Community Guidelines

1. Welcome to the AtoCook community

AtoCook is built to help people discover recipes, cook step-by-step, organize ingredients, create shopping lists, follow creators, and share cooking ideas with others.

These Community Guidelines help keep AtoCook respectful, useful, safe, and enjoyable for everyone.

These guidelines apply to recipes, comments, creator profiles, profile content, usernames, photos, uploaded media, reports, shared recipe cards, blogs, videos, captions, AI-assisted content that creators supply, creator posts, and other activity within AtoCook.

By submitting recipes or other community content, you agree to follow these guidelines.

2. Share content you own or can share

Only upload or publish content that meets one of these conditions:

• content you own;
• content you use with sufficient permission or a valid licence; or
• public-domain material, or material you are allowed to use under an applicable legal exception.

Attribution alone does not establish permission. Do not copy another person’s original writing, photos, videos, captions, thumbnails, music, logos, or other creative material without sufficient permission or a valid basis to use it.

Not every recipe idea, ingredient list, or cooking method is necessarily protected by copyright. Protection often depends on the specific creative expression involved. When in doubt, do not upload material you are not entitled to use.

Users are responsible for ensuring that uploaded content does not violate copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other intellectual property rights. See our Copyright and Ownership Concerns.

3. Ingredient safety and preparation

Recipes must use ingredients suitable for food use and describe safe preparation. Food-grade additives and unfamiliar cultural or traditional ingredients are not banned simply because they are uncommon or processed.

Do not submit recipes that present toxic or industrial substances as edible, that encourage intentional contamination, or that give dangerous consumption instructions.

Examples of prohibited unsafe materials may include engine oil, cleaning chemicals, poisons, toxic plants, or other harmful substances presented as edible ingredients.

AtoCook does not certify ingredients, recipes, or preparation methods as safe for every person or situation. Users should use reasonable judgment and follow safe cooking practices. See our Health & Nutrition Disclaimer.

4. Dangerous instructions

Recipes and cooking content should not encourage unsafe cooking behavior or harmful actions.

Do not submit instructions involving intentionally dangerous preparation methods, unsafe storage practices, unsafe cooking temperatures, harmful consumption practices, or activities likely to cause injury or illness.

Content that promotes or instructs self-harm, intentional food contamination, or other intentionally harmful behavior is prohibited.

Users are responsible for reviewing recipes and cooking instructions before use, including content assisted by automation or AI tools that the creator supplies or requests.

5. Health, fitness, and wellness

AtoCook allows general food, cooking, meal planning, responsible nutrition tracking, and lifestyle discussion. Fitness and meal-prep posts should stay connected to food, meals, groceries, cooking, or food routines. Wellness posts must remain food-first and non-medical.

Do not claim that a recipe, food, diet, ingredient, supplement, or meal plan can cure, treat, prevent, or diagnose a disease or medical condition. Do not present content as professional medical advice.

Do not promote or instruct harmful dieting, starvation, purging, extreme calorie restriction, dangerous detox or fasting practices, dangerous supplement use, dangerous challenges, or other behavior likely to cause physical or psychological harm.

Body shaming and content that promotes eating disorders are not allowed. Respectful recovery or support discussion that does not give harmful instructions is different from content that promotes or instructs harm.

Available in-app report reasons for these and other concerns are described on our Content Reporting page.

6. Respectful conduct and privacy

AtoCook does not allow abusive, hateful, discriminatory, threatening, sexually explicit, violent, exploitative, or harassing content.

Do not use recipes, comments, profile content, usernames, creator profiles, blogs, videos, or uploaded media to insult, target, threaten, shame, or harm others. Do not disclose another person’s private information without authorization.

Do not upload content that exploits, sexualizes, harms, or endangers minors in any way.

AtoCook may remove content, restrict accounts, preserve records, and cooperate with lawful investigations involving child safety concerns where required or appropriate under applicable law.

AtoCook welcomes cultural, religious, family, and traditional recipes from communities around the world. Share them respectfully and provide clear ingredient names and instructions when you can. Do not use cultural recipes or traditions to harass, stereotype, insult, mock, or misrepresent communities.

AtoCook accesses private records only as described in our Privacy Policy.

7. No spam, scams, or illegal activity

Do not upload spam, fake recipes, repetitive abuse, scams, deceptive titles, misleading claims, fake engagement, or promotional abuse.

Do not use AtoCook to facilitate, organize, advertise, instruct, or promote illegal activity, violence, exploitation, fraud, theft, illegal substances, or other unlawful conduct.

Do not impersonate other people, creators, brands, restaurants, chefs, organizations, or AtoCook staff. Recipes should reasonably describe real ingredients and understandable preparation steps where they claim to be cookable recipes.

8. Creator profiles and public identity

Creator profiles should honestly represent the user or creator using the account.

Do not use usernames, profile photos, bios, or profile content to impersonate others, mislead users, harass people, advertise scams, or violate rights.

AtoCook may remove or restrict creator profiles that violate these guidelines, create safety concerns, or abuse platform features.

9. Photos, videos, and other uploads

Only upload photos, videos, or other media you are entitled to use under Section 2.

Avoid uploading unrelated, graphic, misleading, unsafe, or inappropriate images or videos. Public recipes, blogs, videos, or creator posts may be hidden or removed if uploaded media violates these guidelines or creates moderation concerns.

10. Comments and interactions

Comments should be helpful, respectful, and related to cooking, recipes, or the content being discussed.

Do not use comments to harass, spam, threaten, shame, mislead, impersonate, or abuse other users. AtoCook may remove comments or restrict accounts that repeatedly violate community standards.

11. AI-assisted content

Creators may supply content that was prepared with help from AI tools they use outside AtoCook. That content must still follow these guidelines, our Terms of Service, Copyright and Ownership Concerns, and applicable law.

Where available, a creator may request an AI-assisted nutrition estimate for a recipe. Requests are processed through AtoCook’s servers. Creators are responsible for reviewing estimate results and for deciding whether to save or publish nutrition information. Not every nutrition value shown in AtoCook comes from AI. See our AI Disclosure and Health & Nutrition Disclaimer.

Do not use AI tools to copy or reproduce protected content from other creators, websites, books, apps, or platforms without sufficient permission or another valid basis to use it.

12. Commercial and promotional content

Where promotional content is permitted, creators must clearly and noticeably disclose material connections, including payments, gifts, and affiliate relationships, where required by law or platform policy. See our Creator Guidelines.

Promotional content must not be misleading, unsafe, spammy, undisclosed, or unrelated to cooking and food.

13. Moderation and publication

Submitting or requesting publication does not guarantee immediate visibility. AtoCook may review, restrict, hide, remove, or otherwise act on content before or after it appears publicly.

Approval or publication does not certify safety, accuracy, ownership, or legal compliance. AtoCook moderates community content under its policies, but AtoCook does not author creator-owned material. Creators remain responsible for the content they upload or publish.

AtoCook is not obligated to publish, promote, recommend, rank, distribute, retain, or make available any specific content, creator, account, or submission. Previously visible content may later be hidden or removed if issues are identified or reported.

14. Reporting and enforcement

Users should report content, profiles, comments, recipes, blogs, videos, or other activity that appears unsafe, abusive, infringing, misleading, illegal, or inconsistent with AtoCook policies. See our Content Reporting page for how to report and for the available report reasons.

AtoCook may review reports based on the information available, AtoCook policies, and other relevant context. Not every report results in removal or account action. Depending on the concern, AtoCook may take proportionate actions such as hiding or removing content, restricting posting or creator features, hiding a creator profile, suspending an account, preserving records, or cooperating with authorities when appropriate or legally required.

These are possible actions based on AtoCook’s moderation and enforcement tools, not promises that any specific action will be taken in every case. Decisions about reports and moderation do not replace legal rights, duties, or remedies that may apply under applicable law.

Only submit reports you believe are genuine. Knowingly false, malicious, or deliberately abusive reports may violate AtoCook policies. An unsuccessful good-faith report is not, by itself, treated as abuse. Deliberately flooding the reporting tools to harass someone or to disrupt moderation is different from reporting a continuing concern, correcting a mistake, or submitting new evidence about the same content.

15. Reconsideration

If you believe a moderation action was taken in error, contact support.atocook@gmail.com to ask for reconsideration and include details that help AtoCook locate the content or account involved.

A reconsideration request does not guarantee that a moderation action will be reversed.

16. These guidelines are not exhaustive

These guidelines cannot describe every harmful situation. AtoCook may take proportionate action against conduct that presents a comparable safety, rights-infringement, abuse or legal risk, consistent with these guidelines, our Terms of Service and applicable law.

17. Changes to these guidelines

AtoCook may update these Community Guidelines when practices or features change. When changes are significant, AtoCook will provide appropriate notice. Posting a revised “Last updated” date alone is not used as your agreement to revised guidelines.

Nothing in these guidelines limits rights that cannot be limited under applicable law.

18. Contact

Questions about community rules, reports, or moderation: support.atocook@gmail.com. You can also visit our Support page.