Acceptable use policy

1. The short version

Run legitimate events, use accurate information, respect other users, do not try to game the system. The rest of this document spells out what that means in practice. If a use case is not explicitly covered, apply common sense — or email info@voteme.live and ask.

2. Prohibited event types

You may not use voteMe.live to run events that:

• Constitute illegal gambling, lotteries, or games of chance where the law of the relevant jurisdiction does not permit them.
• Promote, incite, or facilitate hatred against a protected class (race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or similar).
• Exist to defraud participants — “pay-to-win” schemes where winners are pre-selected, sham contests with no intended prize, or collection events designed to disappear with the money.
• Would require a licence or permit that the organizer does not hold (for example ticketed events at venues without lawful permission).
• Sell admission to events promoting the above, regardless of how the event is labelled.

3. Prohibited content

Content you upload — event descriptions, contestant photos, nomination data, Studio templates, chat messages, and anything else — must not:

• Contain child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of any kind. This is a zero-tolerance violation and will be reported to the appropriate authorities.
• Depict or promote non-consensual violence, torture, or serious harm, whether real or realistically simulated.
• Infringe third-party intellectual property, including copyrighted images, logos, music, or video that you do not have permission to use.
• Impersonate a real person without their consent, or misrepresent someone's endorsement of your event.
• Contain scams, phishing, malware, or links to resources intended to deceive or harm other users.
• Disclose private information (phone numbers, home addresses, identification documents) about third parties without their consent.

4. Prohibited activity

The following categories of activity are prohibited regardless of whether the underlying event or content is otherwise legitimate:

Vote manipulation

• Using bots, scripts, or automated clients to cast votes (including through the USSD endpoint or the public voting API).
• Operating multiple accounts or using shared credentials to circumvent per-voter limits.
• Coordinating sybil voting campaigns — a single actor controlling many identities for the purpose of inflating a contestant's vote count.
• Exploiting bugs or race conditions to register a vote without a corresponding payment confirmation.

Nomination abuse

• Submitting spam nominations, joke submissions, or names that do not correspond to real people.
• Nominating someone without a reasonable belief that they would welcome being nominated — especially where the nomination carries harassment risk.
• Submitting the same nominee dozens of times under slightly different names or phone numbers to inflate their apparent nomination count.

Ticket fraud

• Reselling tickets above face value outside the platform's transfer flow, where the organizer's rules prohibit it.
• Attempting to clone, forge, or tamper with a voteMe-issued QR code or short code.
• Presenting a screenshot of another person's ticket at the gate, where the ticket has not been formally transferred.

Technical abuse

• Attempting to probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the platform without written authorisation from voteMe.
• Bypassing rate limits, IP blocks, or other access controls.
• Reverse-engineering proprietary pieces of the platform, or attempting to recover secrets from signed tokens or encrypted payloads.
• Sending malformed requests specifically intended to crash the service or cause data corruption.

Legitimate security research is welcome — report vulnerabilities responsibly to info@voteme.live and we will acknowledge, triage, and credit responsible disclosures.

5. Account abuse

• Do not share your organizer or member credentials. If you need another person to act on an event, invite them as a team member with the appropriate role preset.
• Do not create multiple accounts to circumvent suspensions, moderation actions, or dedupe rules.
• Do not use throwaway email addresses or phone numbers purely to game the platform's identity checks.
• Do not use another person's identity to sign up, cast a paid vote, or buy a ticket.

6. Payment abuse

• Do not file chargebacks in bad faith — that is, disputing a charge with your bank despite having received the goods or votes paid for.
• Do not use stolen cards, compromised mobile money wallets, or fraudulently obtained payment credentials.
• Do not attempt to reverse or reroute settled payouts outside the platform's withdrawal workflow.
• Do not use voteMe to launder funds or to break tax, AML, or sanctions obligations.

7. How to report a violation

If you see a violation of this policy — whether as a voter, an organizer reviewing their own event, or a third party — report it to us:

• Email: info@voteme.live.
• Include a description of the violation, the event URL or contestant short code where applicable, and any evidence (screenshots, transaction references, timestamps).
• For urgent safety issues — threats of violence, CSAM, active scams — write URGENT in the subject line.

Organizers are responsible for moderating their own events and can do so from the dashboard's chat-moderation and member tabs. Escalate to voteMe only when organiser-side moderation is insufficient or the violation falls outside the organizer's direct control.

8. Enforcement

Our enforcement ladder is designed to be proportionate and predictable:

1. Warn — we email the account holder, describe the violation, and ask for it to be corrected within a stated window. Most minor, first-time violations end here.
2. Restrict — specific features are disabled temporarily. For example, a contestant page may be hidden from public leaderboards, a withdrawal may be held, or a single event's nominations may be frozen for review.
3. Suspend — the account is disabled pending investigation. Existing events continue if they can be operated safely; new events cannot be created.
4. Terminate — the account is closed. Funds held on behalf of legitimate counterparties (for example ticket holders awaiting refunds) are reserved for them before any remaining balance is forfeited per these Terms.

Serious violations (CSAM, verified fraud, threats of violence, large-scale vote manipulation) may result in immediate termination without prior warning. When that happens, we will explain the reason in writing and, where required by law, report the conduct to the relevant authorities.

9. Appealing an enforcement action

If your account has been restricted, suspended, or terminated and you believe the decision was incorrect, you may appeal by emailing info@voteme.live within 30 days of the enforcement notice. Include:

• Your registered email address and the account identifier.
• A reference to the enforcement notice you received.
• The specific reason you believe the decision was incorrect — include any evidence or context that was not available during the original review.

A different member of the trust-and-safety team will review the appeal. We aim to respond within five business days. Appeal outcomes are final at the platform level; nothing in this paragraph limits your right to seek an external remedy where one is available.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a material way, we will update the date at the top of the page and surface the change in the dashboard. Continued use after the change means you accept the revised version.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy, clarifications, or pre-launch reviews of a planned event should go to info@voteme.live.