Community Guidelines

Lantera house rules for respectful spatial interaction and community standards.

Last updated: Jun 24, 2026

Welcome to Lantera. We are here to build a premium, exclusive community based on authenticity, respect, and presence. To preserve a safe and high-quality environment, all members must agree to follow our core House Rules.

What a gathering is. A gathering (shown in the app as an “event”) is a scheduled, time-limited experience that happens entirely inside the Lantera app. Members who’ve joined enter a shared online space and move through it; when you come close to someone, a private one-on-one video call begins between the two of you. Lantera doesn’t host or send members to any in-person event — there’s no venue, and members never meet in a physical place.

1. Respect Spatial Boundaries

Even though Lantera gatherings happen online, you’re in a shared space with real people, in real time — so spatial boundaries still matter. Respect other members’ personal space:

No Stalking or Harassment: Repeatedly trailing or tracking another member around a room after they have disconnected or moved away is prohibited.
Graceful Exit (Safe Escape): Moving away naturally ends a video connection. If someone walks away, respect their exit.
Cooldown Bounds: If a video connection ends without locking a match, the system enforces a brief 60-second cooldown during which another connection cannot be attempted with that person. Attempting to bypass this cooldown to badger another member is a violation.
120-Second Vibe Check: Real-time video connections require a minimum of 120 seconds (2 minutes) of continuous proximity-based interaction before the option to exchange chat details is unlocked. Mutual Explore likes only indicate interest; messaging channels remain strictly locked until both members complete this 120-second threshold and mutually consent to connect.

2. Authentic Presence Only

Lantera is a community of real people meeting in real-time. We have zero tolerance for deception:

No Fake Profiles or Bots: You must use your own, authentic photos. Catfishing or impersonating others will result in an immediate permanent ban.
Birthday Verification: To prevent misrepresentation and ensure safety, your Date of Birth is locked permanently once verification is completed during onboarding.
Age Gating: You must be at least 18 years old to use Lantera. Sharing an account with minors or allowing minors to access live events is strictly prohibited.

A note on AI profiles: These rules are about you representing yourself honestly. Separately — and transparently — Lantera itself includes a few AI-generated profiles in the Explore feed, mixed in among real people, to help tailor who and what you see. We always label them clearly as an “AI profile,” they never appear in event rooms, video calls, or chat, and you can’t match or message them. You’ll never be left guessing who’s real.

3. Zero-Tolerance for Solicitation

Lantera is designed for personal socializing, connection, and community. It is not a commercial marketplace:

No Business Promotion: Promoting commercial services, selling content, or mass-distributing social media handles for commercial follower growth is prohibited.
No External Links: Sharing links to external commercial platforms or distributing advertisements inside event chats is a direct violation of our terms.

4. Fair Registration & Balanced Curation

We curate our spaces to be balanced and engaging, ensuring a premium experience for everyone:

Balanced Curation: Each gathering features demographic capacity limits based on nearby registrations to maintain healthy, balanced interaction ratios. If multiple target genders are specified (e.g. ‘M,W’), the system enforces balanced gender ratios, locking registrations for a specific demographic once its capacity tier fills.
Strict Verification Checks: To prevent gaming of the curation system, your age, gender, and seeking preferences are checked at the database level against the event parameters before registration is allowed.
Dynamic Community Curation: Immediate access to gatherings near you is curated based on active participation in your area. If capacity is reached, or if you register from an area currently undergoing community setup, your access will be dynamically waitlisted inside the app until participation grows to ensure a premium experience.

5. Wallet Integrity & Registration Protections

We believe in a fair, transparent virtual currency economy:

Transparent Access: Joining a gathering near you uses 1 pass, while Traveler/Explorer access (a gathering hosted elsewhere) uses 2 passes from your balance.
Registration Protection: Your passes are safe. If a gathering is cancelled by the platform or doesn’t attract enough registrations to deliver a quality group experience, your spent passes are automatically credited back to your digital wallet.
Flexible Planning: If you manually withdraw your registration prior to the gathering cutoff, or pause your membership, your spent passes are returned. Passes consumed for gatherings that have already started are non-refundable.
Late Join Cutoff: To preserve group interaction dynamics, ongoing events are only open to late entrants if there are at least 15 minutes remaining in the scheduled duration. Once the duration has less than 15 minutes left, registration and entry are locked.

6. The Consequence Matrix (Strikes & Bans)

We enforce these guidelines through our automated warning and strike system to protect the integrity of our community:

Report & Block: If something breaks these rules, report it in-app — our trust & safety team reviews every report. You can also block anyone who makes you uncomfortable; blocking is instant, works both ways, and hides you from each other everywhere.
Progressive Penalty: Minor behavioral or conduct policy violations will result in a Strike and an immediate 15-minute suspension (temporarily signing you out with a real-time countdown timer).
Three Strikes Rule: Accumulating three strikes results in a permanent global ban.
Immediate Permanent Ban: Severe safety violations (such as explicit behavior/nudity or child safety/underage presence) bypass warning strikes and result in an immediate permanent ban.
Care First: Signs of self-harm or distress are treated as a wellbeing concern, not a violation — we surface crisis support resources, and reports about a member’s safety are routed to support rather than penalties.
Pardon & Final Warning Policy: If a human administrator reviews and overrides a ban, your historical strikes are not reset. Any subsequent violation will trigger an immediate and automatic permanent ban.