Safety
How we protect students
0Skips is built for people who are 13 to 18. These are the protections that are in the product itself, not in a policy document.
- Stage names only A stage name and an avatar are what the site shows. Real names, contacts and addresses live in a separate vault the public site cannot reach.
- Parent consent, per video A student starts an account; a parent unlocks it. Permission to publish is given one video at a time, and it can be withdrawn.
- Every video coach-reviewed A human coach watches the whole thing before anything qualifies, and nothing a student makes goes public without a named person approving it.
What that means, concretely
- A stage name, not a real name
- The site shows a stage name and an avatar. Real names, parent contacts, shipping addresses, college savings statements and gift codes live in a separate vault that the public site cannot reach at all — a single dedicated service can read it, and nothing else can.
- A parent unlocks the account
- A student can open an account and choose a stage name. A parent or guardian has to approve it before anything else happens, and permission to publish is given one video at a time. Permission can be withdrawn.
- No social graph, and no inbox
- There are no connections, no follower lists and no messaging between accounts. No adult has a private channel to a student anywhere on the platform. Encouragement from an Artist Support Crew is one-way, from a fixed set of options, visible to the parent, and logged.
- A named human approves anything public
- Every upload — drafts, images, receipts, notes, selfies — is hash-scanned, checked by an automated classifier, and put in front of a person where anything is flagged. Nothing a student makes becomes public without a named human's approval, recorded in a log that cannot be edited afterwards.
- Drafts are private
- While a student is working, only they, their assigned coach and the staff who need to look can see it. Drafts are never public and never sit on a public address.
- The coach loop is not a private channel
- Feedback goes through 0Skips, reaches the student and the parent at the same time, and is stored. A coach is never assigned the same student twice in a season.
- The video stays the family's
- A qualifying video is published on the family's own YouTube channel, so the family holds the off switch. It can be unlisted and still work fully for the contest.
- No chance, and nothing to buy
- There is no randomness anywhere in the winner path: no random tiebreaks, no surprise rewards. Money can support a student. It cannot buy a vote, a score, or a place in the Finale.
- No engagement loops aimed at minors
- No streaks, no daily-login rewards, no notification designed to pull a teenager back. Progress is shown as real progress toward a real deadline.
- Cookieless analytics, and no ad tech
- Site measurement is cookieless and carries no personal data. There is no ad-tech, no session replay and no cross-site tracking, and sponsor advertising is counted without attaching anything about the viewer.
If something goes wrong
Every page has a route to a person, not a form queue. If a student writes something that worries us — about their own safety or anyone else's — a named adult sees it quickly, off the ordinary coaching clock, and the parent is contacted.
Anyone can ask for something to come down: the student or family whose work it is, or someone reporting a rights problem, a safety problem, or content about them. Both routes reach a human.
The report route itself. This page describes it; the address and the response clocks are being set with counsel, and the button goes here when they are.
Read further
What a parent needs to know · Privacy notice · Terms of use · Official contest rules