decision forms part of an administrative batch (see item 6), the batch's stated purpose is also recorded against each individual decision in the audit trail.
  7. Administrative processing. Some enforcement decisions may be entered through administrative tooling that processes more than one submission or account in a single action. Each decision so processed still carries its own reason, its own audit trail entry, and its own appeal right. Batch processing is capped at 50 submissions per action, requires a stated purpose recorded in the audit trail, and never substitutes a single reason for many. The hunter receives the standard CPA-grade rejection email per decision; that email discloses when a decision was processed as part of a batch.

8. Appeals

If you believe an enforcement decision against you was wrong, you have a right to appeal. Appeals are handled through our Complaints & Dispute Resolution process. An appeal must be submitted within 30 days of the enforcement decision being communicated to you and must explain, briefly, why you think the decision was wrong and what outcome you are seeking.

Appeals are reviewed by a Platform team member who was not involved in the original decision. We aim to respond substantively within 10 business days. Where the appeal raises a dispute about a payment, the Payout & Escrow Terms govern the money-movement side while the content question is resolved.

9. Law enforcement cooperation

We cooperate with valid legal process and report to the South African Police Service where we are required to do so (for example, suspected child sexual abuse material under the Films and Publications Act, or reportable cyber-offences under section 54 of the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020 to the extent applicable to us).

Beyond mandatory reporting, we disclose user data to a third party (including law enforcement) only where we are compelled to do so by a court order, subpoena, or other lawful and enforceable instruction, or where a narrowly scoped disclosure is necessary to protect a person from imminent harm. Routine "information requests" are refused unless accompanied by lawful process.

Where we receive a lawful disclosure request, we will, where legally permitted, notify the affected user before disclosure so they have an opportunity to respond. Gag provisions in the request override this commitment.

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