Content Policy

1. Purpose and approach

We want SmartKourse to be a place where difficult, technical, controversial, and uncomfortable subjects can be taught seriously. A policy that banned every topic that sounds alarming would make the platform useless for security education, medicine, law, history, and finance. So the line we draw is not about subject matter in the abstract — it is about whether content teaches understanding or functions as an operational tool for harm, fraud, or illegality.

This policy applies to everything published here: course titles, descriptions, curricula, lesson video and text, thumbnails, downloadable files, external links, creator profiles, reviews, and comments.

2. How to read the three tiers

• Prohibited — not allowed in any form. Listings are removed and accounts may be terminated.
• Restricted — allowed, but only with the framing, disclosures, or limits described. Get these wrong and the listing is treated as prohibited.
• Permitted — expressly allowed, and we will not remove it merely because the topic is sensitive or a viewer complained about the subject.

3. Prohibited content

• Sexual content. Pornography, sexually explicit material, and sexual services. Clinical, medical, and academic sex education is a restricted category, not this one.
• Child sexual abuse material or child endangerment of any kind, including sexualization of minors. Reported to authorities without exception.
• Violent extremism and terrorism. Recruitment, glorification, fundraising, operational planning, or instructional support for extremist violence.
• Hate content. Content that dehumanizes or promotes hatred or violence against people based on protected characteristics.
• Weapons and explosives manufacture. Instructions for building firearms, untraceable weapons, explosives, or chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear devices.
• Controlled substances. Synthesis, cultivation for illegal distribution, trafficking, or evading drug enforcement.
• Operational hacking for crime. Malware and ransomware kits, credential-stuffing tooling, carding tutorials, botnet operation, SIM-swapping, or step-by-step attacks on systems the learner does not own or have permission to test.
• Piracy and circumvention. Cracking software, defeating DRM, distributing pirated media libraries, or teaching how to obtain paid content without paying.
• Identity crime. Forging documents, identity theft, synthetic identities, or defeating identity verification.
• Privacy invasion. Doxxing, stalkerware, covert surveillance of partners or employees, or harvesting personal data unlawfully.
• Self-harm promotion. Content that encourages suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating, or provides methods.
• Animal cruelty and content that promotes it.
• Academic fraud services. Exam-cheating operations, ghostwriting services for graded work, or selling stolen exam banks.
• Infringing content. Material you do not have the rights to publish. See the Copyright and DMCA Policy.

4. Prohibited commercial and financial content

• Get-rich-quick schemes and guaranteed-income claims, including “passive income” courses built on promised returns.
• Pyramid schemes, Ponzi structures, and multi-level marketing recruitment presented as business education.
• Investment or trading courses that guarantee profits, promise specific returns, or present signals as risk-free.
• Pump-and-dump, market manipulation, insider trading, or crypto rug-pull instruction.
• Tax evasion, hiding assets, or sanctions evasion.
• Fake credential mills — selling degrees, licenses, certifications, or accreditation that you are not authorized to award.
• Deceptive marketing instruction: fake reviews at scale, ad-network fraud, click fraud, or bypassing platform policies to defraud consumers.
• Miracle health cures, courses telling learners to stop prescribed treatment, or unproven remedies presented as medically established.

5. Prohibited safety and exploitation content

• Content targeting vulnerable people for financial exploitation, including elder fraud playbooks and predatory lending instruction.
• Coercive control, manipulation, or “seduction” instruction that teaches overcoming refusal, deception into sex, or non-consensual conduct.
• Human trafficking, forced labor, or smuggling facilitation.
• Gambling operation instruction where unlicensed, and courses selling betting systems as guaranteed wins.
• Dangerous physical challenges or unsafe practices presented without qualified supervision or safety context.

6. Restricted content (allowed with conditions)

These subjects are welcome when taught responsibly. The condition is part of the rule — meet it and the course is fine.

• Cybersecurity and ethical hacking. Allowed for defensive education, certification preparation, and authorized testing. Teach on lab environments or systems the learner owns, state the legal boundaries, and do not supply working attack tooling aimed at live third-party targets.
• Investing, trading, and personal finance. Allowed as education. Include a clear statement that it is not personalized financial advice, disclose that past performance does not predict future results, and never promise returns or present results as typical when they are not.
• Health, medicine, fitness, and nutrition. Allowed as general education. State that it is not personalized medical advice, tell learners to consult a licensed professional, and do not discourage prescribed treatment. Any clinical claim should be grounded in mainstream evidence.
• Legal, tax, and accounting topics. Allowed as general information about how the law works, with a clear statement that it is not legal or tax advice and does not create a professional relationship.
• Mental health and wellness. Allowed as education and general support skills. Not a substitute for therapy, must not diagnose, and should point to crisis resources where the subject warrants it.
• Firearms, hunting, and self-defense. Safety, law, marksmanship, and sport instruction is allowed. Manufacture, conversion, and circumvention of regulation is not.
• Alcohol, cannabis, and regulated substances. Brewing, distillation, cultivation, and industry business education is allowed where the activity is lawful in the learner’s jurisdiction; say so, and do not teach trafficking or evasion.
• Sex education and relationships. Clinical, health-oriented, and consent-focused education is allowed. Explicit sexual material is not.
• Religion, politics, and ideology. Teaching, comparing, and critiquing beliefs is allowed. Dehumanizing adherents or inciting violence is not.
• Violence, war, crime, and atrocity as subject matter. History, journalism, forensics, criminology, and conflict studies are allowed, including graphic historical material where it has educational purpose and appropriate warning.
• Adult-audience topics generally. Mark them clearly in the listing so learners know what they are buying.
• Professional licensure preparation. Exam prep is allowed; do not imply that your course itself confers a license or accreditation.

7. Expressly permitted educational discussion

We want to be affirmative about this rather than leaving it to inference. The following will not be removed simply because the topic is uncomfortable:

• Explaining how attacks, scams, frauds, and manipulation techniques work so people can recognize and defend against them. Teaching people to spot a phishing email requires showing one.
• Analyzing extremism, propaganda, radicalization, and hate movements critically, including quoting primary sources.
• Discussing drugs, addiction, harm reduction, and public-health policy honestly.
• Teaching contested science, competing schools of thought, heterodox economics, or minority positions in a field, provided claims are presented as the argument they are.
• Criticizing governments, corporations, institutions, religions, and public figures.
• Covering historical atrocity, genocide, slavery, and war crimes with appropriate context.
• Teaching law enforcement, military, medical, and emergency-response subjects including realistic case material.
• Discussing sexuality, gender, reproductive health, and relationships in an educational register.
• Teaching persuasion, negotiation, and behavioral psychology, including how manipulation works.
• Reverse engineering, vulnerability research, and security research conducted lawfully.

The distinction throughout is purpose and framing. Explaining how ransomware spreads is education. Shipping a ransomware builder is not.

8. Listing quality standards

• The title, description, curriculum, and level must accurately reflect the actual content.
• No empty or placeholder courses, and no listings for content you have not produced.
• Thumbnails must relate to the course and must not be clickbait, misleading, or appropriated from someone else.
• No duplicate listings created to occupy more search results.
• No keyword stuffing in titles, descriptions, or lesson names.
• Audio and video should be intelligible; content that is unusable in practice may be unpublished.
• Working links and files. Persistent dead lessons are a reason for removal.

9. AI-generated content

Using AI tools to help produce a course is allowed. What is not allowed is passing off bulk-generated filler as taught material, publishing AI output you have not reviewed for accuracy, using synthetic voice or likeness of a real person without their permission, or generating content that infringes existing works. You remain fully responsible for the accuracy and legality of anything you publish, regardless of how it was produced. Where AI generation is substantial and a learner would reasonably want to know, disclose it in the listing.

10. Third-party material in courses

You must have the rights to every element you include: video, images, music, fonts, slides, code, datasets, and excerpts from books or articles. Purchased stock assets must be used within their license, and “found it online” is not a license. Where you rely on fair use, be prepared to explain the basis, and understand that we may still act on a valid copyright notice. Trademarks may be used to identify a subject accurately but not to imply endorsement or affiliation.

11. Payment-network restrictions

Independent of our own views, our payment processor and the card networks prohibit certain categories, and content that violates their rules cannot be sold here even if it is lawful. If our processor requires removal of a listing, we will remove it, because losing payment processing would take down the whole marketplace. We will tell affected instructors when this is the reason.

12. How review and enforcement work

Listings may be reviewed when published, when reported, when a payment or legal complaint arrives, or during routine checks. Depending on severity we may ask for changes, edit listing metadata, unpublish pending fix, remove the course, restrict publishing privileges, hold payouts, or terminate the account. Repeat or egregious violations move faster and further.

We do not commit to reviewing every listing, to a review timeframe, or to any particular outcome, and we do not represent that our review catches every violation. Publication is not endorsement, and the absence of enforcement is not approval.

13. Reporting content

Report content to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) or through the contact form with a link, the rule you believe was broken, and any context. Copyright complaints must follow the Copyright and DMCA Policy. Reports about conduct rather than content belong under the Acceptable Use Policy. Deliberately false reports may themselves be actioned.

14. Appeals and reinstatement

If your course was removed or unpublished and you believe it was a mistake — or you have fixed the problem — reply to the notice or write to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration)explaining what changed. Many restricted-category removals are resolved by adding the missing disclosure or reframing a section, and we would rather see the course fixed than gone. Removals required by law or by our payment processor leave us less room, and we will say so plainly.

15. Contact

Questions about whether a course idea is allowed: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration). Asking before you build is welcome and faster than appealing afterward. This policy is part of the Terms of Service and is governed by California law as described there.