Community Guidelines

Slumlords exists to give tenants an honest platform to share their rental experiences. Renting is stressful, expensive, and often maddening. People need a place to share what they went through — unfiltered.

We believe that transparency and accountability require freedom of expression. The entire point of this platform is to let tenants speak their minds. We maintain the absolute minimum content rules necessary to keep the platform from being used for genuine harm.

We are not interested in tone-policing your reviews. If your landlord deserves a one-star review with expletives, that is your right.

To be clear — the following are all explicitly permitted on Slumlords:

• Profanity, swearing, and strong language of any kind
• Insults directed at landlords, property managers, or management companies
• Angry rants, hostile tone, ALL CAPS, and raw emotional expression
• Naming and shaming landlords and property management companies by name
• Complaints about any aspect of a rental: pests, mold, crime, drugs, noise, maintenance failures, price gouging, discrimination — anything
• Hyperbolic language (“this place is a death trap,” “worst apartment in America,” “I’m going to lose my mind”)
• Descriptions of discrimination, harassment, or illegal behavior by landlords
• Low-effort reviews (“bad,” “do not rent here,” “0/10”) — not everyone writes essays, and that’s fine
• Describing experiences that involve racial slurs, harassment, or other disturbing content — this is people describing what happened to them

We prohibit exactly three categories of content. Nothing more, nothing less.

1. Credible Threats of Violence

Direct threats to physically harm or kill a specific person. The key word is credible — the threat must target a person, not a building, pest, or abstract concept.

The difference: threats direct violence at people. Insults, frustration, hyperbole, and profanity about conditions are not threats. Figures of speech are not threats. Vague venting without a specific human target is not a threat.

2. Explicit Sexual Content

Pornographic or explicitly sexual material in text or images. This means actual sexual content, not descriptions of experiences that involve harassment.

Complaints about sexual harassment by landlords are exactly the kind of experience tenants need to be able to report. That is not sexual content — it is a complaint.

3. Spam

Commercial advertising, scam links, bot-generated content, and coordinated inauthentic campaigns.

A bad review is not spam. A review you disagree with is not spam. Spam is commercial garbage that has nothing to do with rental experiences.

If you see content that you believe violates these guidelines, you can report it using the report button available on every rating and comment. When reporting, you’ll select a reason:

• Defamation — you believe the content contains false statements of fact
• Spam — the content is commercial spam or bot-generated
• Harassment — the content contains threats of violence
• Other — the content violates guidelines in another way

Reports are reviewed through a combination of AI-powered analysis and human moderation. Possible outcomes include:

• Approved — the content does not violate our guidelines and remains visible
• Redacted — the violating portion is removed while preserving the rest of the review
• Hidden — the entire piece of content is removed from public view
• Escalated — the content is flagged for additional human review

When content is hidden, it is replaced with a “[removed by moderation]” notice. We believe in transparency — we do not silently delete content.

We will not remove content simply because a landlord or property manager disagrees with a review. Negative opinions, even harsh ones, are protected speech. “This apartment is a dump” is an opinion. “Worst landlord I’ve ever had” is an opinion. These are not defamation.

We may, at our sole discretion, remove content that contains demonstrably false statements of fact when presented with clear and convincing evidence. However, we have no obligation to do so, and the standard for removal is high. See our Terms of Service (Section 230) for our complete legal position.

If you are a landlord or property manager and wish to respond to a review, we encourage you to engage constructively in the property’s discussion thread.

If you believe your content was incorrectly moderated, you can appeal by emailing [email protected] with the details of what was moderated and why you believe the decision was wrong.

We review all appeals, but our decisions are final. We default to keeping content up — if we removed something, we had a reason.