Child Safety & Protection

1. Our Commitment to Safety

Braai (Pty) LTD and BuzzGrowth (Pty) LTD acknowledge that children and adolescents require special protection online. Our platform is built in accordance with the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, COPPA (USA), and the Children's Act (South Africa).

We do not just have a policy; we have an architecture designed to mitigate foreseeable harm to minors.

2. Age Assurance & Gating

To enter the Braai community, all users must undergo our Age Assurance process:

• Minimum Age: Users must be at least 13 years old.
• Multi-Signal Estimation: We use behavioral and provided signals to estimate age. If our systems cannot definitively confirm an adult age, the account defaults to a Minor Classification.
• Verifiable Parental Consent: Users under the regional age of digital consent require a parent or legal guardian to verify and activate their account.

3. The Minor-Safe Default Mode

For accounts identified as minors, the following architectural safeguards are mandatory and cannot be disabled by the minor:

• No Infinite Scroll: Replaced with "Natural Endings" and session pagination to prevent addictive behavioral loops.
• Circadian Protections: Non-critical push notifications are automatically silenced between 21:00 and 07:00 (local time) to protect sleep health.
• No Behavioral Ads: We strictly prohibit the profiling of minor data for the purpose of targeted or behavioral advertising.
• Restricted Autoplay: Media does not autoplay, preventing the accidental exposure to inappropriate content.

4. The Parental Dashboard

Verified parents are provided with a dedicated control center to manage their child's digital presence:

• Activity Summaries: Parents can view session durations and the types of circles their child has joined.
• Boundary Controls: Parents can set hard session caps and downtime schedules.
• Privacy Balance: To respect a minor's growing autonomy, parents cannot read the content of private messages, but will receive "Anomaly Alerts" for high-risk behavioral patterns.

5. Mandatory Reporting & Law Enforcement

We take a zero-tolerance approach to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), grooming, and exploitation:

• Instant Reporting: Any detected CSAM is automatically reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the South African Police Service (SAPS).
• Preservation: We preserve evidence of exploitative activity to assist in criminal prosecutions while ensuring the immediate removal of harmful content from public view.

6. Education & The Braai Lifeline

Safety is a journey, not a destination. We provide minors with simplified reporting tools and immediate access to the Braai Lifeline, connecting them with age-appropriate counseling and emergency support services.