Safety approach

Service boundaries

The service accepts plain-text points and comments plus up to two HTTPS evidence links on a point. It does not provide uploads, images, embeds, rich text, public profiles or direct messages. Evidence links are displayed but never fetched by the server. These limits reduce risk but do not make user content safe or accurate by default.

Content that is blocked or removed

Do not post or link to child sexual abuse material, sexual content involving children, grooming requests, credible threats, instructions for suicide or serious self-harm, doxxing, targeted harassment, terrorist content or other illegal material. Critical patterns are blocked and escalated. Moderators can preserve limited records where necessary for safety, evidence or a legal duty.

Risk-based moderation

Low-risk contributions can publish immediately. Medium-risk contributions can publish while entering priority review. High-risk contributions stay hidden pending review. Critical prohibited content is blocked and creates an urgent owner-only case. Sensitive debates apply stricter checks for personal details, handles, identifiable allegations, suspicious links and explicit language.

Reports and temporary holds

Use the Report control beside a point or comment and provide only the detail a moderator needs. Child-safety, potentially illegal and privacy reports enter the urgent queue. Three distinct verified accounts, each established for at least 24 hours and on distinct network signals, can place a reported point or comment into a temporary hidden state when their active reports fall within 24 hours. Reports alone do not prove that content is unlawful.

Children and the 18+ notice

The click-through notice and terms state that the service is for adults. They are not highly effective age assurance and do not prove that a visitor is an adult. Ofcom says an in-scope user-to-user service must complete and record a children’s access assessment, and cannot conclude that children are unable to access it solely because its terms say 18+. The repository cannot establish whether the operator has completed that assessment, so this page does not claim that it has.

Online-safety governance

If Thunder Debates is within the Online Safety Act, its operator, Cameron Lobban, also known as Thunder, trading as Thunder Debates, must complete and keep current an illegal-content risk assessment, implement proportionate measures, keep written records, explain those measures clearly in the Terms of use, allow people to report suspected illegal content easily, operate a complaints procedure and act swiftly when aware of illegal content. The operator should review the assessment at least annually, must respond to relevant changes in Ofcom’s Risk Profiles, and must complete a fresh assessment before a significant change to the service’s design or operation. Code controls support this work but do not replace the required assessment, decisions and records.

CSEA reports to the National Crime Agency

From 7 April 2026, the reporting regulations apply to regulated user-to-user services in scope of the Online Safety Act. A UK provider must operate systems and processes which ensure, so far as possible, that all detected and previously unreported child sexual exploitation and abuse content present on the service is reported to the National Crime Agency in the required form and timeframe. The duty applies regardless of service size or the assessed level of CSEA risk.

• Thunder Debates can block material and create an urgent owner-only moderation case. It does not decide conclusively whether content amounts to a Schedule 6 offence and does not send a statutory report automatically.
• The operator must maintain a human reporting procedure, register for the NCA reporting portal where required, preserve only the information the regulations require, and avoid duplicate reporting.
• Use the site Report control to alert the operator. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999. Do not copy illegal material into a site report.

Immediate danger

Thunder Debates is not an emergency service. In the UK, call 999 where there is an immediate risk of serious harm. For non-emergency crime, contact the appropriate police service. Do not rely on a site report as the only action in an emergency, and do not copy illegal material into a report.