Moderator FAQs
What is a moderator?
Moderators ensure a healthy and active Community experience on X. We see moderators having three critical jobs: (1) facilitating meaningful conversation, (2) connecting like-minded people, and 3) developing the Community's culture.
We expect that most moderators will be active in their Community every day, whether it be posting, reviewing on reported posts, or inviting new members to join.
What is the difference between a moderator and an admin?
A moderator is someone who helps keep conversations safe and on track in a Community. They are chosen and overseen by a Community admin, and may be tasked with other duties as the admin sees fit.
An admin is the owner of a Community. Their duties may include keeping conversations useful and on topic, reviewing member reports, hiding member posts, or removing disruptive members from the Community. They may also choose moderators to help with these tasks. Admins are responsible for managing the Community, which includes adding, modifying, and removing Community rules, name, and description. As the admin of a Community, you may invite as many moderators as you wish.
Admins also have the ability to add new moderators from the members list, as well as remove existing moderators.
Note: Currently, adding or removing moderators is only available on web and iOS.
For a further breakdown of features available for each permission, please see Community roles.
Who is eligible to become an admin?
X's eligibility requirements for admin accounts include:
- X account must be public (not protected; if an account gets switched to protected, it will lost Moderator privileges).
- X account must be at least six months old.
- X account must have verified either an email address or a phone number.
- X account must not violate, or have a history of violating, the X Terms of Service.
To remain an admin in Communities, you are required to continuously meet these eligibility requirements. Additionally, X will work closely with the admins and moderators of each Community to help them manage their Communities and may monitor for violations of the moderator guidelines. Depending on the severity and history of violative behavior, we may take some or all of the following enforcement actions:
- Pause your participation as a moderator in Communities.
- Remove you from Communities.
If we take an enforcement action, we will notify you of the action and its impact on your account.
As always, if you violate the X Rules, we may take additional enforcement actions. Please review the X Help Center to learn more.
What are the roles and responsibilities of a moderator?
Inviting & managing members
Moderators are responsible for directly inviting people to join the Community, which would automatically give them access to join. Moderators could also post out to encourage people to nominate themselves for an invitation, after which they invite them directly to join.
Moderators can directly remove members who do not abide by Community rules.
Enforcing Community rules
Each Community may have its own specific rules around conversation. Moderators will be enforcing those rules by hiding them, as described right below.
Managing posts
Moderators will be actively monitoring and reporting posts as inappropriate, toxic, and/or not relevant so that they are hidden and do not appear for members of the Community.
Generating discussion
Moderators should actively be in the Community encouraging discussion by posting and/or creating post replies to other posts created by members in the Community. Moderators make sure the conversation stays healthy. The more members join a Community, the more content that potentially needs to be moderated.
How will X help me as a moderator?
For the initial rollout of Communities, we will create a Community specifically for Community admins and moderators. This Community can be used to talk to other moderators, as well as X employees actually building the features you'll be using every day.
Besides being able to communicate within the special Community built for participants, you will also have direct access to the Communities team via email, where we will be listening to your feedback and supporting you for any issues.
When emailing the X team, please CC your usual X partnerships contact(s) and please specify in the subject line if you have a [General question] or an [Issue]. For example:
Subject: [General question] Adding more moderators to Community
or
Subject: [Issue] Concern for safety of Community members
How many moderators can each community have?
There are no limits to the number of moderators for each Community.
Will I get paid for being a moderator?
X does not provide payment for creating, administering, or moderating Communities.
How many people can I invite into a Community?
Moderators can invite as many people as they would like.
Can I see/download analytics around engagement within my Community?
At this time, there are no metrics or analytics available in-app or on X.com. We're looking into possibly working on this in the future based on feedback.
What eligibility criteria can I use to determine who can join a Community?
Community admins and moderators must not enforce any eligibility criteria for people joining their Communities besides an interest in the shared purpose.
For example, there can be no eligibility enforcement around protected categories including race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
For more information, see our hateful conduct policy.
Guidelines for admins & moderators
Community roles
Community management is based on a set of different roles, with each having various permissions and abilities to manage everything about the Community.
Creator
A Community can only have one original creator. This role is also considered an Admin.
Admin
The creator of a Community automatically becomes the first acting admin, and has the ability to modify the Community settings, as well as all moderator tools available for moderators.
Moderator
Moderators are the people actively monitoring the Community every day, encouraging and taking part in discussion, reviewing Community post reports, and managing members.
Member
Members of a Community can participate in the Community, block members, report posts, and invite up to 5 additional members into an invite-only Community.
As an admin or moderator in Communities, you are expected to support a healthy conversation in the Community by helping to enforce the Community rules using moderator tools. In addition, you are expected to follow these guidelines:
- Always follow the X Rules and the Community rules of the Communities you moderate.
- Do not make Community rules that duplicate, violate, or conflict with the X Rules, or encourage behavior or content that violates the X Rules.
- Stay active in your Community.
- Do not abuse or misuse your moderator tools. Abuse or misuse could include any of the following patterns of behavior:
- Hiding posts from Community members in an abusive or disruptive manner.
- Removing members of a Community arbitrarily or in an abusive or disruptive manner.
- Do not encourage behavior or content that violates the X Rules or the Community rules of your Community.
People on X are allowed to create parody, newsfeed, commentary, or fan communities, provided that the Communities follow the requirements below.
If your Community's profile features another person or brand for fan purposes, you will need to take additional steps to avoid confusing others about your affiliation with the subject of your Community:
- Avoid using the name of the person or brand as your Community name in a confusing or deceptive way;
- Include language in the description that lets others know the Community is run by fans.
Please refer to X's parody, newsfeed, commentary, and fan account policy for more information.
Quick do's & don'ts
Do:
- ...actively post and engage with other posts.
- ...actively monitor and review tasks within the Reported posts queue.
- ...become a face of the Community such that people know who you are and recognize your interest and excitement.
- ...invite relevant and interested people to join, and encourage members to do the same.
- ...work to resolve issues with individuals or groups of people, especially before needing to hide multiple posts or remove members.
Don't:
- ...abuse any moderator tools, including hiding posts arbitrarily or in an abusive or disruptive manner or removing members arbitrarily or in an abusive or disruptive manner.
- ...make Community rules that duplicate, violate, or conflict with the X Rules, or encourage behavior or content that violates the X Rules.
- ...send out mass invitations to people who may not be interested in joining; spamming invitations will likely not result in a leaned-in and healthy Community.
- ...remove members specifically on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
Reviewing reported Posts
You will have the responsibility to review all posts that are reported to moderators.
When a post is reported, all moderators will receive a notification. Once you've reviewed and determined if any Community rules have been broken, you will choose to Hide post or Keep.
If you decide to hide the post, you will be asked to provide feedback on the rule that was broken to help the member understand why this action was taken. If you also believe that the post violates the X Rules, please report the post to us by tapping or clicking on Report post.
Removing members
You will have the ability to remove any members who are not abiding by the Community rules. If you decide to remove a member, you will be asked to provide feedback on the rule breaking to help the member understand why this action was taken. The removed member will be notified in both cases that a moderator removed their post or removed them for breaking a rule.
Community settings & rules
In this section of the playbook, we'll review some of the customizable Community settings.
Community settings
Name
(Required)
This is the name associated with your Community. This is the primary identifier that will be used across many places on X including above posts within timelines, within Communities discovery features, as well as the DM invitations seen by potential new members.
Community names are not unique and so there may be many Communities that use the same name.
Names need to be less than or equal to 30 characters. We'll support the same set of emojis and symbols that are permitted for usernames.
Description
(Required)
A description of your Community will help educate people on what your Community is all about.
The description needs to be less than or equal to 160 characters, with standard emojis and symbols being permitted.
Theme/Color
(Optional)
Choose a theme color for your Community: default (X blue and black), teal, foam, green, blue, purple, fuchsia, red, orange, eggplant. The color you choose will be shown throughout the Community for some buttons and highlights.
Cover Photo
(Optional, but recommended)
Choose a cover photo for your Community's page. If no cover photo is chosen, a X-selected default photo will be shown in its place.
The recommended resolution for the cover photo is 1200 x 480 pixels.
Be sure that your chosen cover photo does not violate our copyright policy, or our hateful conduct policy, and does not contain sensitive media.
Community rules
All Community content still falls within the X Rules, and any Community rules that are made should follow alongside the X Rules.
If a post gets posted within the Community that goes against the X Rules, report the post as such. As part of the post review queue, you need only review and action on posts that may violate the Community rules.
Rule modifications and notifications
Communities must have at least one rule and can have up to ten rules at a time.
Members of the Community will be notified when there are any changes made to the rules. Changes include adding, modifying, or removing rules. Even making small changes, like punctuation fixes, are counted as changes. However, rules can be reordered at any point, and do not count as rule changes.
If posts were hidden for violating a rule that has changed or no longer exists, they will remain hidden.
Thought starters
To get you thinking about the types of rules you might want to apply to your Community, we've compiled a list of some possible rules below:
- Keep posts and Replies on-topic.
- Be kind.
- Be inclusive and open.
- No personal attacks.
- No sensitive media, such as photos or videos that depict graphic violence or adult sexual content.
- No links.
- No pictures or GIFs.
- No memes.
- No advertising or self-promotion.
- No political discussions.