Community guidelines

Comments are open on most pages, but closed on crime, court, death and tragedy stories. Disagree as strongly as you like with ideas, decisions and policies, and with how councillors, TDs, public bodies and companies do their jobs — not with people’s identities. These guidelines are the terms for commenting on The Ozone.

We remove

• Hate speech: attacks on people because of their gender, civil or family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race, colour, nationality or ethnic or national origin, or membership of the Traveller community (the grounds of the Equal Status Acts), including abuse aimed at a whole group, such as Travellers, immigrants or people seeking asylum.
• Threats, harassment and bullying, including wishing harm on anyone.
• Personal information: addresses, Eircodes, phone numbers, car registrations or workplaces of private individuals.
• Allegations of crime against named people that haven’t been charged or proven in court.
• Anything about a live court case beyond what was said in open court, including guesses about guilt or a defendant’s past.
• Anything that names or hints at who is involved in a sexual offence case: the complainant at any time, and the accused unless they have been convicted. Irish law forbids it (Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981, ss.7–8), even when social media or other outlets have named them, and that includes clues such as a street, a job or a relationship.
• Anything that identifies a victim of intimate-image abuse (Coco’s Law), a child in any court case or in the Garda Youth Diversion Programme, or the people or children in a family law or domestic violence case.
• Blaming a named person for a death that is before an inquest, or describing how someone took their own life.
• Spam, advertising and links to scams.

How moderation works

Comments are screened automatically by AI when they are posted: a comment that clearly breaks these guidelines is not posted, and one that might is held back for review. Every day an AI review goes through all new and reported comments against these guidelines and removes those that break them. A person reviews any decision you ask us to look at again.

Reporting a comment

Anyone can report a comment with its Report link. A report sends the comment back for review, and three reports hide it until it has been reviewed.

If you think a comment is illegal, for example defamatory, or identifying someone the law protects, please alsotell us through our contact form: the link to the page, which comment (the name and time shown on it), why you think it is illegal, and your name and email address so we can tell you what we did. We act on reports like these as quickly as we can.

If your comment is removed

Every removal is recorded with the guideline it broke and a short reason. We don’t ask commenters for an email address, so we can’t tell you directly: if your comment was not posted or has disappeared, contact us with the page and the time you posted, and we will tell you why and, if you ask, have a person look at it again. Repeated breaches lead to a block.

Our point of contact

For anything about comments, including from public authorities, use our contact form. We deal with messages in English.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled a report or a removal, you can also complain to Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland’s regulator for online services under the EU Digital Services Act, at cnam.ie.

Comments are the views of their authors, not of The Ozone.