Community Guidelines
50/50 is a dating app where both people put in half. These are the rules of the place, and what actually happens when someone breaks one.
We've kept this short and specific. Every consequence listed below is a real thing our moderation tools do — a report closed as a warning, a suspension that locks you out of the pool, or a permanent ban. Nothing here is decoration.
The short version. Be 18 or older. Be who your photos say you are. Treat people like people. Don't sell anything, don't ask anyone for money, and don't send anything sexual to someone who didn't ask for it. If you're not sure whether something crosses a line, it probably does.
What happens when we act on a report
A reviewer can close a report without doing anything to the account, or take one of the actions below. Here's what each of those actually does.
- Warning. All this does is close the report and mark it as a warning. Nothing happens to the account itself — you aren't locked out, you keep your matches, and we don't message you about it. It isn't a strike counter either: nothing on our side adds your warnings up. What it is, exactly, is a record we can go back to. Our review queue can be filtered to the reports we closed as warnings, and each one names the account it was about, so whoever works the next report about you can look the earlier one up.
- Suspension. Your account is paused. While it's in force you disappear from everyone's deck, you can't be revealed to anyone new, and you can't send messages. You're signed out of every device. Your account, your profile, and your matches all still exist, and none of them are deleted. Whoever handles the report normally sets how long it runs at the moment they apply it, and when that length runs out the suspension lifts by itself and the account goes back to normal. We can also lift one early, so email us if you think it was a mistake. In serious cases a reviewer can instead leave a suspension open-ended, with no end date — that kind doesn't expire on its own, and stays in force until a reviewer lifts it.
- Permanent ban. The account is locked out of the pool for good, every revealed conversation you were in is closed for the other person, and every session is killed. A ban is not reversible on request.
A ban survives account deletion. When we ban an account we store a one-way hash of the sign-in identities behind it: your Apple or Google account identifier, and your email if we have one. We store only the hash, never the raw value. Signing up again with the same Apple ID, Google account, or email re-applies the ban to the new account, and there's no path in the app to clear it. A suspension is not recorded this way. No hash is stored for one, and deleting your account while you're suspended does not bar you from signing up again.
The rules
1. You must be 18 or older
50/50 is an adults-only app. You give us your birthdate once during onboarding, and it can never be changed — you get exactly one submission, so there is no retrying with a different year. If that birthdate says you're under 18, the account cannot enter the pool, permanently. The App Store age rating is 17+.
If you lie about your age: permanent ban the moment we learn it, and the ban follows the identity you signed up with.
2. Be yourself
Your photos have to be recent photos of you — your face, clearly visible, not a group shot where nobody can tell which one you are, not a photo of someone else, not a picture of a picture. Before you can enter the pool you take a verification selfie, and a person on our team looks at that selfie next to your profile photos and decides, by eye, whether they're the same human being.
That's the entire check, and we want to be straight with you about its limits: it is one human comparing two images. It is not a background check, not an ID check, and no software analyzes anyone's face. It catches obvious catfishing. It does not tell you a person is safe. Read more in the Safety Center.
If your verification doesn't match your photos: the verification is rejected and you can submit another — three attempts in total, and each one you submit is kept. If you deliberately use someone else's photos: permanent ban.
3. No harassment
Nobody owes you a reply, a date, a second date, or an explanation. If someone stops responding, unmatches you, or turns you down, that's the end of it. Repeated unwanted contact, insults, threats, intimidation, sexual pressure, or trying to reach someone off 50/50 after they've ended the conversation is harassment.
Threats of violence, threats to expose someone, and stalking behavior aren't a spectrum — they're the end of your account.
Warning or suspension for an ugly message. Permanent ban for threats, stalking, sexual coercion, or a pattern of it.
4. No hate
No slurs, no dehumanizing language, and no attacks on anyone for their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, age, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Stating what you're looking for in a partner is fine. Being cruel about who someone is isn't, and there's a wide, obvious gap between the two.
Suspension or permanent ban — hate speech usually skips the warning.
5. No nudity or sexual content
No nudity, no sexual acts, no lingerie-and-nothing-else shots, and no underwear-only photos in your profile. Chat on 50/50 is text only, so there's nothing to send — but describing sexual acts to someone who hasn't invited it is the same violation as sending a picture would be. Unsolicited sexual messages are harassment, full stop.
Photo removed and a warning for a profile photo over the line. Suspension or permanent ban for sexual content sent to someone who didn't ask for it.
6. No solicitation, promotion, or commercial spam
50/50 is for meeting people, not for traffic. No advertising, no recruiting, no MLM pitches, no "check out my page," no promoting another app or a paid site, no sex work, and no mass-copy-pasting the same opener to everyone. If your profile is a funnel, it isn't a profile.
Suspension or permanent ban. Commercial accounts don't get a warning — they get removed.
7. No scams and no money requests
Never ask a match for money, gift cards, crypto, a bank transfer, "help with a flight," a deposit, or an investment tip — and never dress a request up as an emergency. Don't ask anyone to move to another app to keep talking so a scam can run somewhere we can't see it. Don't ask for intimate photos, and never, ever threaten to share images of someone.
If a match ever asks you for money, that's a scam, every single time. Don't pay. Report them. Our Safety Center lists the patterns to watch for.
Permanent ban — immediately, and the ban is recorded against the identity so the account can't be rebuilt.
8. No minors, ever
No one under 18 on the app, in any capacity. No photos of children in your profile pictures, no sexual content involving minors anywhere, and no attempt to contact a minor through 50/50. There is no version of this that gets a warning.
If you believe a 50/50 account belongs to someone under 18, report it with the Underage reason, or email us right away. We remove the account, and we preserve what's on it rather than deleting it. Federal law requires us to report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and we will make any report the law requires of us. You can also report directly to NCMEC at report.cybertip.org — you don't need to wait for us.
Permanent ban, plus a report to the authorities where the law requires one.
9. No impersonation
Don't claim to be someone you aren't — another real person, a celebrity, a brand, or a member of the 50/50 team. Don't run an account for someone else, and don't share your account. One person, one account.
Permanent ban. Impersonating 50/50 staff is an instant ban with no exceptions.
Things that are NOT rule breaks
To be clear about where the line isn't, because 50/50 has opinions about effort and we don't want them mistaken for policy:
- Not replying isn't a violation. 50/50 tracks whether people follow through on first messages, and that shows up as a reply-rate badge on your profile. It's a reputation signal, not a punishment — moderation never touches it.
- Unmatching isn't a violation, for either person, and it costs you nothing. It's a safety valve. Use it whenever you want.
- Blocking isn't an accusation. You never have to justify a block to anyone, including us.
- Ending a conversation isn't rude. "I don't think we're a match, good luck out there" is a complete sentence.
How to report someone
Reporting happens from inside the conversation:
- Open the chat with that person.
- Tap the menu in the chat header and choose Report.
- Pick a reason: Fake profile, Profile doesn't match photos, Harassment, Inappropriate content, Underage, or Other.
- Add a note if there's something we should know. This is optional.
- Optionally turn on Include their last message. That attaches the text of their most recent message to the report so our team can read the actual words. It's off unless you turn it on — the excerpt is shared with your consent, not by default.
There's no picklist entry for spam or scams yet. Use Fake profile or Other and say what happened in the note — it lands in the same queue.
Reporting also blocks them. The moment you submit, you and that person disappear from each other's 50/50 entirely, and the match closes. You don't have to do anything else, and they aren't told that you reported them.
We aim to review and act on every report within 24 hours. For anything urgent or serious, email [email protected] as well — a human reads it.
Block and unmatch
- Block is immediate, silent, and goes both ways. They vanish from your deck, your reveals, and your matches, and you vanish from theirs. They get no notification, ever.
- Unmatch ends one conversation for both of you. No penalty, no explanation required.
How we review reports
A human being reads every report. We look at the reason, your note, the message excerpt if you attached one, and — when the report is about a conversation — the conversation itself. That's a purpose-limited path: opening a reported conversation is only possible from the report, and every time it happens the system writes an audit record of who opened what and when. We don't browse conversations.
Some things we act on immediately and permanently. Others depend on context, whether it's a pattern, and how bad it was. We'd rather be honest that judgment is involved than pretend there's a lookup table.
If you think we got it wrong
Email [email protected] from the address on your account and tell us what happened. A suspension is the one we can undo for you. If it was given a set length, it lifts on its own once that runs out; if it was left open-ended, it stays until a reviewer lifts it. Either way a reviewer can lift it, so tell us if we got it wrong. A ban is the opposite: it's permanent, it isn't lifted on request, and bans for scams, threats, or anything involving a minor aren't appealable at all.
Changes to these guidelines
If we change the rules or the consequences, we'll update this page and revise the "Last updated" date above.
Related
Safety Center — practical safety tips and the tools in the app.
Privacy Policy — what we collect and what we don't.
Support — contact us, or delete your account.