What Gets You Banned on Bumble?

Breaking Bumble's content rules. Its help page lists what it does not allow. Some rules cover how you treat people: no hate speech, discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment or fetishisation. Some cover what you post: no nudity or sexually explicit content, nothing violent or threatening, no weapons in photos, and no photos of children. The rest are about honesty: no fake accounts, no posing as someone else, no false or misleading claims, no spam or scams, and nothing that promotes drug use or other illegal acts. When a rule is broken, Bumble says it may remove the content, issue a warning, or ban the member.

Bumble's Community Guidelines set out the same three steps in more detail. It may remove the content, issue a warning, or ban the member from some or all Bumble Inc. apps. It says it weighs a number of factors before it picks the penalty, and that when necessary it may also cooperate with law enforcement.

So a ban is one of three outcomes Bumble lists, not the only one. But a ban can reach past the one app you were using, which is worth knowing before you test where the line is.

Bumble says it uses human moderators and automated systems, and that reports from members play a critical role. The part a man controls is what he sends.

The guidelines are specific. Sending sexual comments or pictures she did not want counts as harassment. It also includes cyberflashing, which means sending explicit pictures nobody asked for. Bullying covers insults, putting someone down, and trying to scare them. It also covers unasked-for comments about someone's appearance, and repeated contact she does not want.

In real conversations, that list maps onto a few habits:

• Going sexual before she has. In the first messages, too warm and friendly is a small, fixable problem. Too forward costs you the conversation at best and a report at worst.
• The angry reply to a no. She says she is not interested, and the man sends a paragraph about what she is missing. That is the insulting message the guidelines describe, and it is exactly the kind that gets screenshotted.
• Treating silence as a maybe. Three follow-ups to a woman who never answered the first can read as repeated unwanted contact, however polite each one sounds.
• Anything explicit. Nudity and sexually explicit content are on the list, full stop. Keep it off the app entirely.

Explicit photos are the obvious one. Past that, men trip over three.

Weapons. Bumble does not allow weapons or firearms in photos, so the hunting shot and the range selfie stay on your phone.

Children. Bumble's rules restrict photos of children. The simple way to stay inside them is to leave children out of your photos entirely, nephews and godchildren included.

Photos that are not clearly you. The guidelines require at least one photo that shows only you, with your full face visible. They also rule out photos so heavily distorted or filtered that nobody can tell it is you, and memes or photos that are mostly text.

A few rules are about who you are and why you are there.

Bumble does not let you pose as someone else or lie about who you are. Its guidelines say that includes your name, gender, age and where you live. Your username should be a real version of the name you use every day. It cannot be a celebrity's name, and it is not a place for your social media or messaging handles.

Bumble is also not a marketplace. Using it to promote a business, a club night or anything else you sell is against the rules.

And the account has to be run by you. The guidelines ban automation Bumble has not approved, such as tools that swipe or send messages on your behalf. They also count an excessive number of accounts, or several active ones used for unwanted contact, as spam.

Two lines in the guidelines matter more to men than anything on the list.

First, what you do off the app counts. If Bumble learns of harm between members on dates, over text, or in other messaging apps, it says it may take action as if it happened on Bumble. The way you behave at the bar and in the texts afterwards is part of your account's record.

Second, getting around a ban is its own violation. Bumble does not allow new accounts, VPNs or other methods used to get past a restriction or ban, and it says it removes accounts that try when it finds them. A second account turns one decision you might have appealed into a problem with no way back.

None of this is hard to avoid, and the habits that keep an account safe are the same ones that get dates.

Keep the first messages about her and about a plan, not about sex. Take a no in one line and leave it there. Show recent, honest photos of yourself, with nothing in your hands you would not carry into a restaurant. Run one account, write your own messages, and sell nothing.

If Bumble does take action and you believe it got it wrong, its route is the appeals form linked in the notification you receive in the app. The better position is never needing it.