What moderation is for
Moderation exists to keep TSA truthful and safe: to stop fabricated and incentivised reviews, to keep private information off the platform, and to prevent harassment. It does not exist to protect agencies from unflattering but genuine feedback.
The line we hold
A review is judged on whether it breaches the Review Guidelines, never on whether the rating is high or low, and never on whether the agency is claimed, verified or advertising nothing at all.
How a review is processed
- Submission: the review is recorded with its relationship type and, where relevant, the reviewer's anonymity choice.
- Automated screening: the text is assessed for risk signals such as personal data, threats, or indications of a fake or incentivised review.
- Publication or hold: low-risk reviews are published. Flagged reviews are queued for a human moderator.
- Human decision: a moderator approves, rejects or removes the review, records a reason, and where it is not approved sends the author an explanation.
- Appeal: the author can ask for the decision to be looked at again.
Automated screening can flag content but never issues a final removal on its own for a report-driven case; removals are recorded against a moderator account and stored in the moderation log.
Reports, and why they do not remove content
Any signed-in member, including an agency representative, can report a published review. A report opens a case; it does not hide, unpublish or downrank the review while the case is open.
- Volume of reports does not change the outcome. Ten reports of a compliant review still result in no action.
- A member cannot report the same review twice while a case is open, and heavy report activity is rate-limited.
- Reports made in bad faith — to suppress legitimate criticism — are themselves a policy breach.
Valid grounds for removal
A published review will be removed only where TSA concludes it is:
- Fabricated, or from someone with no genuine relationship with the agency.
- Incentivised, purchased or coerced.
- A conflict of interest, such as self-review or a competitor review.
- Containing private personal information, or content that identifies or endangers an individual.
- Harassing, hateful, threatening or otherwise unlawful.
- About the wrong agency, or duplicated.
- Used as leverage to extract payment or a refund.
Not grounds for removal
A low rating. Damage to reputation or sales. A dispute the agency believes it would win. An unresolved refund. The agency's preference that the review had never been written.
When the facts are disputed
Where an agency says a review is factually wrong, TSA does not act as a court. We ask for evidence, we ask the reviewer to substantiate specific factual claims, and we take the narrowest action that fits: usually no action plus the agency's public response, sometimes removal of one unsupportable factual claim, and removal of the whole review only where the relationship itself turns out to be fake.
The agency's public response is the primary remedy for a disputed review. It is shown directly beneath the review so readers see both accounts.
Appeals
If your review is rejected or removed, you can appeal from your dashboard. Tell us why you believe the decision was wrong. Appeals are handled by TSA staff, and wherever practical not by the person who made the original decision. You will be told the outcome and the reason. One appeal per decision.
Accountability
- Every moderation action is written to an internal audit log with the actor, the action, the reason and the time.
- Agency representatives can never edit or delete a review, change a rating, or see who wrote an anonymous review.
- Removed reviews are not silently deleted: the author is notified and the record is retained internally.
- TSA staff with a personal or commercial connection to an agency must not decide cases involving it.
Questions about this policy?
Ask the TSA team through the contact form. We reply within two business days.