All new projects in Toloka must pass moderation before labeling starts. During moderation, we check to make sure the project complies with our platform guidelines and security policies. Our first priority is to protect the wellbeing of our Tolokers and to give them the best possible experience on the platform.
If your project does not meet our guidelines, we’ll send you recommendations for how to fix it before launching tasks. Our goal is to work together toward compliance with platform rules and enhanced security.
Please read the guidelines below before posting your tasks.
You can't post tasks that advertise and promote websites, products, or services, or involve any type of fraud related to advertising, reviews, clicks, ratings, and so on. Do not ask Tolokers to:
Register on certain websites, apps, or social networks and use your referral link. If the Toloker needs to have an account on a particular social network or website to complete the task, specify this in the task description or provide them with access (if this is allowed by the terms of use and privacy policy of the particular social network or website).
View ads on external sites. However, you can put your own advertising materials in tasks for Tolokers to evaluate. For example, you can ask Tolokers to compare two versions of a banner ad.
Subscribe to newsletters, order products or services, or fill out feedback forms.
Publish, distribute, or evaluate posts and comments on social media or websites, participate in online voting, or sign petitions. However, you can conduct surveys and research in Toloka.
Create and send out any kind of spam, distribute flyers, or make advertising calls.
Write and/or edit reviews of products, services, or organizations and/or post them on websites or social networks. But you can ask Tolokers to moderate and evaluate reviews.
Tasks that ask Tolokers to identify people or other PII in photos of public spaces are allowed, provided that the following conditions are met:
All people, license plates and other PII are blurred prior to uploading to Toloka, except for tasks where the search for a person or vehicle is the main purpose.
If images are not blurred, you provide consent agreements with people whose images or vehicles may appear in photos.
Tasks containing PII of third parties are allowed provided that the following conditions are met:
PII is anonymized prior to uploading to Toloka.
You provide consent agreements with people whose PII may appear in tasks.
Tasks that collect PII from Tolokers, such as photos, videos or voice recordings, are allowed if the PII is collected in a lawful manner:
You must provide the name of an actual entity that administers data collection.
You must specify the purpose of data collection in the task.
You must provide a link to your privacy policy in the task.
You must follow the Guidelines on data collection.
You are never allowed to collect media for the purpose of creating a database for identity searches.
You are never allowed to post tasks related to collecting photos for the creation of biometric categorization systems inferring sensitive attributes (race, political opinions, trade union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, or sexual orientation) that are prohibited under the EU AI Act and other applicable laws.
Conducting surveys on third-party platforms is allowed provided that the following conditions are met:
Before conducting a survey, make sure that all your content has been checked and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Save the number assigned to your IRB-approved survey. You will need it when launching it through the academic survey template. If you're using a different template and/or are running your survey on a third-party website, the platform's administration may also request that number for verification purposes.
The survey should contain its goal and objectives. We also ask you to indicate requirements for participants, and approximate survey completion time.
Do not request data that can be used to identify the Toloker or a third party. This includes their first and last name, phone number, email address, home address, and pages on social networks. You can ask questions regarding the respondents' gender, age, education level, region or city of residence, and income level. To preserve the anonymity of requesters and annotators, make sure you communicate with annotators only via private messages in your Toloka account. However, the survey may include the researcher's name, organization, and email address as a standard practice for scientific research.
If you want to collect PII, follow the Guidelines on data collection.
The amount that the Toloker earns for completing the survey (including bonuses) should not depend on their political or religious beliefs, race, nationality, gender, social standing, or other criteria. Set the price based on how long it should take Tolokers to complete the survey.
Do not include questions or content in your survey that could cause moral injury, material loss, or any other type of harm to the Toloker or the Toloka platform. The terms of the survey and any materials included in it must comply with the laws of the countries where the survey is available.
The survey should not cover political, ideological, religious, or other controversial views and sensitive issues. The questions and other materials included in the survey should not impose the author's point of view on the respondents, offend the proponents of other positions, or stir up discord among users and various groups of people.
The survey should not contain advertising of websites, products, or services.
The Toloker should be able to complete the survey and submit a response:
If your survey is hosted on a third-party website and uses confirmation codes, make sure that all Tolokers receive the code regardless of their responses. You can change the confirmation code depending on the Toloker's responses to attention check questions.
Set sufficient time for survey completion in pool settings. The recommendations for conducting surveys in Toloka are based on the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects.
Tasks containing explicit and/or sensitive content are prohibited unless both conditions are met:
You indicate the sensitive content in the task feed and in the task description, and describe the project’s purpose so that users can familiarize themselves with the task content in advance.
You include a checkbox to confirm the user's understanding of the nature of such content before they begin labeling tasks.
Explicit content includes:
Erotic content
Content containing profanity
Any content that could cause moral or material harm to Tolokers or mislead them
Content that violates ethical and moral norms
Graphic depictions or discussions of violence, humiliation of others, or other disturbing topics
Sensitive content depicts or discusses topics that can be found controversial by users coming from different cultures, such as:
Politics
Religion
Gender and sexual preferences
World conflicts
Major conspiracies or events related to ongoing geopolitical events, etc.
Tasks that are aimed at insulting or discriminating against any group of people are prohibited.
Tasks with child pornography are prohibited.
You can’t post tasks that are aimed at developing or improving prohibited AI practices under the EU AI Act and other applicable laws, such as:
Subliminal, purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques
Exploiting vulnerabilities (age, disability, social/economic status)
Social scoring leading to detrimental or unfavorable treatment
Criminal risk assessments /predictions based on profiling
Building facial recognition databases from Internet/CCTV data
Emotion inference in the workplace or educational institutions
Biometric categorization based on sensitive characteristics
Real-time biometric identification in public by law enforcement
You can’t post tasks that could harm the Toloka platform, or a third party, namely:
Harm the Toloka platform or its underlying technology, other requesters, third parties, the infrastructure, the internet, and more.
Encourage downloading or installing software, including malware, on Tolokers' devices. If special software is needed to complete your task, contact support.
You can’t post tasks that serve as recruiting or assigning tasks to people who work for the requester. Don't make Tolokers do work outside the platform and don't post tasks for your employees.
You can’t post tasks that are intended for money laundering, including scams with payments and bonuses and the placement of fake tasks. If these types of tasks or a fraudulent requester are discovered, Toloka has the right to suspend their access to the platform and take other measures it deems appropriate for stopping the requester, including blocking their profile, limiting their ability to post tasks, and restricting their use of the Toloka platform.
You can’t post tasks that can be used for military purposes. In particular, don’t post tasks that can later be used within products (including in software solutions and/or in services related to such software solutions) and/or within the objects (tangible property) for the following military purposes (in accordance with their technical documentation): in weapons and military equipment, or in ammunition, or in military transport for purposes of military use (including ground, air, naval and space).
The name of the task must match its content, description, and instructions.
You can't post tasks with names that:
Are written in uppercase letters (all caps)
Contain multiple capital letters, emojis, question marks, and exclamation marks
Encourage Tolokers to complete the task by promising easy and fast earnings or contain other calls to action aimed at promoting thetask
Contain obscene or profane language
Contain unreadable characters, code elements, and links
Mention illegal actions or prohibited goods and services
Contradict the applicable legislation
Request or contain data that can be used to identify the Toloker or a third party. This includes their first and last name, phone number, email address, home address, pages on social networks, and so on
Toloka reserves the right to check the platform's public resources and block tasks that do not meet the aforementioned conditions.