Community Guidelines

Trays is a place for home cooks to share recipes, swap notes, and learn from each other. These guidelines are how we keep it that way. They’re a plain-language companion to the formal rules in our Terms of Service §5.

What we love to see

• Real recipes you’ve actually made — with ingredients, steps, and the kind of details a cook trying it for the first time would need
• Honest comments — “I tried this with chicken instead of tofu and it worked” is gold; so is “the bake time was too long for my oven”
• Generous credit — if a recipe came from someone else (a cookbook, a relative, another cook on Trays), say so in the caption
• Helpful corrections — “FYI, this needs an egg or it won’t bind” is welcome; condescension isn’t

What’s not allowed

These categories will get content removed and may get accounts suspended or terminated. We err on the side of removal when there’s doubt.

Harassment, hate, or threats

• Personal attacks, insults, or pile-ons against another cook
• Slurs or content targeting people based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or any other identity
• Threats of violence, doxxing (sharing someone’s personal info without consent), or coordinated harassment campaigns

Sexual content, graphic violence, illegal content

• Sexual content, nudity, or sexually suggestive material
• Graphic violence, gore, or content depicting cruelty (including animal cruelty in cooking contexts)
• Content promoting or instructing on illegal activity — including illegal drugs, illegal foraging, or recipes designed to harm

Spam, scams, and manipulation

• Repeated identical or near-identical posts
• Commercial spam, link farming, or off-platform redirects unrelated to a recipe
• Engagement manipulation — buying followers, vote brigading, sock-puppet accounts, or coordinated inauthentic behavior
• Bot or automated accounts unless we’ve explicitly authorized them

Impersonation and misinformation

• Pretending to be another person, business, or public figure
• Misleading recipes that pose a safety risk (e.g., unsafe canning practices, raw consumption of foods that require cooking) presented as safe
• Health or dietary claims framed as medical advice

Content that isn’t yours

• Posting someone else’s photo or recipe without credit or permission
• Copyright infringement of any kind — see our DMCA process in §7 of the Terms

Attacks on the platform

• Attempting to break, exploit, or disrupt Trays’ service
• Scraping, automated extraction, or bulk download of other cooks’ content

Cooking-specific judgment calls

Food is personal and Trays is a global community. A few things we lean into:

• Diet styles are welcome side-by-side. Vegan posts on omnivore recipes (or vice versa) are fine; “your diet is wrong” comments are not.
• Cultural recipes deserve attribution. A dish has a history. Naming where it comes from is generous; claiming you invented something you didn’t is not.
• Allergies and safety belong in the recipe. If your recipe contains common allergens (nuts, dairy, eggs, shellfish, gluten), say so. If a step is genuinely dangerous if done wrong (raw meat, hot oil, pressure canning), flag it.

How moderation works

You have three tools in the app:

• Report a post, comment, or user — opens a short form; a moderator reviews. Reports are confidential to the moderator.
• Block a user — hides their posts, comments, and notifications from you everywhere in Trays. They are not notified.
• Delete your own content or your whole account — Settings → Delete account; this is irreversible and clears your data per the Privacy Policy.

When a moderator removes content or suspends an account, the user is told the broad reason (e.g., “harassment”) but not which report triggered the action. We do this so reporting is safe.

Appeals

If your content is removed or your account is suspended and you believe it was a mistake, email support@trays.app within 14 days of the action. We acknowledge appeals within 7 days and decide within 30 days.

Contact

For questions about these guidelines, email support@trays.app. For privacy-specific requests, see the contact section of the Privacy Policy. For copyright takedowns, see the DMCA process in §7 of the Terms.