TRUST AND SAFETY
Trust is not a promise here. It is enforced.
HAOT is built for meeting people in person. That only works if safety is structural, not a setting you hope someone honored. Here is exactly what protects you, what runs on its own, and where a human steps in.
Every account decision is made by a person, never an algorithm.
Every safety rule lives in the database, not the interface, so it cannot be skipped.
You are never more than one tap from help.
Trust Mesh
Reputation you earn by showing up, not by writing a bio.
Trust Mesh is a four-tier reputation record. New, Active, Trusted, Ambassador. You move up only through real activity and real ratings from people who actually attended. It is portable across every HAOT city, so the trust you build in one place follows you to the next. It is a record of what you have done, not a score a model predicts about you. Verification through Stripe Identity is a separate status that adds a tick to your badge, available at any tier.
- New
- Active
- Trusted
- Ambassador
- New. Where every member starts.
- Active. Three plans, 4.0+ rating. You show up and the score reflects it.
- Trusted. Ten plans, 4.5+ rating. Hosts notice. So does the network.
- Ambassador. Invitation only. Less than one percent of members.
Silent SOS
Help without a sound.
One button alerts your emergency contacts and shares your live location, with no sound and nothing visible on your screen. It exists for the moments when drawing attention is the danger.
Share-My-Walk
Someone you choose always knows where you are.
Share your live location with up to three people you pick, from the moment you leave for an activity until you confirm you are home. They get a link. You decide when it ends. No one else can see it.
Verification
Real people, confirmed.
Hosting requires Stripe Identity, which checks that a government ID matches a live face. HAOT never stores your ID document. Stripe holds it under their retention policy. Passing is what turns Active into Verified in the Trust Mesh.
TRUST, ENFORCED
The architecture, not the marketing.
Most apps put their safety rules in the interface and ask you to trust that the backend honors them. We do the opposite. A rule in the interface can be bypassed. A rule in the database cannot.
People make every account decision
No model suspends, bans, or shadow-limits anyone. Models help triage reports so humans see the urgent ones first. Humans decide.
Anti-dating lives in the database
It is not a content guideline a moderator might miss. It is a constraint enforced on every activity at write time, through Postgres Row Level Security.
Your most sensitive data never reaches a model
We do not send your photos, your emergency contacts, your payment data, your precise location, or your private messages to any AI vendor. Details at /privacy#ai.
HAOT is not a dating app, and it is not one by accident.
Activities created or used for dating are removed. Hosts who keep trying lose Host status. This is enforced on every activity at write time, not left to a moderator who might miss it.
People show up differently when romance is off the table. That is what makes a stranger's plan feel safe to join.
Reporting and response.
See something, say something, and a person will read it.
Where to report
In-app on any profile, activity, or message. Or write safety@haot.app.
In an emergency
Call your local emergency number first. Then tell us at safety@haot.app.
Response targets
| Channel | Reaches | Response |
|---|---|---|
| In-app report, high severity | Safety team, a person | 15 minutes |
| safety@haot.app | Safety team, a person | 4 hours |
| trust@haot.app appeal | Trust team, a person | 48 hours |
Appeals and due process.
If we act on a report, you have the right to know why and to challenge it.
You get an email
It names what happened and which rule applied. Not a vague reference to the terms.
You appeal
Reply to that email, or write trust@haot.app, within thirty days.
A different person reviews
Not the one who made the first call. A fresh read of the same evidence.
You get a written decision
Within forty-eight hours. If we got it wrong, we reverse it and tell you so.
Suspensions for credible safety threats take effect immediately and are reviewed right after. Everything else waits for review.
What we will never do.
Some promises are easier to keep when you write them down in public.
- We will never let an algorithm ban you.
- We will never sell your location, or anything else.
- We will never run HAOT as a dating app.
- We will never send your private data to an AI vendor.
- We will never make you guess why a decision was made.
Transparency.
Trust pages are easy to write. We would rather show the numbers.
Median time to first human response
Reporting begins
Reports actioned
Reporting begins
Appeals reviewed
Reporting begins
Appeals overturned
Reporting begins
The first HAOT Trust Report publishes one quarter after public launch.