Child safety standards

1. Our commitment

Bloom App Services operates Bloom, an LGBTQ+ social and dating service for adults in Australia and New Zealand. We prohibit child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) on Bloom without exception. This page is our published standard against CSAE, as required by Google Play’s child safety standards policy and Apple’s equivalent requirements.

These standards apply to everything on Bloom: profiles, photos, messages, calls, Village posts, meetups, events, and venue listings.

2. Bloom is 18+ only

Bloom is not available to anyone under 18. We enforce this at several points:

• Date of birth is required at signup, and accounts under 18 cannot be created.
• Government photo ID and a live selfie are required before anyone can open the dating side of Bloom.
• Accounts we believe belong to a minor are suspended immediately, pending review.
• Members can report a suspected underage account from any profile.

3. What is prohibited

The following are banned on Bloom and are grounds for immediate and permanent removal:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in any form, real or generated.
• Sexualised depictions of minors, including drawings, animation and AI-generated imagery.
• Grooming, solicitation, or any attempt to contact a minor for sexual purposes.
• Sextortion, or threatening to share intimate images of a minor.
• Trafficking, or advertising a minor for sexual services.
• Any account created or used by a person under 18.

Bloom is 18+ but is not an adult app. Nudity and sexually explicit content are already prohibited for every member under our Community Guidelines.

4. How to report

Every profile, message thread, Village post, meetup and venue listing on Bloom carries an in-app Report control, and every profile can be blocked. Reports of child safety concerns are prioritised ahead of all other reports.

You do not need a Bloom account to report to us. Email hello@bloomapp.com.au with what you saw and where. If a child is in immediate danger, call 000 in Australia or 111 in New Zealand first.

5. What we do with a report

• We review child safety reports as a priority, ahead of the ordinary moderation queue.
• Content we assess as CSAE is removed and preserved as evidence in line with our legal obligations.
• The account is suspended, and where confirmed, permanently banned along with any linked accounts and devices.
• We report confirmed CSAE to the relevant authorities, as set out below.
• We do not warn the account holder in advance where doing so would interfere with an investigation.

6. Reporting to authorities

We report confirmed child sexual abuse and exploitation to the appropriate authority for the jurisdiction involved, including:

• Australia — the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), operated by the Australian Federal Police, and the eSafety Commissioner.
• New Zealand — the Department of Internal Affairs Digital Child Exploitation Team, and New Zealand Police.
• United States — the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), where a report concerns a US person or US-hosted content.

We comply with all child safety laws that apply to Bloom in the places we operate, and we cooperate with lawful requests from these authorities.

7. Prevention

• Identity verification — government photo ID and a live selfie gate the dating side of Bloom.
• Photo moderation — reported photos are reviewed and removed where they breach our rules.
• Ban enforcement — banned accounts are blocked from returning under a new email or phone number where we can detect it.
• Safety check-ins — members can nominate up to three trusted friends and start a check-in before meeting someone.

8. Point of contact

Our designated point of contact for child safety and CSAE compliance is rachael@bloomapp.com.au. Law enforcement and platform partners can use this address to reach someone able to speak to our CSAE prevention practices.

9. Review

We review these standards at least annually, and whenever Bloom adds a feature that changes how members can reach one another. Related policies: Community Guidelines, Safety, Terms and Privacy.