The two rules that make this safe

Almost every site where strangers can reach each other handles unwanted contact the same way. It lets the message through, then gives you a block button, a report form and a promise that somebody will look at it.

That order is backwards. By the time you use any of those, you have already read it.

What we do instead

Two rules, and they are enforced by the shape of the data rather than by moderation:

• You can only hug somebody who asked for one, or somebody who hugged you first.
• Nobody can message you until you have both said yes.

There is no setting for this and no strictness level. There is no path through the site that produces a message from somebody you have not already been in contact with, because no such row can exist.

Why put it in the schema

A rule written in a policy has to be read, understood, remembered and then enforced by somebody, usually after the harm. A rule written into the structure of the data is simply a thing that cannot happen.

The best safety feature is the one nobody has to use.

It also means there is nothing for you to configure. No hoop to jump through to be left alone, no privacy settings to get right before you can relax. The quiet, careful people who would have set everything to maximum and still worried get the same protection as everybody else, without having to ask for it.

What this costs

It costs reach, and that is the point. You cannot browse a list of strangers and start conversations. You cannot appear in somebody's messages because you found them interesting. If nobody has asked and nobody has hugged you, there is nobody for you to write to yet.

For a site trying to grow quickly, that would be a serious problem. For a site about being reachable only by people you have chosen, it is the product.

What it does not do

It does not make anybody kind. Somebody you have said yes to can still say something careless or unpleasant, and if that happens you can end it and tell us. The rules remove contact you never invited. They do not vouch for the people you did.

There is one more rule, and it is absolute: nobody asks anybody for money here, for any reason, ever. Not a loan, not a favour, not a story that ends with an account number. If it happens to you, write to safety@freehug.me and we will act on it. You do not need to be signed in to do that, and you do not need to be sure.

One thing the rules deliberately do not do is make this a place to be looked after. freehug.me is not a helpline and nobody here is a professional anything. What the schema guarantees is that nobody reaches you uninvited; it does not guarantee that a stranger's kindness is the right size for what you are carrying. If today is a serious one, there are people who can help properly.

If you want the wider tour, how freehug.me works covers the rest in a few minutes.