ChatterFork is built around a simple idea: people should be able to discover food through genuine experiences and recommendations relevant to their tastes. The value of a post comes from what actually happened, not whether a restaurant, creator or sponsor would prefer a different story. These Guidelines apply to public posts, videos, photos, ratings, comments, profiles, restaurant pages, creator activity, promotional content and paid missions. They work alongside the ChatterFork Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
1Tell the truth about your food experience
A review should reflect what you actually ate or experienced and your genuine opinion. It is fine to dislike a dish, disagree with a popular recommendation, or change your mind after another visit. Describe the dish you tried, the restaurant, and what influenced your opinion. You may use food-related flavor descriptors and ratings honestly.
Allowed: "I tried the brisket and found it too salty for my taste."
Not allowed: Claiming you ate the brisket when you never visited or tried it. Creating multiple accounts to inflate or attack a restaurant. Fabricating a review using AI or a copied story.
Do not publish someone else's post, picture, video or review as if you created it. If you are sharing permitted third-party material, attribute it and follow licensing requirements. AI may help with accessibility, captioning or technical editing where permitted, but must not invent a dining experience or misrepresent an artificial food image as an actual dish served by a restaurant.
2How content is used on ChatterFork
ChatterFork organizes food experiences to help diners discover dishes, explore restaurants, and connect with people who share similar tastes.
Content may appear across ChatterFork's discovery feeds, dish pages, restaurant listings, and other Platform features in accordance with applicable content rights.
Restaurants cannot independently use creator photographs, videos, or other original media for advertising or promotional purposes simply because that content appears on ChatterFork.
ChatterFork may introduce a creator licensing program allowing eligible subscribing restaurants to request promotional use of creator content. Creators will have the option to accept or decline these requests, and approved uses will be subject to agreed compensation and licensing terms.
Deleting a post triggers the deletion and retention rules explained in the Terms and Privacy Policy. Uploaded photos and videos must be material you have the right to share, including rights to any music and identifiable individuals where legally required.
3Disclose paid, gifted and insider relationships
Trust depends on knowing when content has a commercial connection. Clearly disclose if you received money, a free meal, a discount, a gift, an invitation, a commission or another benefit connected to the post. Restaurant owners, employees, contractors, family members and other insiders should disclose their relevant relationships when endorsing or reviewing a restaurant. A disclosure should be visible with the post or video itself, not hidden only in a profile, comments or distant hashtags.
Useful labels include "Paid partnership with [Restaurant]", "Meal provided by [Restaurant]" and "Paid mission", accurately matched to the relationship. The Platform may apply additional labels. Sponsorship does not mean a positive review is required. Giving a negative rating after a sponsored meal is allowed when the review is genuine.
4Paid missions must reward authentic work, not praise
Paid missions are optional campaigns with written eligibility, deliverables, authenticity rules, compensation, usage rights and payout terms shown before a creator accepts. A mission may be sponsored by a participating restaurant or by ChatterFork, for example to introduce diners to new restaurants, and the same rules apply to both. Payment must never depend on a positive star rating, favorable language, removing criticism, or agreeing with the sponsor's preferred conclusion.
Before paying, ChatterFork may verify a genuine experience, required disclosures, originality, appropriate dish tagging, and whether views or other interactions are authentic. A payout review tests whether the work qualifies, not whether the sponsor likes the opinion. When a concern is found, ChatterFork should explain the specific issue and provide a reasonable process to correct harmless omissions or appeal disputed findings. Never require disclosure of more personal information than is reasonably necessary to validate an eligible mission.
How authentic paid missions should work
- Neutral brief. A mission asks for a truthful experience with a specified dish or restaurant, never a positive review. Sample: "Visit, try the dish, and share your honest experience." Avoid: "Tell everyone why our tacos are amazing."
- Upfront rules. Show deliverables, deadlines, verification, disclosure labels, payment amount or formula, payout timing, use rights, any caps and appeal process before the creator opts in.
- Experience validation. Apply proportionate checks such as original upload metadata, creator history, voluntary proof of purchase or a restaurant confirmation that a visit occurred. Permit redaction of unrelated receipt information. No single signal, including a location ping, proves someone ate a dish.
- Originality and reuse checks. Detect exact or near-duplicate media, reused captions, copied claims, accounts posting identical reviews and previously paid submissions. Allow properly licensed reused content only when a mission explicitly permits it.
- Commercial transparency. Automatically attach the appropriate paid, gifted or sponsored label, including when the post is reshared or featured in a paid restaurant placement.
- Independent payout approval. Review objective mission requirements without allowing restaurants to veto a valid payout based on sentiment. Escalate suspicious claims for human review.
- Fair review and appeal. Document why payment was delayed or rejected, give creators a way to correct minor issues or appeal, and apply published timelines and policies.
See the Mission Fairness Standard for the full policy.
5Engagement-based rewards and virality
ChatterFork may later reward creators when eligible posts generate genuine engagement. Ordinary visibility or popularity does not automatically create a compensation entitlement. Additional promotional use by a restaurant requires creator authorization under an applicable licensing and compensation agreement. Future programs must explain qualified engagement, calculation windows, reward caps, exclusions and payment dates before participation.
Artificial activity does not count. Prohibited methods include buying likes or views, bot traffic, click farms, reciprocal engagement pods, fake accounts, misleading giveaways that force inauthentic activity, and organizing coordinated rating attacks. Viral rewards should be based on fraud-adjusted, qualified engagement and subject to transparent adjustments, not raw public counters.
6Restaurant participation and fair review treatment
Restaurants can claim or manage pages, contribute factual information, and respond to reviews. Creator content may appear on those pages through ChatterFork's ordinary discovery features, but restaurants cannot independently select or use that media for promotional purposes without the required authorization. They can request corrections of factual errors and report prohibited content. They cannot purchase removal of a genuine negative review, require creators to alter honest ratings, disguise employee reviews as independent customer opinions, or treat payment to ChatterFork as a guarantee of favorable ranking.
A restaurant may publicly respond professionally and factually to criticism without publishing a diner's private information, threatening retaliation or harassing the reviewer. Restaurant pages should distinguish sponsored placements from ordinary consumer content. Any promotional use of a creator's media by a restaurant, on or off ChatterFork, requires the creator's authorization.
7Give creators credit and respect copyright
Post only content you created or have rights to share. Do not remove watermarks to hide ownership, rip video from other platforms, reuse a creator's footage without permission, or use copyrighted audio without appropriate rights. Publicly accessible does not mean free to repost. Contact legal@chatterfork.com if you own content used without authorization. Content may be removed while ChatterFork processes qualifying complaints and counter notices.
ChatterFork may provide some initial dish, restaurant and media information as Seed Content. Authorized media will be treated according to its actual source permissions and licensing requirements. Users should report suspected unattributed or unauthorized seed photos and videos through the same rights reporting channel.
8Respect people, especially minors
Disagree with the food opinion, not the person's dignity. Do not threaten, bully, stalk, dox, sexually exploit, discriminate unlawfully, encourage violence, or share someone's private contact details, financial information or exact personal location without authority. Do not post sexual content involving minors or content that endangers them. Ask permission before uploading identifiable children where necessary and avoid disclosing minors' school, routine or live location. Do not pressure anyone to disclose their home address, identity documents, payment information or private messages.
Users aged 13 through 17 need parent or legal guardian consent under the Terms. Children under 13 cannot create an account unless ChatterFork later offers a specifically compliant and verifiable parental-consent experience. Paid missions are reserved for adults unless ChatterFork creates a separately approved compliant program for minors.
9Keep food facts and safety claims responsible
Opinions such as "too spicy" are welcome. Claims about allergens, foodborne illness, sanitation violations, medical treatments or a restaurant's legal status should not be invented or presented as verified when they are not. Do not share another person's medical details. Restaurant menus, food photos and dietary tags may be outdated. People with food allergies should verify ingredients and cross-contact concerns directly with a restaurant before ordering.
10Do not manipulate the Platform
Do not create sock-puppet accounts, impersonate restaurants, artificially inflate followers, brigade other users, run automated scraping, insert malware, bypass access controls, exploit technical vulnerabilities, or coordinate harassment. Do not use promotional messages, referral codes or repeated duplicate posts as spam. ChatterFork may limit visibility, withhold suspect engagement from reward calculations, suspend affected accounts and investigate serious abuse.
11How reports and enforcement should work
Users, creators and restaurants should have a clear way to report inaccurate listings, impersonation, copyright infringement, privacy violations, harassment, fake reviews and suspicious mission activity. Provide the link or content ID and a short description of the concern. Do not publish another person's personal information as part of a report.
ChatterFork may use automated signals, user reports and human judgment to investigate. Depending on severity, actions may include education, disclosure correction, content labeling, reduction of distribution, removal, temporary restrictions, account suspension or termination, and mission-payment review. ChatterFork should not assume an automatically flagged post is fraudulent without appropriate review, especially where money is at stake.
Where feasible, creators whose rewards are withheld or whose posts are removed should receive an explanation of the relevant rule and a route to request reconsideration. Illegal or dangerous content may require immediate action. ChatterFork may preserve records for lawful fraud prevention, dispute resolution or legal compliance subject to the Privacy Policy.
12Examples of acceptable and unacceptable missions
Acceptable: "Try and describe." A participating restaurant offers a creator a discounted meal to try its new noodles and requires an honest dish-level review with a visible disclosure. The creator may give any truthful rating. The payout is based on valid completion, not on praise.
Unacceptable: "Five stars for five dollars." A restaurant offers payment only to people posting favorable ratings or asks a creator to edit a negative review before releasing funds.
Acceptable: "Licensed creator promotion." A subscribing restaurant requests permission to feature a creator's video in a promotional placement. The creator accepts the proposed usage and compensation terms before the restaurant begins using the media.
Unacceptable: "Unapproved promotion." A restaurant uses a creator's photograph or video in a paid placement without obtaining the required authorization, even if the media already appears on the restaurant's ChatterFork page.
Unacceptable: "Borrowed footage." A restaurant downloads a creator's ChatterFork video and publishes it on a billboard or its outside social campaign without the needed license.
Acceptable: "Verified virality." A creator enrolled in a disclosed rewards program receives a bonus after eligible, genuine engagement passes the published threshold, subject to objective anti-fraud checks.
Unacceptable: "Engagement farm." A creator buys view packages or rotates multiple accounts to trigger a payment threshold.
13Questions, reports and appeals
- Community support: info@chatterfork.com
- Mission payouts and appeals: info@chatterfork.com
- Copyright reports: legal@chatterfork.com
- Privacy questions: privacy@chatterfork.com
- Terms of Use: https://chatterfork.com/privacycenter/terms/
- Privacy Policy: https://chatterfork.com/privacycenter/policy/
We may revise these Guidelines as the Platform develops. Material changes will be communicated as required by law and the Terms of Use. These Guidelines do not remove any user's right to share truthful opinions or exercise applicable legal protections.