Version 1.0
Last updated: 2026-05-13
Canonical URL: /legal/community-standards
If you are reading this because something happened to you on SynthCamp:
If you are reading this because you have been sanctioned: scroll to section 7 for how we act and the appeal procedure.
SynthCamp is a marketplace for artists who want their music to be heard. It is not a stage for spectacles of conflict, a battleground for personal feuds, or a vehicle for manufactured drama.
We curate the behaviors we tolerate on the platform, not the artistic content itself. You are free to make difficult music, experimental music, AI-crafted music, music that critiques the world, music that critiques the industry. You are not free to weaponize the platform to target other people, deceive listeners, or coordinate attacks under cover of "art" or "free speech".
This is a private platform. Disagreement with our community standards is not censorship in any legal sense. It is our right as a private platform to curate its community. We would rather be smaller and intentional than larger and chaotic.
Each profile, release, and launch party has a Report button. You can report:
| Step | Timing |
|---|---|
| Acknowledgment of your report | Within 24 hours |
| Triage by a human moderator | Within 48 hours for harassment, threats, or illegal content. Within 7 days for spam or low-severity matters |
| Final decision and statement of reasons | Within 7 days for most cases, longer with explanation for complex matters |
Priority flaggers (see 7.6) get fast-track triage but never auto-action.
Behavior that targets an identifiable person on the platform. Three patterns qualify:
Examples:
These standards apply to every existing surface AND any future surface that allows user-to-user written content (tip messages, fan-hosted parties, future comments, etc.).
Legal basis: Code pénal art. 222-33-2-2 (cyber-harcèlement). Base sentence 2 years and €30,000 fine. Up to 3 years and €45,000 with aggravating circumstances (minors under 15, vulnerable persons, group action / raid).
Legal basis: Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse (art. 29 and following).
Using another person's name, slug, avatar, banner, or bio content in a way that, taken together, could deceive a reasonable listener into thinking you are them or speaking for them. Imitating a vocal style or a production signature alone is not impersonation. Combined with name/avatar copying and a deceptive intent, it becomes one.
Parody is allowed under strict conditions (see 4.2).
Legal basis: Code pénal art. 226-4-1 (usurpation of identity, up to 1 year imprisonment and €15,000 fine).
Side projects are allowed if they are clearly distinct creative endeavors. Multiple accounts used to evade a ban, to amplify yourself, or to engineer narratives are not.
Off-platform coordination is in scopewhen its effect lands on SynthCamp. "We'll all drop attack tracks Friday" planned on Discord and executed here is sanctioned as if the coordination had happened in our chat.
Legal basis: deceptive commercial practice under UCPD (Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, transposed into French Code de la consommation art. L121-1 and following).
Targeting an individual or group based on a protected category. The protected categories are those listed at Code pénal art. 132-77 and art. 225-1, which include:
This includes lyrics, profile content, party chat, and any other form of expression on the platform.
Legal basis:Loi du 1er juillet 1972 (race + religion). Loi du 30 décembre 2004 (sex, sexual orientation, disability). Loi 2016-1547 (situation économique). Loi 2017-86 (perte d'autonomie). Code pénal art. 132-77 and 225-1 for the consolidated list. DSA obligations on illegal-content baseline.
This content results in immediate permanent ban and, where appropriate, referral to law enforcement.
Terror-promoting content removed within 1 hour when flagged by a competent authority pursuant to EU Regulation 2021/784 (TCO). This SLA overrides the general 24h/48h/7d framework in section 2.2.
Legal basis: French Code pénal. EU DSA art. 16. EU Regulation 2021/784 (TCO). National child-protection law.
Revealing or sharing private personal information about another person without consent. This covers both:
This includes personal data you receive as a seller about your buyers.
Doxxing results in immediate permanent ban, regardless of history.
Legal basis: GDPR (unauthorized processing of personal data), Code pénal art. 226-22.
SynthCamp's Creative Credits framework explicitly accepts AI-crafted music. That makes voice cloning and likeness synthesis available, and that means a clear rule is required:
Legal basis:droit à l'image vocale (Cass. 1ère civ. 24 avril 2013). From August 2026, Code pénal art. 226-8-1 introduced by loi SREN punishes non-consensual deepfakes with 1 year and €15,000 (doubled to 2 years and €30,000 when the content is sexual). GDPR (voice and likeness are biometric data). Droit d'auteur on the underlying performance.
This section covers the cases where the line is not obvious and we have made an explicit choice.
Always allowed. You can:
The line moves when criticism stops being about the work and starts being about the person, particularly when the person is a private individual or a named individual under attack.
Parody is a legally protected form of expression in France (article L122-5 4° CPI). On SynthCamp it is allowed under all of these conditions:
Failure to meet these conditions results in profile takedown on report. Egregious cases (parody designed to defame or coordinate harassment) trigger sanctions per section 7.
Parody of a stage persona whose real identity is unknown: allowed if the conditions above are met against the stage persona. The protection does not extend to revealing the real identity behind the persona ("outing"), which remains a doxxing violation under 3.7 regardless of the parody framing.
Tracks that name or visibly target an identifiable individual are not allowed on SynthCamp, with three narrow exceptions:
A track that meets the form of exception 2 but reads as a personal attack to a reasonable listener falls back to the prohibition.
In particular, the following are not allowed regardless of context:
Why this strict line: the cost of producing AI-generated content is near zero, which weaponizes the traditional diss-track form into industrial harassment. SynthCamp does not host that.
Practical test for moderators: if you remove the name of the targeted person, does the track still have artistic standing? If no, the track is a vehicle for targeting a person rather than a work.
Critique of music, of scenes, of trends, of movements, of public statements without naming individuals remains welcome.
You may publicly criticize SynthCamp itself, our policies, our team, on this platform or any other. We do not sanction users for criticism of the platform.
We treat critique of public figures differently from critique of private individuals, aligned with French jurisprudence (Loi 1881).
An artist with significant public presence, a public official, a journalist or critic engaging publicly on artistic matters, or any person who has voluntarily entered public discourse on a topic.
"Significant public presence" is not purely judgment. Our moderation team uses a documented working floor with multiple indicators:
The totality of indicators is weighed. An artist with 500 followers who has just published a widely-discussed manifesto is a public figure for the topic of that manifesto, though not necessarily for unrelated matters.
Public figures must accept a higher level of critique on their public role. Criticism of an artist's work, posture, or publicly-stated opinions is broadly protected.
Anyone else. A fan, a person from your past, a non-public artist, anyone who has not voluntarily entered public discourse.
Criticism of private individuals is much more restricted. Targeting a private individual by name, even with truthful criticism, can constitute harassment.
Public figures forfeit privacy on their public role, not on their person, family, or life outside that role. Critique of the work, yes. Personal attacks dressed as critique, no.
The minimum age to create an account on SynthCamp, including an artist account, is 15, the digital consent age in France (Loi 78-17, art. 7-1), consistent with our Terms and Privacy Notice. SynthCamp is a small platform and is exempt from the DSA art. 28 minor-protection obligations (art. 19). We still take extra care with creators in the 15-17 bracket, in the spirit of art. 28:
These protections apply whether the minor is a target of misconduct or a witness present in a setting (e.g., a listening party where harassment occurs in chat).
You do not have to wait for moderation to take action. You have these tools at your disposal:
You can block any other user. Blocking hides their content from your view across the platform (profile, releases, parties, chat) and prevents them from interacting with you (tipping, replies, mentions if we add them later).
The blocked user is not notified.
A softer version of block. Hides the user's content from your feed but does not break direct interaction (they can still buy your releases, for example).
You can turn email notifications on or off from your account settings.
We act in proportion to the violation and to your history on the platform.
| Action | When it applies | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Warning | Low-severity, first-occurrence violation | Warning email citing the rule. The offending content is removed |
| Permanent ban | A serious violation, or further violations after a warning | Account banned. Profile retired, releases archived, active parties cancelled |
We weigh your full history when we decide. A pattern of violations, even spread over time, leads to a ban. The immediate-ban offenses in 7.2 skip the warning step. (See section 11 for how long we keep moderation history.)
When an account is permanently banned:
Some violations result in immediate permanent ban on first confirmation:
Each sanction is accompanied by an email to the sanctioned user that includes:
Where the sanction follows a report, the reporting user is separately informed that their report was actioned or dismissed, together with the routes to escalate a dismissal. For the privacy of the person reported, that notice does not disclose the rule applied to them or the specific measure taken.
SynthCamp is a small platform and is exempt from the DSA art. 20 internal complaint-handling obligation (art. 19). We offer an internal re-examination anyway, on the following terms.
The re-examination can result in: maintain the decision, reduce the sanction, or fully reverse it. We aim for thoughtful review over speed.
The DSA art. 21 out-of-court mechanism does not apply to SynthCamp as an exempt small platform (art. 19). Your statutory rights are unaffected: EU users keep the right to bring a dispute before a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body, or before the courts of their member state.
We will engage in good faith with any such body you choose to seize. We do not nominate a specific body in this document. Consult your national digital services coordinator for the current list of certified bodies in your jurisdiction.
Two distinct concepts apply here, often confused:
DSA art. 22 trusted flaggers are entities (typically organizations, not individual users) recognized by the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) of an EU member state, not by the platform. SynthCamp respects every notice from a recognized DSA trusted flagger with priority handling, as the regulation requires. We do not award DSA trusted flagger status ourselves. The DSC does.
SynthCamp Priority Flaggers are individual users we have manually designated as having a strong track record of accurate, good-faith reporting. When our moderators triage, they look at these reports first. This is an internal practice, not an automated queue. This program is distinct from DSA art. 22 and we do not claim it confers DSA trusted flagger status.
Priority flagger status is:
There is no fast-track to priority flagger status. Time on the platform, accuracy of past reports, and clean conduct record are the inputs we consider. Final discretion is the moderation team's.
A release has a single selling artist, the one who receives payment for it. Other people can be named in the release credits, but those credits are descriptive. They do not carry a separate payout.
When the selling artist is banned, their releases are archived and removed from the public catalog. Existing buyers keep their access.
If you are credited on a release by an artist who is sanctioned and you believe the decision affects you unfairly, contact us at [email protected] and we will look at your situation.
The Report button is for genuine concerns about platform safety. Using it to silence legitimate criticism, to harass a person you have a personal grievance with, or to pile false reports against an artist you dislike is itself a violation of these standards.
Bad-faith reports are sanctioned the same way as other violations (section 7.1). A pattern of false reports (repeated reports against the same target without basis, reports filed in clusters with no merit) results in escalating action up to a permanent ban.
Multiple reports against the same target are not bad-faith in themselves. A genuine victim of ongoing harassment will file repeated reports about the same harasser, each citing a distinct incident or a continuing pattern. We distinguish bad-faith reports (those without factual basis, those designed to silence legitimate speech, those filed in clusters with manifest absence of merit) from victim-side accumulation (multiple incidents, each documented). When in doubt, the moderation team errs toward investigation rather than dismissal.
We do not act on reports without independent verification. Filing a report does not guarantee an outcome.
Creating alternate accounts to harass yourself, to manufacture victimhood, to artificially attack yourself for sympathy, or to engineer a narrative of public conflict, is a violation of our coordinated inauthentic behavior policy (3.4) and is treated as one of the most severe categories of violation we encounter.
When we identify this pattern, all linked accounts are permanently banned regardless of which account is the "victim" and which is the "attacker" in the manufactured narrative. We rely on a combination of behavioural and technical signals consistent with single- operator control of the linked accounts, plus a human review. The specific signals are operational and are not published so that bad actors cannot calibrate around them.
We name this pattern explicitly because traditional moderation tools, designed around good-faith victim reports, are blind to it.
SynthCamp is a small platform and is exempt from the DSA art. 24 reporting obligation (art. 19). We publish a moderation transparency report voluntarily at /legal/transparency/moderation. The first report covers calendar year 2026 and is published once that period closes. Modeled on the DSA transparency disclosures, it will include, at minimum:
We also include:
Once a reporting period closes, the figures are aggregated from our internal moderation records and are auditable internally.
We may update these standards. Material changes are notified by email and in-app banner at least 30 days before they take effect, except for changes required by law or to address an active safety threat (in which case immediate updates are allowed, with retroactive notification).
The current version is the one applicable to all actions on the platform. All previous versions are archived indefinitely at /legal/community-standards/history for transparency and for users with open appeals against past sanctions.
Moderation history retention is two-tier, matching our Moderation Policy (section 9): actioned decisions (sanctions, statements of reasons, appeals) are kept for as long as the account exists plus ten years after closure. Unactioned reports are kept for three years. The ten-year tier aligns with our records-of-processing and accountability obligations (GDPR art. 30, DSA art. 24) and the general civil prescription (art. 2224 of the Code civil). The rationale for retention beyond account closure is defense against potential litigation initiated by a former user or by a third party affected by a former user's conduct.
Users may request erasure of their moderation history under GDPR art. 17. Where granted, the underlying facts of the sanction (date, category, action taken) are retained in pseudonymized form for our transparency reporting obligations under DSA art. 24, but the personal data attached is erased.
The history we weigh when we decide (section 7.1) is bounded by this retention window: a violation from two years ago still counts, but a violation from a closed account whose record has aged out of the window above no longer does.
SynthCamp is a private platform. Our community standards apply beyond what the law strictly requires. Disagreement with these standards is not censorship in any legal sense, it is the platform's exercise of its right to curate the community.
For users in the European Union, your statutory rights under the EU Digital Services Act, the General Data Protection Regulation, and other applicable EU law are not affected by these standards.
For users in France, the legal references cited throughout this document are the basis of our specific prohibitions. The standards add platform-level expectations above those legal minimums.
The applicable law for disputes between SynthCamp and any user is French law, with jurisdiction of the courts of the place where the user resides for consumers, in line with Regulation Brussels I bis. Business users are subject to the platform-to-business (P2B Regulation 2019/1150) provisions of our Terms of Service.
Platform-level sanctions are contractual, not penal. Statutes of limitations on criminal action (e.g., the six-year prescription on délits, the three-month prescription on press offences under loi 1881) do not bind our enforcement of these standards. Our retention and the history we weigh are governed by the rules in section 11, not by criminal-law prescription periods. Users seeking penal action have separate avenues and should consult appropriate counsel.