Content Policy

Last modified: April 2026

This Content Policy governs all content created, uploaded, traced, published, or displayed on grovetracks.com (the "Website"). This policy is incorporated into our Terms of Service by reference.

The Spirit of the Grove

Grovetracks is a place for creative play. Messy doodles, weird remixes, inside jokes drawn in crayon, ten-layer compositions that somehow work — that's the grove at its best. We built this platform so people could experiment, surprise each other, and discover what happens when creativity gets tangled together.

We want you to push your style, try things that might not land, and see what the community does with your work. Not every doodle needs to be a masterpiece. The grove grows from curiosity, not perfection.

This policy exists to keep that spirit alive — to make sure the grove stays a place where people feel safe enough to play freely. The lines we draw here protect the fun, not limit it.

What We Love to See

Before we get to the rules, here's what the grove is for:

Weird, wonderful, experimental doodles — abstract, figurative, silly, beautiful, ugly on purpose. All of it.
Remixes that surprise the original creator — that's the whole point of the doodle dag.
Pushing into uncomfortable territory thoughtfully — edgy, provocative, or intense work has a home in the Briarpatch (more on that below).
Learning in public — your hundredth doodle doesn't have to be better than your first. Growth is the point.
Community building — reactions, follows, studies, blooms. The social loop makes the grove alive.

The Briarpatch

The Briarpatch is the thorny corner of the grove — part of the same forest, but a place you walk into on purpose. It exists because creative expression doesn't always fit neatly into "suitable for all audiences," and we think that's fine.

What the Briarpatch is for

The Briarpatch is a discovery space for mature content. Non-sexual nudity, intense themes, edgy humor, provocative compositions — work that's genuinely creative but not for everyone. The Briarpatch lets you go there without worrying that someone's kid is going to stumble into it.

Nudity (artistic, silly, anatomical — classical-figure-drawing work through to the weird and the honest) is allowed.
Intense or graphic themes (dark, unsettling, emotionally heavy) are allowed.
Edgy, provocative, or uncomfortable work (pushing boundaries is part of creative discovery) is allowed.
Content where you're not sure — when in doubt, the Briarpatch is the right call.

What the Briarpatch is NOT for

The Briarpatch is not a loophole. Even in the thorny thicket, the hard lines below still apply. Specifically, the following are never permitted inside the Briarpatch, regardless of artistic framing, context, or tagging:

Any sexualization of minors — real, fictional, hand-drawn, traced, AI-generated, or described in text. This includes "loli," "shota," "cub," and similar art-community euphemisms. See Sexual Exploitation of Minors (CSAM) below.
Adults depicting themselves or other adults as minors in sexualized contexts — including drawing yourself with child features, stating or implying a minor age, role-play as a minor, or sexualized age-regression scenarios.
Sexual violence, non-consent scenarios, and "consensual non-consent" presented as sexually arousing — including rape, sexual assault, stealthing, coercion, alcohol- or drug-influenced consent depictions, or hypnosis/mind-control scenarios with sexual content.
Incest among close blood relatives, legal parent/child, legal guardian/child, or legal siblings.
Bestiality (real or realistic depictions involving humans and real-world animals). Fictional, mythological, anthropomorphic, bipedal, or sapient creatures in adult fiction contexts remain permitted within the Briarpatch.
Real-person intimate imagery without consent (NCII) — including photographs, traces derived from such photographs, and synthetic or AI-generated depictions of identifiable real people.
Animal cruelty glorified or presented as eroticized subject matter.
Self-harm or suicide instructions, methods, or content framed to encourage the acts.
Content glorifying, coordinating, or recruiting for violent extremism.

The Briarpatch expands the range of creative expression. It does not remove the floor.

How the Briarpatch works

Age attestation required. Access to Briarpatch content requires that you affirmatively represent you are 18 years of age or older. This attestation is in addition to the age declaration you made at account registration. Minors (13–17) cannot opt into the Briarpatch — the toggle is disabled for minor accounts.
Explicit opt-in required. Until you enable the Briarpatch toggle in your account settings, Briarpatch content will not appear in your feed, search results, gallery, profile views, or API responses.
Public-facing surfaces are safe. Briarpatch content cannot appear on profile avatars, profile banners, composition thumbnails visible to non-opted-in users, display names, bios, or share cards outside Briarpatch-aware contexts. Mature content is for the mature space, not the front porch of the grove.
Automatic flagging. Our client-side classifier helps flag content automatically (see NSFW Classification below). It's conservative by design — false positives are fixable; false negatives are not.
Derivatives follow the source. Derivative works created from non-Briarpatch compositions must not introduce Briarpatch-level content unless the derivative is also flagged for the Briarpatch.
Ratio commitment. Grovetracks commits to keeping Briarpatch content at or below 25% of total published compositions. This keeps us comfortably outside the "more than one-third sexual material" threshold used by state age-verification statutes.

Finding what works in the Briarpatch

We don't pretend to have the Briarpatch boundaries perfectly calibrated on day one. Where exactly does "edgy but fine for teens" end and "this belongs in the Briarpatch" begin? Honest answer: the community will help us figure that out.

Our classifier makes the first call. It's conservative — it will flag some things that probably didn't need it. That's by design.
You can appeal. If you think the classifier got it wrong, request a review. Real humans look at appeals.
Community reports refine the line. When people report content as misclassified — either "this should be in the Briarpatch" or "this shouldn't be" — those signals help us tune the system over time.
The boundary will evolve. We'll adjust thresholds, update word lists, and refine moderation guidelines based on what the community tells us. This is a conversation, not a decree.

Community-Calibrated Boundaries

Grovetracks is a creative platform, not a content police state. We set the hard lines (see Prohibited Content below), and beyond those, the community helps shape what "works" in the grove.

Reporting is feedback, not just enforcement. When you report something, you're telling us "this doesn't feel right for where it is." That's valuable signal whether it leads to action or not. We review every report.
Patterns matter more than individual calls. One report on a composition is a data point. Twenty reports on similar compositions in a week is a trend that tells us something about where community expectations are.
We'll be transparent about changes. When community feedback leads us to adjust thresholds or guidelines, we'll say so. You deserve to know when the rules shift and why.
Moderation is human. Automated classifiers make the first pass, but human judgment makes the calls on reports, appeals, and edge cases.

We'd rather have a hundred conversations about "does this belong in the Briarpatch?" than one conversation about "why did nobody feel safe here anymore?"

Prohibited Content

These are the hard lines — content that is never allowed on Grovetracks, regardless of context, artistic intent, or Briarpatch status. Violations result in content removal and, depending on severity and history, warnings, account restrictions, or permanent bans.

Sexual Exploitation of Minors (CSAM)

Grovetracks has zero tolerance for any content that sexualizes minors — whether real or fictional, and regardless of how it was created. This includes photographs, traced compositions, hand-drawn compositions, AI-generated or AI-altered imagery, text descriptions, and any combination of the above. It includes "loli," "shota," "cub," and any similar art-community euphemisms. It applies inside and outside the Briarpatch without exception.

It also includes:

Adults depicting themselves or other adults as minors in sexualized contexts — explicitly or implicitly.
Content that depicts, promotes, or attempts to normalize child sexual abuse.
Grooming behavior, including sexualized conversations with minors, or attempts to contact or meet minors for sexual purposes. First-offense zero tolerance — permanent ban.
Sexualized or suggestive tracing of photographs of minors, regardless of the photograph's source.

Violating accounts are permanently banned. Content is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline as required by 18 U.S.C. §2258A, and preserved for a minimum of one year along with associated user metadata per the REPORT Act. Referrals are made to law enforcement where appropriate. There are no exceptions for artistic framing, satire, "fictional," "drawn," or "AI-generated" defenses.

Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII)

Grovetracks prohibits posting intimate content — nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit — depicting an identifiable real person (or a recognizable likeness of a real person) without that person's explicit, informed consent. This applies to:

Photographs and uploaded images.
Traced compositions derived from photographs.
Synthetic, AI-generated, AI-altered, or "deepfake" imagery — including imagery that is digitally manipulated to place a real person in a sexual situation or to simulate their likeness.
"Tributes" — impersonation of a real person in a sexualized context.
Threats to share any of the above.
"Creepshots," "upskirting," or similar non-consensual capture imagery.

Consent to the creation of an image is not consent to its publication. Consent must be specific to the act of publishing on Grovetracks.

How to report NCII. If you are the subject of a non-consensual intimate visual depiction published on Grovetracks, you (or your authorized representative, parent, or guardian) can request removal through our public report form: grovetracks.com/report/ncii (no account required), or by email to support@grovetracks.com. See the Terms of Service for the four elements a valid notice must contain.

Our commitment. Upon receipt of a valid notice, Grovetracks will remove the reported content as soon as reasonably possible, and in no event later than forty-eight (48) hours after receipt, in accordance with the TAKE IT DOWN Act. We will also make reasonable efforts to identify and remove known identical copies (e.g., through hash-matching of removed material). Minor NCII additionally triggers NCMEC CyberTipline reporting as described above.

Harassment and Targeted Abuse

Harassment is behavior that would discourage a reasonable person from participating in the grove. That includes:

Directing abuse, threats, or slurs at a person or group.
Following someone around the site from composition to composition to continue attacks.
Sexualizing someone — including real people and Grovetracks users — without their consent.
Coordinating others to attack an individual or group (dogpiling, organized brigading, "hate raids").
Creating compositions specifically to mock, shame, or intimidate a named or recognizable individual.
Impersonating someone to damage their reputation.
Harassment counts whether the target is on Grovetracks or elsewhere.

What isn't harassment. Disagreeing with someone strongly, critiquing a composition honestly, declining to follow someone, reporting content you believe violates this policy, declining to collaborate, parody, satire, and fair commentary — including pointed or unpopular opinions — are not harassment. Being annoying, downvoting, or strongly disagreeing with someone is not harassment.

Doxxing and Personal Information

Do not share another person's private information without their explicit consent. Private information includes (but is not limited to):

Home or work address.
Phone number, personal email address.
Employer, school, workplace name beyond what the person has publicly disclosed.
Family members.
Bank, credit, or other financial account information.
Medical or mental-health information.
Legal name when they use a pseudonym on Grovetracks or elsewhere.
Immigration status.
Physical location at a specific time.
Private images or personal correspondence.

Do not threaten to share this information. Do not make false reports to emergency services or law enforcement using another person's information ("swatting"). Sharing your own information is your choice — but be thoughtful about what you make public.

Hate Speech

Content that promotes violence, dehumanization, or hatred against individuals or groups based on a protected identity (race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical condition, age) — or a vulnerability (survivors of violence, people in crisis, the unhoused, refugees) — is prohibited.

We look at intent and context. Dehumanizing language, slurs directed at a class of people, denial of hate-crime victims' experiences, coded attacks on people as a class, and calls for violence against protected groups all count. Legitimate political, religious, and social commentary about policies, institutions, or public figures does not — even when it's pointed or unpopular.

Violent Extremism

Do not organize, promote, recruit for, glorify, or fundraise for violent extremism, terrorism, or the individuals and groups that commit it. This includes compositions designed to recruit for, celebrate, or coordinate acts of terrorism or extremist violence.

Historical, journalistic, educational, and counter-speech work examining these topics is welcome when the framing is clear.

Animal Cruelty

Compositions that glorify, eroticize, or celebrate the infliction of physical harm on animals — real or depicted — are prohibited. Nature, hunting, butchery, predation, and wildlife imagery remain welcome when they are not framed to glorify cruelty.

Spam, Manipulation, and Platform Abuse

Automated or bulk content, engagement-metric manipulation, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and vote-ring / bloom-ring manipulation are prohibited.
Submitting false, misleading, or bad-faith reports to our moderation team — including report-flooding to harass specific users or flood the queue — is itself a form of harassment and will result in account action.
Ban evasion by creating new accounts after a ban will extend the ban and may result in IP- or device-level restrictions.
Circumventing the Briarpatch flag — manually removing or manipulating the mature-content flag on your own compositions — is a violation of this policy.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

Do not publish content that infringes another person's copyright, trademark, right of publicity, or other intellectual property right. See the DMCA / Copyright Takedown section of the Terms of Service for our notice-and-takedown procedure and our repeat-infringer policy.

Note that Grovetracks's Community Remix License (see Terms of Service) authorizes Grovetracks users to integrate and remix each other's published compositions on the platform. Publishing a composition on Grovetracks is not an infringement of the original author's copyright, because the license is granted as a condition of publication.

Illegal Content

Do not publish content that is illegal under U.S. federal law or the law of any U.S. state, or that facilitates imminent illegal acts. Fictional or journalistic depictions of crimes, historical atrocities, and difficult themes remain welcome — art has always examined the darkest corners of human experience and we don't want to foreclose that. The line is facilitation (providing actionable instructions, methods, or solicitation), not depiction.

Specific examples:

Drugs: Educational, advocacy, harm-reduction, and recovery-focused content is welcome. Instructions for manufacturing, trafficking, or acquiring controlled substances are not.
Weapons: Historical, fictional, and artistic depictions of weapons are welcome. Instructions for manufacturing functional weapons, bypassing legal restrictions, or facilitating attacks are not.

Impersonation

Do not falsely represent yourself as another person or organization. Transparently disclosed parody, tribute, and fan accounts are permitted — if your profile name, bio, and first composition description clearly indicate that you are a fan, parody, or unofficial account, you're fine.

Self-Harm, Suicide, and Eating Disorders

Creative work about hard mental-health experiences has real value. Grovetracks is a place where people can draw through what they're going through, share recovery stories, and raise awareness. That matters, and we want to protect it.

What's welcome:

Compositions that raise awareness, document recovery, share warning signs, or point people toward help.
Compositions that process difficult experiences through art — grief, depression, anxiety, trauma.
Debunking or calming misinformation about these topics.
Documentary, educational, or journalistic work.

What's prohibited:

Content that presents suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating as glamorous, romantic, heroic, aspirational, or a practical solution.
Detailed descriptions or depictions of methods, instructions, or how-to content.
Targeting specific individuals with self-harm-related threats, challenges, or encouragement.
Promoting, normalizing, or providing instructional advice about disordered eating ("pro-ana," "pro-mia," "thinspo").
Using self-harm imagery primarily to shock, manipulate, or emotionally blackmail others.

Crisis resources. If you're struggling, please reach out:

United States: Call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (24/7).
International:findahelpline.com lists crisis services by country.

AI-Generated Content

Grovetracks is a hand-drawn and user-traced platform. Compositions you publish should be substantially your own creative work — the drawing, the integration, the composition are yours.

Required disclosure. Disclose when a composition is primarily or entirely generated by a generative-AI tool rather than hand-drawn or user-traced. You can disclose by adding an "ai-generated" or "ai-assisted" tag, or by saying so in the composition description. This is the "when in doubt, disclose" rule.

No disclosure needed for:

AI-assisted tracing tools built into Grovetracks (Canny edge detection, stroke extraction, contour tracing). These are part of our traced-composition workflow and are not "generative AI."
Minor AI assistance — autocomplete in the description field, AI-suggested tags, etc.

Prohibited regardless of disclosure:

AI-generated sexualized content depicting minors (see CSAM).
AI-generated intimate imagery of real people without consent (see NCII).
Hyperrealistic AI deepfakes impersonating a real person outside of clearly-labeled satire, parody, or political/social commentary on a public figure.
AI-generated content used to defraud, deceive, or impersonate.
AI-generated content that circumvents Grovetracks's community remix features (e.g., synthesizing fake ancestry).

We distinguish hyperrealistic AI (photographic style, real-person-like, could be mistaken for a real photograph) from illustrated or animated AI (drawn style, stylized, clearly not photographic). The hard rules above apply to both. Disclosure is primarily important for hyperrealistic cases where viewers might be deceived.

Our policy here will evolve as AI tools and platform norms develop.

NSFW Classification

Grovetracks uses a client-side NSFW classifier (NSFWJS) that runs entirely in your browser:

No images are sent to our servers for classification.
When the classifier detects content exceeding our thresholds, the Briarpatch flag is automatically applied.
You may request a review if you believe the classification is incorrect.
Manually removing, spoofing, or circumventing the Briarpatch flag is a violation of this policy.
Failure to flag content that clearly belongs in the Briarpatch is itself a violation, separate from the underlying content decision.

Traced Compositions

When creating traced compositions from photographs:

Uploaded photos: You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to trace any photo you upload (you own it, you have a license, or it's in the public domain).
Real people: Do not trace a recognizable real person in intimate or sexualized contexts without their explicit, informed consent. Tracing public figures in non-intimate editorial, satirical, or commentary contexts is welcome.
Intimate photos: Do not trace intimate or private photographs of others without their explicit consent, regardless of Briarpatch status. Do not trace photos you know or should know were shared without the subject's consent.
Photos of minors: Do not create sexualized or suggestive traces of photographs of minors, regardless of the photograph's source.

COPPA Compliance and Minor Safety

Grovetracks is not directed at children under the age of 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Users must declare their date of birth during registration; accounts for users under 13 are blocked.

For minor users (ages 13–17) who register:

Additional privacy protections apply, as described in the Privacy Policy.
The Briarpatch is disabled and cannot be enabled until the account holder reaches 18.
We may apply default-private visibility settings and may restrict some community features in jurisdictions with active state laws requiring such measures.
We cooperate with legitimate parental inquiries about minor accounts.

Enforcement and Consequences

We handle violations with progressive enforcement. The severity of the violation and the account's history together determine where in the progression enforcement begins.

Notice: The composition is removed, hidden, or reclassified (e.g., forced into the Briarpatch), and the account is notified with a brief explanation.
Temporary restriction: Repeated or moderate violations may result in publishing limits, feature restrictions (loss of bloom collection, reduced reach, inability to publish to certain surfaces), or a temporary account hold.
Permanent ban: Severe violations or persistent violations after warnings result in permanent account termination, forfeiture of virtual currency and digital items per the Terms of Service, and — for qualifying violations — referral to law enforcement.

Zero-tolerance violations always result in immediate permanent ban regardless of history: CSAM, NCII of real persons, grooming, credible threats of violence, and coordination of violent extremism. CSAM violations are reported to NCMEC and law enforcement, and content is preserved per 18 U.S.C. §2258A.

Responding in kind. If someone violates this policy and your response is itself a violation, your response is also a violation. Use the Report feature instead of matching their energy.

Off-platform conduct. For serious violations — particularly those involving minor safety — we may consider credible evidence of related off-platform behavior when evaluating reports and account actions.

Ban evasion. Creating new accounts after a ban extends the ban and may result in IP or device-level enforcement.

Reporting

Users may report content that violates this policy using the "Report" feature available on every composition. Report categories include:

Inappropriate / misclassified content
Harassment or abuse
Spam or manipulation
Copyright infringement
Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) — also available via public form at /report/ncii, no account required
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — handled with urgency, also reported to NCMEC
Self-harm / crisis concern
Other

We review all reports. The reporting user's identity is kept confidential.

A note on vigilantism. If you see something that violates this policy, report it. Don't organize against the user, don't publicly call them out in your own compositions or descriptions, and don't investigate them off-platform. Even with good intentions, vigilante action often hurts the wrong person, creates a second harassment vector, and makes our investigation harder. We take reports seriously. Let the moderation process do the work.

DMCA / Copyright

For copyright takedown requests, counter-notifications, and our repeat-infringer policy, see the DMCA / Copyright Takedown section of the Terms of Service.

Appeals

If your content is removed, your composition is reclassified, or your account is restricted and you believe it was done in error, you can appeal.

How to appeal. Use the appeal button on the affected composition, the appeal link in your moderation notice, or email support@grovetracks.com with the subject line "Appeal — [your username]".

We review every appeal and aim to respond as quickly as we reasonably can. Appeals involving CSAM, NCII, or immediate safety concerns are prioritized.

Honest appeals help the grove. When we get a decision right, we learn something. When we get one wrong, we revisit it. Please be direct — hostile or abusive appeals are themselves a policy violation.

Transparency

As Grovetracks grows, we may publish a summary of enforcement actions — compositions removed by category, accounts suspended, appeals handled, DMCA and NCII notices processed — so the community can see what the rules actually mean in practice. The cadence and detail of these summaries will depend on scale; we'd rather publish nothing than publish something hand-wavy.

Changes to This Policy

This policy will evolve. We'll adjust definitions, add categories, and refine thresholds as the community grows and as new harms emerge. When we update, we'll note the change date, call out meaningful changes in community channels, and explain what's new.

If a new form of harm appears that this policy didn't anticipate, we may take action under the spirit of these rules while we update the text. Continued use of Grovetracks after an update constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

All questions about this Content Policy, reports, appeals, DMCA notices, NCII takedown requests, and legal or privacy inquiries should be directed to support@grovetracks.com. NCII takedown requests can also be submitted via the public form at /report/ncii without an account.

Please include a descriptive subject line (e.g., "NCII Takedown," "DMCA Notice," "Appeal — [username]," "Privacy Request") so we can route your message appropriately.