The rules.

SidewalkSnitch is a tool for documenting potential NYC city-code violations: you photograph a condition, the app prepares a city-ready record that you review and attest to, and the record posts to your block's feed. For some categories, you can ask us to send it on to NYC 311 — a person on our staff submits it — or you can take the same details to 311 or another NYC agency yourself. It is a service provided by SidewalkSnitch Inc., a Delaware corporation (“SidewalkSnitch,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), c/o its registered agent in Delaware, Legalinc Corporate Services Inc., 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, DE 19713 US. By using the service you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

You must be at least 13 years old. To file a complaint you must verify a mobile phone number and provide a real name and contact address — city agencies require a contactable submitter. By verifying your phone number on SidewalkSnitch, you affirm you are at least 13 years old.

Use SidewalkSnitch to file complaints about violations you have personally observed in New York City. Examples: a car blocking a fire hydrant, trash put out before the legal set-out time, an unlicensed sidewalk café.

• File complaints about events you did not personally witness. The app enforces a 48 h freshness rule on photos; circumventing it is grounds for account termination.
• Use the app to harass, stalk, or retaliate against any individual. After five reports about the same place in seven days from the same account, further reports about that place are declined and held for manual review — you will see a message saying so, with an address to write to if the condition is genuinely ongoing. Repeated targeting may also cost you your account.
• Submit false or fabricated content. The complaint text you confirm is treated as your sworn statement to the city.
• Bulk-scrape or automate use of the service, including the AI analysis endpoint and any NYC Open Data passthrough we proxy.
• Use the plate-lookup feature for any purpose other than filing a single complaint about the specific vehicle in your photo. The data we surface from NYC's open dataset is shown to support that single filing.
• Submit photos containing material that violates someone else's rights — for example, images you don't have the right to upload, or images intended primarily to identify or shame a bystander.

If you add a photo to another user's report, you confirm you took it yourself, that it shows the location the report describes, and that it is unaltered. You — not SidewalkSnitch and not the original reporter — are responsible for it.

Our AI drafts complaint text from your photo. The draft is editable. Before you submit, you must read the text, edit anything inaccurate, and explicitly attest that what it describes is what you personally observed. The submitted text is your statement, not ours. You are responsible for its accuracy.

When you photograph a parked vehicle, our AI may extract the visible license plate. We then query NYC's public Open Parking and Camera Violations dataset and display the vehicle's prior-violation summary to help you confirm you have the right vehicle. The history is not stored on your complaint and is not shown to any other user. The plate itself is stored on your complaint because the eventual 311 filing requires it.

We keep an audit log of plate lookups for our own compliance under federal law. See the Privacy Policy for details on retention.

You keep ownership of the photos and text you submit. By submitting, you grant SidewalkSnitch a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, process, and display that content: on our infrastructure; to the city agency you select; in your own account; on the public SidewalkSnitch feed where your report is public; on another user's report where you chose to contribute a photo to it; and to train and evaluate our own AI models. We will not display your name, phone, email, or address to other users. Your screenname is the only identifier shown publicly.

This applies to comments as well as posts: your screenname is the only identifier shown next to anything you post or comment on SidewalkSnitch. You, personally — not SidewalkSnitch — are responsible for the truth of statements you make in comments about other people, businesses, or events. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally shields SidewalkSnitch from liability for content you or other users post; it does not shield you.

This applies to rule suggestions as well as posts and comments: your screenname is the only identifier shown next to anything you submit. You, personally — not SidewalkSnitch — are responsible for the truth of statements you make.

If you own the copyright in something posted on SidewalkSnitch and you believe it was posted without your permission, tell us and we will take it down. This is the process the Digital Millennium Copyright Act sets out, 17 U.S.C. § 512.

Our designated copyright agent.
SidewalkSnitch Inc.
131 Continental Dr, Suite 305
Newark, DE 19713 US
hello@sidewalksnitch.com

What a notice has to say. Email is fine, and it is faster than post. To be effective under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) your notice must include all six of these:

1. Your physical or electronic signature (typing your full name in an email counts).
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you say was infringed. If several works are covered by one notice, a representative list is enough.
3. Identification of the material you want removed, and enough detail for us to find it — a link to the post or the report page is the most useful thing you can send.
4. Your address, telephone number and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act for them.

A notice missing any of these may not be effective, and we may come back to you for the missing part rather than act on it. We will tell the person who posted the material that we removed it, and we will send them a copy of your notice, including the contact details in it.

Knowingly false notices carry a cost. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) anyone who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing is liable for the damages and legal costs that misrepresentation causes. That applies to counter-notices too.

If your material was removed and you think that was a mistake, you can send a counter-notice to the same address. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3) it must include: your signature; identification of the material and where it appeared before it was removed; a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief it was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification; and your name, address and telephone number, with a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where you live (or, if you are outside the United States, any district where we may be found) and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice.

When we receive a valid counter-notice we forward it to the person who sent the original notice. Unless they tell us within 10 business days that they have gone to court to stop you, we may restore the material — at our discretion, and generally within 10 to 14 business days of the counter-notice.

Repeat infringers lose their accounts. As 17 U.S.C. § 512(i) requires, we keep a record of the takedown notices we act on and which account posted the material. An account that accumulates three takedowns we have acted on, and that has not successfully counter-noticed them, is terminated. We may terminate sooner in an obvious case, and we may decline to terminate where the notices are plainly abusive. Terminated means terminated: the person does not get a new account.

Copyright is not the only reason we remove something. If a post names your business, see our takedown policy — we act on those within 24 hours.

Comments on SidewalkSnitch are public and attached to reports about real places. Our Community Guidelines set out what you may and may not post, and they are part of these Terms.

We screen, and we may remove. Comment text is checked by automated tools before it is published, and other users can flag comments. We may hold, remove, or decline to publish any comment, and we may suspend commenting for an account that repeatedly breaks the Guidelines. We are not obliged to publish anything, and we are not obliged to keep anything published. Moderating is not a promise to moderate perfectly, and reviewing a comment is not an endorsement of it.

You are responsible for what you post. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1), generally protects SidewalkSnitch from liability for content that you or other users write. It does not protect you. If you post something false about a person or a business, that is your statement and your exposure, not ours.

Votes. Votes on posts and comments are recorded against your account for ranking and abuse-prevention. They are never shown publicly and are never attributed to you by name or screenname.

If you delete your account. Comments of yours that were published stay visible but are no longer linked to you — your screenname is replaced with “[deleted]”. Comments that were held or removed are deleted. Your votes, flags, and any photos you contributed to other people's reports are deleted. The full description is in the Privacy Policy under “Retention and deletion.”

If a comment is about you. Email hello@sidewalksnitch.com with a link. We review promptly. We do not adjudicate disputes between users and we do not decide who is telling the truth; we decide whether a comment breaks our Guidelines.

Suggest a Rule is a civic-engagement tool, not a legal service. SidewalkSnitch is not a law firm, does not provide legal advice, and does not represent you before any government body. Any assessment of whether a rule already exists, is preempted by state law, or raises a constitutional issue, and any draft legislative language or Administrative Code citation shown to you, is generated by an AI model, may be incorrect, and is not a legal opinion — verify anything before relying on it or sending it to anyone. SidewalkSnitch does not contact elected officials on your behalf; we provide a pre-filled draft and publicly available contact information, and you choose whether to send it. Including an elected official's contact information is not an endorsement or criticism of that official, and inclusion of your proposal in our public list is not an endorsement by SidewalkSnitch of any proposed rule.

The service is provided “as is.” The AI's analysis is a drafting aid, not a legal determination. The AI sometimes misreads photos. You are responsible for confirming the accuracy of your complaint before submitting. SidewalkSnitch is not a law firm and provides no legal advice.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SidewalkSnitch is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the service. Our aggregate liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you have paid us in the past 12 months (which is, for most users, zero).

You can stop using the service at any time. We may suspend or terminate your account for any of the “What you can't do” behaviors above, or for any other material violation of these terms. We will preserve your data per our retention schedule (see the Privacy Policy) and respect any deletion requests you make.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute must be brought in a state or federal court located in New York County, New York.

We may update these terms. If we make a material change we'll notify account holders by email or in-app banner before the change takes effect.

Program name: SidewalkSnitch alerts, sent by SidewalkSnitch Inc.

What we send: (1) one-time sign-in codes when you ask for one; (2) if you tick the optional box on the waitlist form, one text when your waitlist spot opens; (3) if you own a business, claim it, and tick the optional box on the claim form, a text when a neighbor reports your business or sends it a message. We send no marketing or promotional texts.

Frequency: sign-in codes only when you request them; the waitlist text once; business alerts vary with activity at your business.

Consent is optional. The waitlist and claim boxes start unchecked. You can join the waitlist and claim your business without ticking them. Consent to receive texts is never a condition of any purchase or of using the service.

Cost: message and data rates may apply. Check with your carrier.

Opt out: reply STOP to any message to cancel. You will get one final text confirming you are unsubscribed. Reply START to opt back in.

Help: reply HELP to any message, or email hello@sidewalksnitch.com.

Carriers: supported carriers include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and most US carriers. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

Privacy: your mobile number and your opt-in consent are used only to send you the messages you asked for. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. See our Privacy Policy.

SidewalkSnitch Inc., c/o Legalinc Corporate Services Inc.
131 Continental Dr, Suite 305
Newark, DE 19713 US
hello@sidewalksnitch.com