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Community Guidelines

The below are living guidelines which we'll continue to review as the Shares community grows across the world. By using Shares you agree to these guidelines and terms of use.

Getting started

Community at Shares is at the heart of everything we do. That’s why we think it’s important to create a space that our members feel safe in, and where you’re encouraged to share as much or as little as you want. Whether that’s a public thread discussing what stocks you think are moon-bound or quietly building your portfolio, we want you to feel comfortable however you’re using Shares.

We started Shares to help people come together around investing, build meaningful connections and start conversations. That's why we encourage you to add your friends, peers and network to support each other's investment journey. Investing can feel scary when you’re doing it alone, so use this community to ask questions, discuss strategies and see how others are doing it.

Community guidelines are often long lists of don’t-do’s. While these are important to call out, we think it’s just as important to talk about the do-do’s. These are the things that make this community special and keep you coming back for more.

Whether you’re planning to be an active member of our community or not, here are a couple of suggestions on how to get the most out of Shares:

Build your profile

Add a profile picture and bio and interests to your account. Putting a face to a name helps you build a profile others want to engage with and makes it easier to find friends!

Engage with friends

See what stocks your friends are buying and selling through your activity feed, or by chatting with them directly.

Join the conversation!

Chat with fellow investors about almost everything from how to get started to ethical investing, dividends, trading strategies and so much more. Get involved! We know you’ll find something to love.

Our guidelines

Our guidelines apply to all parts of our product, regardless of how you’re using Shares.

What you can expect from us

Our number one priority is building trust and safety in this community, and that means ensuring these guidelines are followed by all our members. We’re here to build the kind of environment you want to be a part of, which means you might see our Moderators take action against engagement we feel goes against our guidelines.

In most cases, action might mean issuing a warning. But where necessary, we’ll take steps to remove harmful or offensive content or the accounts responsible for creating it. We know people make mistakes, but there are certain behaviours we won’t accept.

What we won’t accept from you

While it should be pretty obvious what’s unacceptable to share in this community, we want to call out particularly important behaviours we won’t tolerate:

Attempts to advise or influence the actions of others

Investment advice isn’t permitted on Shares, so please avoid sharing content that encourages (whether deliberately or not) others to act on whatever you’re sharing.

It’s perfectly acceptable to share some general investing tips (such as using dollar cost averaging) or information coming from credible sources, which you believe might be useful to others.

Here are a few examples of content which is acceptable ✅:

  • "I think it's a good idea to diversify your portfolio, if you'd like to minimise the potential risk."
  • "Personally, I always make sure to do proper research before investing." - "Check out this book I read about investing strategy, it might be useful to deepen your knowledge."
  • "Have you read the article about Apple on Bloomberg? Interesting news!."

At the same time, please keep in mind that providing any direct financial advice on Shares is strictly forbidden. You shouldn't advise others what assets/products to invest in, how often to invest, what amount to invest, or what to do with a specific investment (e.g. sell/buy/hold). This also applies to the promotion of specific stocks. If we think that your post may amount to financial advice, our Moderators will provide you with an explanation why we think that is the case and may take action.

Here are a few examples of content which is not allowed on Shares ❌:

  • "Invest in Tesla - it has great potential."
  • "Keep buying tech stocks, and maybe consider index ETFs."
  • "To become financially free, start with $10 a month, and go up to $1000 in a year."
  • "Focus on dividend-paying assets."
  • “Why be bullish on a tech company when you can be bullish on all tech companies' raw ingredients.”
  • “Stock A and Stock B look strong premarket. Moving forward we can see stock prices increase dramatically.”
  • “If you start investing into dividend stocks like Stock A and Stock B you can get a guaranteed passive income stream every 3 months. Any questions, drop me a message.”

Market abuse

This is an umbrella term that covers behaviours such as market manipulation and collusion, spreading rumours, insider trading, and price speculation. Here are a few examples of content which you shouldn't share ❌:

  • "Everyone's saying AMZN going UP!"
  • "I'm telling u - TWTR will be down to $40 soon"
  • "Lets all sell META and show them what we think about them"
  • "Unconfirmed info but I'm pretty sure COIN will bounce back next week"

Soliciting Business

Don't engage in direct advertising or promoting personal and/or third party businesses. This includes promoting products, services, or any commercial activities. Let's maintain a focused and respectful environment for all community members.

Promoting the copying of trades

Refrain from endorsing or encouraging trade replication. Sharing methods to copy trades may carry significant risks and might not be suitable for all investors. Let's prioritise responsible investing practices and provide helpful insights without promoting direct trade replication.

Hate speech

Any form of discrimination towards others won’t be accepted on Shares. You must respect everyone, including Shares staff and moderators.

Abuse and harassment

Treat others how you want to be treated. Disagreements are fine, but abuse and harassment isn’t cool and won’t be tolerated. This might include harmful language or repetitive, unsolicited behaviour towards individuals or groups.

  • Here are a few examples of language which is not allowed on Shares ❌: "You are dumb if you think that's a good idea"
  • "You are a joke"
  • "Do you even speak English? Those typos are ridiculous"

Threats and bullying

This is an absolute no-go. It includes direct, indirect and suggestive threats made to individuals or groups of people.

Pretending to be someone you’re not

Don’t deceive others by pretending to be someone else. Whether that’s through impersonation or by misleading others about your profile or investing experience.

Spam

We appreciate that people get excited and trigger-happy, but let's make sure it’s for the right reasons. Don’t spam our community with personal referral links or promotional offers.

Consider what you share

We won’t tolerate sharing inappropriate content whatsoever. This includes, but isn’t limited to: gore, self-harm, drug abuse, nudity, animal cruelty.

Please keep in mind that the above are just some examples of unacceptable behaviour, but this list is not exhaustive. A serious breach of these guidelines may lead to us closing your account. If you are unsure if the content you’d like to share is appropriate or not, you can always contact our Support Team and ask for advice. Our team will be excited to assist you.

What we’d like to see from you!

Here are some of the ways you can help us create and maintain a truly great community that you and everyone else wants to be a part of.

Have meaningful interactions

Find people just like you, with the same questions and investing goals. Connect, bond and share your journey together.

Share thoughtful and relevant content

Seen an insightful video or educational blog post related to a community? Share it! If you found it useful, chances are others will too.

Make others feel welcome

Joining a community can be daunting, so welcome others into the mix and engage with their content.

Give us feedback

Tell us what you think so we can improve your experience.

Support our Moderators

Help us create and maintain the kind of community you want to be a part of. If you see someone sharing something that goes against our guidelines, give them a polite nudge about it.

Be opinionated, but considerate

We’re all for hearing your take on something, but please keep clear of contentious subjects like politics, religion and topics with no relation to investing and which may be harmful to others.

Please note that where you need help with technical questions or how to navigate the app, our customer support team will be happy to help you. As such our agents may reach out to you directly or point you to the right article in our Help Centre.

Reporting Posts & Moderation

We’ve built the first set of features on Shares to help you create the experience you want. That’s why you have the ability to report and block users and report content on your activity feed and communities. If you feel that a piece of content or engagement breaks our guidelines, we encourage you to report it. All you need to do is tap the three dots (‘...’) next to a piece of content to tell us about it.

We’ll always take the time to thoroughly review these requests and take action, but sometimes we’ll make mistakes. We’re only human after all. A lot goes into building a thriving community, so please be patient with us if we don’t nail it the first time round! We’ve just created a brand-new moderation team that should really help us.

Think of Moderators as stewards of our community. For now they directly oversee our Community to help us uphold our high standards. Our moderation and support team will manually review any content or users you’ve reported, so there’s no need to reach out to them directly. In turn, they will contact the user in question and provide them with an explanation why the post or their behaviour may be in breach of these guidelines (for example, they've commented on a specific stock and it could be seen as financial advice). If, however, you have any questions, you can always contact our Support Team to discuss.

Fairness and transparency are important to Shares. If we need to take action against you or a piece of content you’ve shared, we’ll never leave you in the dark. Expect to receive a communication from us outlining what’s happened and why we’ve made a decision.

If you think there’s more we can do to provide a better experience for our community, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading!