Qallak logoQallakቃላክ
Open Qallak

The rules of the table.

At a buna ceremony, everyone is welcome and everyone behaves. Same here. These guidelines apply to every profile, chat, debate, and Buna table on Qallak.

1. Authenticity, Identity & Profile Standards

Qallak is built for real human beings creating genuine relationships.

  • Clear Face Photos (Romantic Intent): Members seeking romantic connections must upload at least two clear, authentic photos of themselves. Your primary photo must provide an unobstructed view of your face—without face-obscuring masks, extreme filters, or sunglasses. Your secondary photo must also clearly depict you.
  • Placeholder Media & Memes: On romantic profiles, using cartoons, anime characters, memes, celebrities, internet stock photos, or inanimate objects will result in photo deletion by administration and discovery suppression until genuine face photos are provided.
  • Zero Tolerance for Explicit Content: Nudity, sexually explicit media, pornographic poses, graphic gore, weapons, and hate imagery are strictly banned across all profile slots without exception.
  • Child Safety (Absolute Prohibition): To safeguard minors, no photographs containing children, infants, or minors under 18 years of age are permitted on any profile under any circumstance, even if pictured alongside a parent or legal guardian.
  • Clean Public Bios (No Off-Platform Handles): Your bio is an introduction to your personality, not a classified directory. Personal contact information—including phone numbers, Telegram handles, WhatsApp links, Instagram usernames, email addresses, and payment IDs—is strictly prohibited in public bios and prompt cards. Bios violating this standard will be automatically wiped.
  • Identity Verification Integrity: The verified blue badge indicates authentic identity. Submitting deceptive, spoofed, or artificial verification selfies (such as photographing another screen, printed paper, or using a third party) is treated as deliberate fraud, resulting in verification disqualification and potential account bans.

2. Relationship Intent, Intent Switching & Photo Re-Reviews

Qallak is built on transparent relationship intentions to protect community expectations:

  • Two Core Intent Classes:
    • Romantic Class: Dating, Serious Relationship.
    • Platonic Class: Friendship, Just Chatting, Interest Circles, Accountability Buddy.
  • Cross-Class Discovery Boundary: Romantic and Platonic profiles are quarantined from each other in discovery stacks unless both members explicitly enable "Open to Both". You must always respect another member's declared intent. Approaching platonic or professional profiles with unsolicited romantic or sexual advances violates community trust and will result in conduct warnings.
  • 7-Day Intent Switching Cooldown: Switching between Romantic and Platonic classes is subject to a server-enforced 7-day cooldown. This prevents users from toggling modes to circumvent discovery boundaries.
  • Mandatory Photo Re-Review upon Platonic-to-Romantic Transition: Members registered under Platonic intent enjoy flexibility in photo subjects (casual snapshots, artistic shots, hobbies). However, the moment a user transitions their intent from Platonic to Romantic, their profile is immediately subjected to mandatory photo re-review under strict Romantic standards. The user must have at least two clear, unobstructed photos of themselves uploaded. Any placeholder memes, cartoons, objects, landscapes, or non-face images uploaded during platonic mode are automatically flagged and removed by administration, and the user's profile is suppressed from the romantic discovery deck until compliant photos are provided and approved.
  • Protection of Existing Matches: Switching your profile intent does not alter the nature of your past connections. Existing matches formed under Platonic intent remain strictly platonic. A member cannot retroactively treat existing platonic connections as dating prospects without mutual consent.

3. 1-on-1 Direct Messaging & Chat Conduct

Private messages must remain safe, consensual, and respectful.

  • Automated First-Message Safety Screen: To protect members from immediate harassment and fraud funnels, Qallak’s automated safety system screens the opening message of every new match. First messages containing phone numbers, external web links, external social platform handles, or explicit sexual terms are automatically blocked.
  • Immediate High-Severity (S2) Enforcement for Explicit Harassment: Unsolicited sexually explicit messages, crude propositions, or non-consensual sexual remarks will not receive informal warnings. They result in immediate disciplinary action, beginning with an instant 24-hour account restriction.
  • Strict Prohibition of Intimate Media Exploitation: Members are strictly forbidden from soliciting, sending, or pressuring others for nude, intimate, or compromising photographs or videos—whether inside Qallak or by attempting to move conversations off-platform. To safeguard against blackmail, leaks, and sextortion, Qallak urges all members never to exchange sensitive personal media through any digital channel.
  • Anti-Badgering & "No Means No": When another member expresses disinterest, declines a match, or ceases communication, their boundary must be respected. Continuing to send repeated messages (e.g., three or more unanswered messages across multiple days), particularly when accompanied by hostility, entitlement, insults, or guilt-tripping, constitutes actionable harassment. Members are urged to block and report persistent badgering.
  • Financial Solicitations & Airtime Requests: Qallak is a platform for personal connections, not financial appeals. Soliciting money, loans, investment schemes, or mobile airtime (Ethio Telecom scratch cards / airtime transfers, Telebirr, CBE transfers, or remittances) is prohibited. Substantiated reports will trigger formal warnings escalating to account suspension.

4. Buna Tables (Virtual Coffee Gatherings & Debates)

Buna tables are Qallak’s communal rooms where multiple members gather to converse via text and voice messages.

  • Communal Participation & Host Kick Authority: Every table operates as a shared space. The creator (host) of a Buna table has complete authority to kick out any disruptive, rude, or offensive participant to maintain the room's harmony.
  • Individual Disciplinary Accountability: Disciplinary actions taken against misbehaving participants apply strictly to that individual. Hosts are not held liable for the infractions of room participants, provided they exercise their kick powers when abuse occurs.
  • Strictly Prohibited Topics (Ethnic & Sectarian Hostility): To foster unity across our diverse community, ethnic/tribal debates, religious disputes, and any form of sectarian hostility are strictly forbidden.
  • Zero Tolerance for Hate Speech: Demeaning, mocking, generalizing, or using derogatory language against anyone's ethnicity, religion, regional background, gender, or disability will result in immediate room removal and account suspension or permanent termination.
  • Audio Privacy & Anti-Leaking: In-app audio messages cannot be forwarded or exported natively. Recording, capturing, or re-broadcasting Buna table discussions without the explicit consent of all participants is strictly prohibited. Exporting or leaking table audio or personal stories to third-party platforms (such as TikTok, Telegram channels, or Facebook) to mock or doxx members will be penalized with proportional severity, up to permanent account termination.
  • No Table Kick Evasion: Using secondary accounts or alternative phone numbers to re-enter a Buna table after being kicked out by the host is strictly prohibited.

5. Notes Bar & Question Tags

The Notes Bar and daily Question Tags provide quick, casual status updates.

  • No Commercial Advertising or Classifieds: Notes and Question Tags are reserved strictly for personal reflections and social status updates. Commercial advertisements, product sales (phones, clothing), rental/real estate listings, and business/crypto promotions are prohibited. Violating notes will be removed, escalating to formal warnings on repeat offenses.
  • No Public Shaming or "Subtweeting": Using status notes to air personal grievances, attack past matches, spread rumors, or humiliate other members is strictly forbidden and results in note deletion and conduct warnings.
  • Permitted Social Handles in Temporary Notes: Members may share personal social handles in their temporary status notes if they wish to invite conversation off-platform, provided the content remains non-commercial and respectful.

6. In-Chat Mini-Games & Photo Challenges

  • Standard Conduct Applies to Game Answers: Turn-based mini-games (Two Truths & a Lie, Finish the Sentence, Compatibility Quiz, etc.) are conversational icebreakers. Submitting crude sexual propositions, slurs, or hostile remarks within custom game text fields carries the exact same High-Severity (S2) penalties as direct chat violations.
  • Photo Challenge Integrity: The Photo Challenge mini-game is intended for casual everyday moments (pets, surroundings, food). Submitting nude, suggestive, or intimate media through the Photo Challenge is strictly prohibited and subject to immediate disciplinary enforcement upon report.
  • No Game Invite Spam: Participating in chat mini-games is voluntary. Spamming repeated game invitations after a match has ignored or declined them is treated as message badgering.

8. The Judicial System: 5-Rung Disciplinary Ladder

Qallak employs a fair, transparent, and graduated enforcement system to protect the community:

Violation Severity Tiers

  • S1 (Medium / Warning Track): Spam, commercial classifieds, minor rudeness, fake non-intimate profile details, intent boundary disrespect, and uninvited game invite badgering.
  • S2 (High / Suspension Track): Targeted harassment, hate speech, financial scams, unsolicited sexual remarks, explicit photo challenges, and bad-faith retaliatory reports.
  • S3 (Critical / Zero Tolerance): Underage accounts, child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSAM), credible threats of violence, non-consensual intimate imagery, and deliberate impersonation fraud. Triggers an immediate permanent account ban.

The 5-Rung Penalty Ladder (for S1 & S2)

  1. Rung 1 — Formal Warning: A recorded educational warning detailing the policy category violated.
  2. Rung 2 — 24-Hour Read-Only Mode: Account access is restricted. The user may view existing matches but cannot swipe, send messages, or enter Buna tables.
  3. Rung 3 — 7-Day Account Suspension: Complete account freeze for 7 days.
  4. Rung 4 — 30-Day Account Suspension: Extended account freeze for 30 days.
  5. Rung 5 — Permanent Account Termination: Permanent forfeiture of the account, profile, and points.

Automated Safeguards & Anti-Brigading

  • 180-Day Strike Decay: Strikes for reformed users naturally expire after 180 days of clean conduct, resetting the penalty ladder.
  • Anti-Brigading Trigger: Accounts receiving reports from 3 distinct users in 7 days are prioritized for human review. Accounts receiving reports from 5 distinct users in 7 days receive an automatic 7-day safety suspension pending review.
  • Rapid Block Cooldown: Accounts blocked by 2 distinct users within 24 hours have their Discovery visibility paused for 24 hours (escalating to 72 hours).
  • Anti-Retaliation Protection: To prevent retaliation, Qallak never reveals the identity, profile, or evidence submitted by a reporting user.
  • Malicious False Reporting Penalized: Submitting vengeful false reports against innocent members will result in disciplinary strikes against the reporter.

9. Disciplinary Appeals & Reporting

Every member who receives an administrative strike or suspension has the right to submit an appeal through the in-app Appeal Screen for objective human review.

Appeals Decorum: The appeal submission must remain civil and factual. Submitting appeals that contain insults, abusive language, profanity, or threats directed at moderation staff will result in an immediate rejection of the appeal and escalation to a permanent account ban.

Every profile, message, and table includes a report button. Reports are confidential. For urgent safety matters, contact support@qallak.com.

If you are in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first: 991 (Police, Ethiopia) or 907 (Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association Hotline).