Safe & respectful community

With your account you contribute observations, identification suggestions and a profile picture to the Ocean Spotter community. To keep the platform safe and respectful and to protect rare species, the following rules apply. They form part of the terms of use — by accepting the terms, you also accept these content guidelines.

What you may share

Ocean Spotter is a platform for nature observations, especially in and around the water. The following content is welcome:

• Your own photos and videos of a sighting — animals, plants, habitats, dives.
• Factual data about the sighting: species, time, depth, count, size, behaviour and descriptive notes.
• Identification suggestions on other users' observations, ideally with a short reasoning.
• A profile picture as your avatar.

Prohibited content

You must not upload, post or otherwise share any content that

• glorifies violence or is brutal, gory or shocking;
• is pornographic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable;
• contains hate speech, discrimination, bullying, harassment or threats against individuals or groups;
• violates applicable law — in particular illegal wildlife trade, poaching or the killing of protected species;
• violates the privacy of third parties, including identifiable people without their consent, personal data, addresses or real names;
• contains spam, unsolicited advertising, phishing, malware or harmful links;
• contains copyrighted material of third parties without permission (other people's photos, text, logos, maps);
• is wholly or partially AI-generated and presented as a real sighting;
• contains deliberately wrong species identifications or fabricated observation data.

Locations of protected species

Ocean Spotter protects sensitive locations automatically: for particularly endangered species, the exact location of an observation is not published by the server. Such sightings are shown on the map as a circle with a radius of about 30 km instead, without revealing the precise point. You do not need to do anything.

You agree not to circumvent this protection — in particular, you must not put the exact location of a protected species into the notes or any other free-text field in order to defeat the obfuscation.

If you notice a case where a sensitive location is visible or a protected species was not obscured, please report the observation using the reason "Sensitive location for protected species".

Confirming other observations

You can confirm observations of other users via QR code. Only confirm sightings you actually witnessed. False confirmations — for example to make an observation appear more credible than it is — are a violation of these guidelines.

Copyright and licence

You confirm that you hold the necessary rights to all content you upload, or that you share it with the explicit permission of the rights holder.

The rights you grant Ocean Spotter when you upload content are set out in § 5 of the Terms of Use. When uploading, you can additionally select a Creative Commons licence if you want to allow third parties to reuse your photos or videos. An overview of all available licences is provided on /licence.

Reporting and consequences

You can report any observation in the app via the report function on its detail view. The following reasons are available:

• False information
• Wrong species identification
• AI-generated content
• Inappropriate content
• Sensitive location for protected species
• Other

We typically review reports within 24 hours and take appropriate action, including:

• Removal of the content without prior notice.
• Warning of the account.
• Suspension or deletion of the account in case of repeated or severe violations.
• Reporting to the competent authorities where there is reasonable suspicion of a crime.

You will be informed about the status of your report in the messages section of the app.

Blocking users

Independent of reporting, you can block other users at any time. Observations from blocked users will no longer be shown to you afterwards.

Contact

For questions, complaints or other concerns, please contact us at info@hanki.com.