Safety on Luney
If you’re in danger right now, call your local emergency number. Below is where to find each safety tool in the app, what happens after you report something, and where to get help.
Where to find each safety tool
Next to each tool is where it lives in the app, in the app’s own words, so you can open Luney and follow along.
Settings, Safety means open Settings, then tap Safety.
Your phone and your account
For when someone else might pick up your phone or learn your password.
Panic Mode
Settings, Safety, Panic Mode
If someone walks up or looks over your shoulder, Panic Mode lets you hide Luney in a moment. It stays hidden until you bring it back. If you don’t come back within five minutes, your Trusted Circle gets an alert that you may need help, as long as someone has accepted a place in it and your phone had signal when you used Panic Mode. Set it up before you need it.
App Lock
Settings, Security, App Lock
Luney asks for its own PIN, 4 to 8 digits, when you open it, and again after it’s been in the background for as long as you choose. It’s separate from your phone’s lock.
Two-factor authentication
Settings, Security, Two-factor authentication
Signing in takes your password and a 6-digit code from an authenticator app, so someone who knows your password still can’t get in.
Devices signed in
Settings, Security, Active Sessions
Lists every device signed in to your account, and you can sign any of them out. If someone signs in to your account while you’re signed in somewhere else, you get a notification, and Luney asks “Was this you?” with a button to sign out every other device.
Friends who can check on you
Friends you choose, who get an alert if you might need help.
Trusted Circle
Settings, Safety, Trusted Circle
Pick up to five of your Luney friends. Each one has to accept your invite first. They’re the people Luney alerts if you miss a Date Check-in, or if you don’t come back within five minutes of using Panic Mode.
Date Check-in
Settings, Safety, Date Check-in
Before you meet someone new, set a deadline between 15 minutes and 12 hours away. If you haven’t tapped “I’m safe” by then, your Trusted Circle gets an alert. You can add who you’re meeting and where, and push the deadline back if plans run long. Only your Circle sees those details, and only if the deadline passes.
Who can reach you
Turn these down if you’re getting attention you don’t want.
Who can message you
Settings, Privacy, Who Can DM
Pick from everyone, friends of friends, friends only, existing conversations only, or nobody. With nobody, the people you already talk to can’t message you either.
Who can send you a friend request
Settings, Privacy, Who can add you
Pick from everyone, friends of friends, or no one. You can still send requests yourself, and someone you’ve blocked can never send you one.
Who can comment
Settings, Privacy, Who Can Comment
Sets who can comment on your new posts: anyone who can see the post, friends of friends, friends only, or no one. You can still turn comments off on a single post.
Limit new accounts
Settings, Privacy, Limit new accounts
Stops accounts less than a week old from messaging you or commenting on your posts and photos. Friends always can.
New in 1.5.0
Hidden words
Settings, Privacy, Hidden words
If a comment on your post or photo uses a word or phrase on your list, other members don’t see it. You and the person who wrote it still do. They aren’t told it’s hidden, and you can let it through.
New in 1.5.0
Take a break
Settings, Notifications, Take a break
Pauses your notifications for anywhere from an hour to a week. You show as offline unless you turn that off, and you can leave an away note for anyone who opens a chat with you. Safety alerts still come through.
New in 1.5.0
What other people can see
Check who can see what, and make your profile harder to find.
Privacy checkup
Settings, Privacy, Privacy checkup: what people can see of me
One page that says who can see what, based on your settings right now, and what’s changed since your last checkup.
Hide me from search
Settings, Privacy, Hide me from search
Takes your profile out of search results. Friends, groups and direct links to your profile still work.
Profile link
Settings, Privacy, Allow profile link sharing
Turn this on if you want a luney.lgbt link to your profile that you can give people. It starts off, so nobody can find your profile on the web by guessing its address.
Stealth Mode
Settings, Privacy, Stealth Mode
You look offline to everyone, and nobody sees when you’re typing or have read their messages. Read receipts are off both ways while it’s on. You’re also left out of the community cards on the Home tab, like Roll Call, Shoutouts and Icebreakers, and out of other people’s mutual-friend lists.
Closet Mode
Settings, Privacy, Closet Mode
Only your inner circle sees your posts, reels, photos, albums and guestbook, whatever audience you picked. People outside it don’t see which friends you have in common.
If someone is giving you trouble
Whichever of these you use, the other person isn’t told it was you.
Report
Long-press, then Report
You can report posts, comments, messages, reels, profiles, live rooms and more. What happens next is further down this page.
Block
Settings, Safety, Blocked Users
Block someone from the menu on their profile. After that they can’t open your profile (it shows as not found), message you, comment on or react to your posts, send you a friend request, or see your posts and reels, and you stop seeing theirs. You can unblock anyone from Blocked Users.
What a blocked person can still do
- See and post in any group you’re both in, including on your posts there. If that’s a problem, you can leave the group or talk to its admins.
- Be in the same live audio room as you.
- Type out your @handle. Luney stops suggesting it to them.
Blocking doesn’t delete anything they sent you before. Your old conversation stays, but they can’t write in it.
Mute or hide
Settings, Safety, Hidden content
Mute someone from the menu on one of their posts, and their posts and reels stop showing up for you. You stay friends, and they aren’t told. You can also hide a single post or reel from its menu. Hidden content lists everything you’ve muted or hidden, so you can undo it.
Muted words
Settings, Preferences, Muted words
Posts and comments with a word you’ve muted are covered until you tap them. Nothing is removed.
On for everyone
You don’t have to set these up.
Screenshot protection
Always on
Screenshots and screen recordings of Luney come out black, on iPhone and Android. On iPhone, you’re also told when someone screenshots your profile, your reel, a photo on your profile, or one of your posts that has a photo in it, while they have it open, unless it’s in a group that has switched those warnings off.
No location in your photos
Always on
Your phone often saves where a photo was taken inside the photo file. Luney takes that out before the photo uploads, and the app never asks where your phone is.
Explicit photos arrive blurred
Always on
A photo or GIF that looks explicit goes up blurred, with a “Possibly sensitive” label, and people tap if they want to see it. The check happens on the phone, so your photos aren’t sent anywhere to be scanned.
What happens when you report something
A person decides what happens to every report: someone on the Luney team, or the admins of the group it was posted in.
You report it
Long-press the post, comment or message, or open its menu, and tap Report. Choose a reason, and add a note if you want to. If you’re reporting a DM, you can include up to a week of the messages around it, and you see exactly which messages will go before you send them.
Right after you send the report, you can hide what you reported from your own view, or block the person.
It goes to the group’s admins or to Luney staff
If you report something inside a group, that group’s admins get it first. If they haven’t dealt with it within 48 hours, it goes to Luney staff.
Serious reports, like hate speech, sexual content or self-harm, skip the admins and go straight to Luney staff. So do reports about DMs, reels, live rooms and anything outside a group. Serious reports also sit higher in the staff queue.
Someone looks at it
A Luney moderator or the group’s admins look at what you reported. One report doesn’t hide anything by itself, and the person you reported is never told who reported them.
You hear back
When it’s settled, you get a short notification: the content was removed, or no action was needed.
If staff take action, the person you reported is told, and the decision shows up in their account history at Settings, Account Activity, with any note staff wrote for them.
The other person can appeal
Most decisions can be appealed from Account Activity, and someone on the team replies in a support ticket. When staff remove a post or comment, we keep it for 30 days, so it can go back up if an appeal succeeds. Child sexual abuse material, and anything else removed for the most serious violations, is deleted straight away and can’t be restored.
Automated signals help our moderators decide which reports to look at first.
Our Open book publishes the moderation numbers for every month: reports received, warnings, suspensions and content removed.
What isn’t allowed
You have to be 18 or over to use Luney. Everyone gives their date of birth when they sign up, and if it shows they’re under 18, they can’t finish signing up. If we find an account that belongs to someone under 18, we remove it.
Be yourself, and let other people be themselves. Hate speech, harassment, threats, doxxing, sharing intimate images without consent, spam and pretending to be someone else aren’t allowed, and neither is going after someone for who they are. Groups can add their own rules and ask you to accept them before you join. The full rules are in the terms.
Harassment includes the kinds queer people know too well: misgendering someone on purpose, telling someone they’re not queer enough, outing them, and pile-ons.
For most problems we go one step at a time: a warning, then a limit on one thing the person can do (like messaging or commenting), then a suspension, then removing the account. Hate speech, threats, doxxing and attacks on someone’s identity can skip those steps, and the account can be removed with no warning.
If someone keeps coming back on new accounts, tell us. Someone removed for a serious violation can’t sign up again with the same email address.
Leave this site quickly
Leave, at the top right of every page on this site, swaps the page for a weather site straight away. Pressing Esc three times within two seconds does the same, on any page.
It replaces the page you were on, so Back won’t bring it up again. It can’t clean up the rest of your browser, though:
- Back can still reach Luney pages you opened earlier in the same tab.
- Your browser history still lists every page you opened on this site.
If someone might go through your browser, read this site in a private window, or clear your history when you’re done.
If a button that says Leave would draw attention, you can hide it on this device with the switch at the bottom of every page. Pressing Esc three times still works while it’s hidden.
Child safety
Luney is for adults, and we don’t allow child sexual abuse or exploitation anywhere in it. When we find it, we delete the content for good, ban the account, and report it to NCMEC in the United States, and to the matching authority in other countries where the law requires it.
To report it in the app, choose Sexual content involving a minor as the reason. That report goes straight to Luney staff, wherever you send it from.
Find help
If you’re in danger right now, call your local emergency number. Luney isn’t a crisis service, and we can’t send anyone to you.
Our directory lists LGBTQIA+ crisis lines, clinics, housing, legal help and community spaces, country by country, with crisis lines at the top. Someone on our team has checked every listing before it goes up. If we have a place’s opening hours, it also shows whether it’s open right now. Once you’ve opened the directory, it keeps working without signal.
- The same directory, in the app:Settings, Safety, Find help near you
- Queer-friendly crisis lines you can call, text or chat with:Settings, Safety, Crisis Support Resources
Talk to someone at Luney
In the app, you can open a support ticket from Settings, Support Tickets. To report something you saw in Luney, use Report in the app instead, so the moderator goes straight to the right post or message.