Content Policy

Last updated: 23 August 2026

This page covers everything you type into Carrel that can end up on a public page: book titles, author names, your display name, and your handle. It also explains how to report a shelf and what happens next.

What is public and what is not

If you publish your shelf, anyone with the link can see your name, your handle, and your books marked read or reading. A published shelf is also open to search engines unless you switch that off next to the publish switch.

Your wishlist is not shown on a published shelf unless you switch it on, and that switch starts off. Your email address is never public.

Carrel has no comments, no messages, no follows, and no feed. Nobody can post anything on your shelf but you.

You cannot upload images. Covers are either generated from a colour and the text you typed, or taken from the Open Library catalogue.

What you may not publish

• Anything illegal where you are or where we operate.
• Sexual content involving minors, in any form. This is removed immediately, the account is closed, and it is reported to the authorities.
• Threats, harassment, or abuse aimed at a person.
• Hate speech: attacks on people because of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
• Other people's personal data. Do not use a book title or your display name to publish someone's address, phone number, workplace, or anything else about them.
• Impersonation. Do not take a handle or a display name to pass yourself off as a real person or an organisation.
• Sexually explicit material, as titles, author names, or a display name.
• Advertising and spam: promotional text, repeated links, or a shelf built to push a product rather than to keep books.
• Links to malware, or anything meant to trick or harm a visitor.

Real books with difficult, violent, or explicit subject matter are fine. A book is not banned because of what it is about. What is banned is using the title field to publish something that is not a book.

How to report a shelf

There are two ways, and both reach the developer directly.

In the app. Settings, then Report a shelf. Paste the link, say what is wrong, and send. The report is signed by your account, so we can write back without you typing an address.

By email. lobovlabs@proton.me. Use this if you do not have Carrel installed, or would rather not sign in.

Public shelf pages carry no Report button. A button like that sits on somebody's page and is useful in the rare case it is there for, so the two ways above are the ones we keep.

Tell us the address of the shelf (trycarrel.app/handle), what is wrong with it, and which rule you think it breaks. If you write by email, leave an email address if you want to hear the outcome. You do not have to.

If you are reporting content that you believe is illegal, say so and say why. If it concerns you personally (your data, your name, your likeness), mention that too, because it changes how quickly we act.

Send it only if you believe what you are telling us is accurate and complete. The form in the app asks you to confirm that before it lets you send.

We confirm we got it. In the app that is the message you see the moment your report is sent. By email you get a reply saying it arrived, before any decision is made.

What happens after you report

A word list runs on its own. We keep a short list of words that do not belong in a book title. If a title matches one, it is hidden from public pages automatically, with no report and no person involved. The book stays on the owner's shelf, the owner is told that a word list did it, and they can ask us to look again. That is the only thing in Carrel that works without a person.

We aim to look at it within 7 days, and sooner for anything that looks illegal or urgent.

The outcome is one of:

• no action, because the content does not break these rules;
• the book is hidden from the public page, and stays on the owner’s own shelf;
• the shelf is unpublished, and the owner has to fix it before publishing again;
• the account is suspended or closed, for serious or repeated breaches;
• the matter is passed to the authorities, where the law requires it.

We tell the owner what we did and which rule it falls under, unless telling them is itself against the law. They can reply to that message and ask us to look again. If we were wrong, we put it back.

We tell you what we decided, and we do it by email. If you reported from the app, we write to the address on your account: the app has no inbox, so there is nowhere inside it to leave you an answer. If you reported by email, we reply to the address you wrote from, or to the one you left.

If you disagree with the decision, write back and say why, and we will look again. You can also take the matter to a court where you live. Carrel is run by one person, so there is no internal appeals board and no certified out of court body to send you to.

We keep a record of each report and what we did about it for 12 months, so that we can show how a complaint was handled.

Reporting in bad faith

Reports that are repeatedly baseless, or sent to harass a shelf owner, will be ignored, and we may block the sender.

Point of contact

For anything about content on Carrel (reports, appeals, or a request from an authority) the single point of contact is lobovlabs@proton.me. It is read by the developer, and the working language is English.

Contact

Aleksandr Lobov, lobovlabs@proton.me