The honest part, first
Dialed cannot remove anything from Instagram. It is not the host. What Dialed can do is stop showing it to you.
That is the whole shape of this document, and it is worth being plain about it rather than writing standards that imply powers we do not have.
Instagram hosts the posts. Instagram's own policies, its moderation and its enforcement decide what exists on Instagram and what comes down. We have no account privileges there, no platform access and no special standing. We cannot delete a post, suspend an account, or make a report on your behalf.
What we control is one thing: what reaches your screen in our app. We take that seriously, because for the time you are using Dialed it is the whole of your experience. When something should not be in front of you, we can cover it, we can stop serving the account it came from, and we can add it to what the filter looks for — for you, and in the app's defaults for everyone.
A hosted service's answer would be "we removed it." Ours is "we stopped showing it." Those are different promises, and we would rather state the one we can keep.
What Dialed filters
You set the filter. During setup you choose topics, and the app works one of two ways:
- Show me only these — a post has to match one of your topics to get through. Everything else is covered.
- Hide these — a post is covered if it matches one of your topics, and everything else gets through.
A post is judged from the caption Instagram has already put on your screen. The judgement runs on your device; the caption is never sent anywhere.
You can also:
- Never show an account. Add an Instagram handle to the never-show list and its posts are covered wherever they appear, whatever they are about. This is a block that we can enforce, and it is independent of the topic filter.
- Always show an account. The opposite list, for accounts the topic filter keeps getting wrong.
- Turn a whole surface off. The home feed and Reels can each be removed from the app entirely.
- Filter what other people send you. Posts opened from an account page, and reels sent in a direct message, are held until they have been judged and covered if they fail — the content you did not choose is filtered on the same terms as the content you did.
- Pause filtering, for a set time, after which it resumes on its own.
What is filtered before you choose anything. Nothing, and we would rather say so plainly than imply otherwise.
Dialed starts with an empty filter. Until you pick a topic, block an account or switch a section off, your feed is the feed Instagram would have shown you anyway.
What that means in practice is that mature content is Instagram's to filter, not ours. Instagram has already applied its own rules and your own Sensitive Content Control setting to your account before any page reaches Dialed, and Dialed never un-hides something Instagram has hidden — it has no way to. We only ever hide more. If you want Instagram's own limits tightened, that setting lives in Instagram, under Settings → Content preferences, and it keeps working exactly as it does in a browser.
Dialed is rated 16+ for this reason: what you see before you configure anything is Instagram, with Instagram's own standards.
What we will not tolerate
These rules are about what people do with Dialed. Breaking them can get your access to Dialed suspended or terminated, and where the law requires it we will report conduct to the authorities.
Absolutely prohibited, with no warning and no second chance:
- Using Dialed to find, collect, store or pass on child sexual abuse material, or any content that sexualises a minor.
- Using Dialed to find, collect or pass on intimate images of someone who did not consent to them being shared.
- Using Dialed in the course of stalking, threatening, or coordinating violence against a person or a group.
Also not allowed:
- Harassment, threats, hate speech directed at a person, or impersonation carried out through the app.
- Collecting, scraping or republishing Instagram content or other people's personal information. Dialed is deliberately built so it cannot do this, and you may not modify it so that it can.
- Automating activity on an Instagram account — bulk following, liking, messaging or posting. Dialed takes no action on your account and must not be made to.
- Using Dialed to get around a block, restriction or ban imposed by Instagram or by another user.
- Turning Dialed's filter off in order to put restricted content in front of someone else — a child, for instance.
- Sharing or reselling a subscription, or tampering with the app to bypass payment.
What to do about a post you should not have seen
Report it to Instagram. Instagram hosts it, so Instagram is the only party who can take it down. Its own report control is on the post, in the app, one tap away: tap ⋯ on the post or reel and choose Report. Dialed does not touch, move, hide or wrap that control — the page underneath is Instagram's, unmodified, and the report goes straight to Instagram as it would in a browser. The same goes for Instagram's Block, Restrict, Mute and Not interested controls.
Stop it reaching you again. Add the account to Dialed's never-show list, or add the topic to your filter. That takes effect immediately and on every surface.
Tell us, if it is something our filter should have caught. Write to support@usedialed.app. We cannot take the post down, and we will not pretend otherwise — but we can:
- work out why the filter let it through, and fix the classifier or the default category list;
- add the pattern to Dialed's default filters so it is covered for everyone, not just you;
- tell you plainly if the answer is that the post said nothing in its caption that any caption-based filter could have caught.
We acknowledge every report within 2 business days, and aim to resolve it within 10 business days. What we do next, and how fast, is set out in our Content Compliance Plan: https://usedialed.app/content-compliance.html.
What we do when we act
- Against content: we add it to Dialed's default filters so it is covered in the app for everyone. We cannot delete it, and it still exists on Instagram.
- Against an account: we can add it to Dialed's default never-show list. We cannot suspend it; only Instagram can.
- Against a Dialed user who breaks these standards: we can suspend or terminate their access to Dialed, under section 12 of our Terms of Service. That is the limit of what we have. It does not touch their Instagram account.
- Where the law requires reporting, we report, and we cooperate with law enforcement requests that are properly made.
The limits of these standards
We want to be clear about three things so that nobody relies on Dialed for something it cannot do.
- Dialed is not a moderation service, a parental control or a child-safety product. It is a filter you configure for yourself.
- A caption filter misses things. Dialed judges a post from the words on screen. A post whose caption says nothing about its content can pass a filter that is working exactly as designed. You will sometimes see something you asked not to see.
- These standards govern Dialed, not Instagram. What is allowed to exist on Instagram is Instagram's decision under Instagram's Community Guidelines. Our standards only govern our app and the people using it.
Changes
We will update these standards as the app changes and as we learn what the filter misses. The date at the top shows the current version.
Contact
support@usedialed.app