🥄Welcome to the Spoonie Community
SpoonieFans exists to give people living with chronic illness a place to be seen, heard, and supported — and to give creators a way to earn a living by sharing their real, unfiltered experiences. Whether you're here as a creator or a subscriber, you're part of a community built on honesty, empathy, and respect.
These Community Guidelines work alongside our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The ToS covers what is legally required; these Guidelines cover how we treat each other. Violating these Guidelines can result in warnings, content removal, suspension, or permanent account termination — even if no law is broken.
🌟Our Core Values
- Authenticity over performance — Real experiences matter more than polished content.
- Empathy over judgment — Every spoonie's journey is different.
- Support over advice — Share what worked for you, never prescribe for others.
- Privacy over exposure — Protect yourself and others.
- Community over competition — We rise together.
✅What We Encourage
- Sharing your lived experience — symptoms, flares, wins, losses, daily realities
- Vulnerability with boundaries — share what feels safe, skip what doesn't
- Celebrating small victories — getting out of bed, a good doctor's appointment, a low-symptom day
- Asking for and offering peer support — "this helped me" framing welcomed
- Educating about your condition — your experience, not generalized medical claims
- Adaptive content — captions, image descriptions, content warnings, low-energy formats
- Respectful curiosity — asking thoughtful questions when invited
- Honest reviews of products, tools, or accommodations that help you cope
❌What We Do Not Allow
1. Medical Misinformation & Unsafe Advice
- Posting content as professional medical advice (unless you're licensed AND following our healthcare professional rules)
- Promoting unproven cures, miracle treatments, or "natural healing" that contradicts established medicine
- Telling other users to stop taking prescribed medication or to ignore their doctors
- Sharing dangerous DIY treatments, dosages, or self-experimentation guides
- Promoting eating disorders, self-harm, or suicide in any form
- Anti-vaccine content, conspiracy theories about chronic illness, or denial of established medical conditions
💡 Always required: "This is my personal experience, not medical advice. Consult your healthcare provider for medical decisions."
2. Privacy Violations
- Sharing identifiable health information about another person (family member, doctor, fellow patient) without their written consent
- Posting photos, names, or medical records of others without permission
- Doxxing — sharing real names, addresses, workplaces, or contact info of any user
- Screenshotting or recording private DMs without the other person's consent
- Identifying healthcare providers in a defamatory way (you can share your experience; you can't make false factual claims)
3. Harassment, Bullying & Hate
- Mocking, belittling, or gatekeeping illnesses ("you're not really sick," "that's not a real condition")
- Telling users their illness is fake, exaggerated, or their fault
- Ableist language or slurs toward any disability or condition
- Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, body size, age, or disability type
- Targeted harassment of any creator or subscriber, including pile-ons in comments
- Brigading — coordinating with others to attack a user
4. Sexual & Inappropriate Content
SpoonieFans is not an adult platform.
- No nudity, sexual content, or pornography
- No sexually explicit language or solicitation
- No content sexualizing illness, disability, or medical equipment
- No content involving minors in any health/medical context
5. Scams, Spam & Exploitation
- Fake illness content for profit (factitious disorder content presented as real lived experience)
- Impersonating another creator, doctor, or person
- Unauthorized fundraising without verification (GoFundMe links require disclosure and verification)
- MLMs, "wellness" pyramid schemes, or selling unregulated supplements
- Promising cures, recoveries, or specific health outcomes in exchange for money
- Spam, repetitive content, engagement bait, or comment farming
- Off-platform solicitation — directing subscribers to pay you outside SpoonieFans
6. Content That Endangers Vulnerable Users
- Graphic depictions of self-harm, suicide attempts, or eating disorder behaviors (recovery-focused content with content warnings is OK)
- Pro-ana, pro-mia, pro-self-harm content of any kind
- Detailed methods related to suicide, self-harm, or substance overdose
- Content glamorizing medication abuse or recreational drug use
7. AI-Generated Content
SpoonieFans is built on authentic, lived chronic illness experiences. AI-generated content undermines that mission and misleads our community. We do not allow:
- AI-generated posts, captions, stories, or comments presented as your own lived experience
- AI-generated photos or videos of yourself, your symptoms, your flares, your medical situations, or other people
- Deepfakes or AI face-swaps of any kind
- AI-generated voice content (cloned or synthetic voiceovers) presented as your real voice
- AI chatbot replies in DMs or comments to subscribers without clear disclosure
When AI content is detected — through user reports, automated detection, or moderator review — it will be removed. Repeated violations will follow our enforcement ladder, up to and including permanent account termination. Misrepresenting AI content as authentic lived experience is also grounds for forfeiture of earnings tied to that content.
💡 Limited exceptions: AI tools used for accessibility purposes (e.g., transcription, image descriptions, grammar correction, text-to-speech for users who cannot type) are allowed and encouraged, as long as the underlying content reflects your real experience.
🛡️Special Rules for Sensitive Topics
Mental Health & Crisis Content
- Use content warnings (CW: suicide, CW: SH, CW: ED, CW: trauma) at the start of relevant posts
- If you discuss self-harm or suicidal ideation, frame it in past tense or recovery context when possible
Always include crisis resources when posting heavy content:
- 🇺🇸 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988)
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
Discussing Doctors & Treatments
- ✅ "My rheumatologist suggested X and it helped me"
- ✅ "I had a bad experience at [Hospital Name] — here's what happened to me"
- ❌ "Dr. Smith at Mercy Hospital is a fraud who hurts patients" (defamatory factual claim)
- ❌ Posting another patient's chart, scan, or medical document
Healthcare Professionals on the Platform
If you're a licensed nurse, doctor, therapist, or other clinician:
- You may share general educational content from your professional perspective
- You must include your credentials and license state in your bio
- You cannot establish a doctor-patient relationship through the Platform
- You cannot post about identifiable patients (HIPAA — see ToS Section 9.4)
- You cannot prescribe, diagnose, or recommend specific treatments to individual users
- Healthcare professional accounts are subject to earnings caps as defined in the ToS (Section 7.5)
💬Community Interaction Standards
For Subscribers
- Respect creator boundaries. If a creator says "no DMs about X," honor that.
- No unsolicited medical advice. Even if you mean well — they didn't ask.
- Don't compare suffering. "At least you don't have…" is never helpful.
- Tip and engage genuinely — don't use payments to demand specific content.
- Don't screenshot, screen-record, or repost creator content anywhere outside the Platform.
For Creators
- Be honest about your condition and experience. Embellishing for engagement is exploitation.
- Disclose sponsorships, affiliate links, and gifted products clearly (#ad, #sponsored).
- Don't shame your subscribers for questions, even basic ones.
- Set and communicate your boundaries publicly so subscribers know what to expect.
- Don't use guilt-based tactics to extract tips ("I can't afford my meds, please tip").
Healthy Tipping Behavior
Tipping is a powerful way to show appreciation for creators whose content resonates with you — but it should always feel good, never strained. Many of our subscribers live with the same financial pressures that come with chronic illness (medical bills, reduced work capacity, insurance gaps), and we want this community to be a source of support, not financial stress.
We ask all subscribers to:
- Tip within your means — your own well-being comes first
- Avoid impulsive tipping during emotionally heavy moments (late-night flares, after watching distressing content)
- Set personal monthly tipping limits if you find yourself tipping more than you intended
- Remember that engagement, kind comments, and sharing also support creators — tipping isn't the only way
- Never tip in exchange for a specific outcome, response, or content you haven't already seen
We ask all creators to:
- Never pressure, guilt, or emotionally manipulate subscribers into tipping
- Avoid framing tips as urgent (medical bills, rent emergencies) without verifiable context
- Recognize that a small tip from someone on disability is just as meaningful as a large tip from someone with disposable income
- Thank tippers genuinely — never publicly shame or rank by tip amount
⚠️ If you notice a subscriber tipping in a way that seems unsustainable or compulsive, you are encouraged to gently check in with them or report concerns to community@spooniefans.com. We take subscriber financial well-being seriously.
🚨Reporting & Enforcement
How to Report
- Use the 🚩 Report button on any post, comment, profile, or message
- For urgent safety concerns: safety@spooniefans.com
- For HIPAA / privacy violations: legal@spooniefans.com
- For appeals of moderation decisions: appeals@spooniefans.com
- For general community questions: community@spooniefans.com
What Happens Next
We aim to review reports within 48 hours. For urgent safety issues (self-harm, threats, doxxing), we respond within 4 hours.
Enforcement Ladder
| Violation Severity |
First Action |
Repeated Action |
| Minor (tone, missing CW, missing disclaimer) |
Warning + content edit request |
Temporary feature restriction (24–72 hrs) |
| Moderate (harassment, misinformation, spam, AI content) |
Content removal + 7-day suspension |
30-day suspension |
| Severe (doxxing, threats, exploitation, CSAM) |
Immediate permanent ban |
N/A — law enforcement referral when applicable |
Appeals
You may appeal any moderation action within 14 days by emailing appeals@spooniefans.com. Appeals are reviewed by a different moderator than the one who made the original decision.
🤝A Note on Disagreement
You will encounter creators whose treatment choices, lifestyle decisions, or beliefs differ from yours. That's okay. You can:
- Unfollow or block
- Scroll past
- Engage respectfully
You cannot:
- Pile on, harass, or coordinate against them
- Report content just because you disagree (false reports are themselves a violation)
By using SpoonieFans, you agree to follow these Community Guidelines. They may be updated as our community grows — we will notify you of significant changes.