Public Content Policy

Public Content Policy

This page explains what you can publish on Bar & Cocoa Passport, what we reject, what happens if something goes wrong, and what rights you keep. We’ve tried to write it the way we’d want to read it — short, specific, and in normal English.
The intent is simple: Passport is a place to share opinions about chocolate. Stay on that, and most of this page won’t apply to you.

Who can use Passport

You need to be at least 16 to publish lists on Passport. If you’re under 16, you’re welcome to read public lists, but please don’t create an account or publish content.
One account per person. Don’t impersonate a maker, brand, or another customer. Handles that include a real maker’s name (for example, valrhona_official) aren’t allowed unless you actually represent that maker — and at the moment, all maker representation on Passport is editorial and runs through Bar & Cocoa directly.

Your lists, your words

You own what you write. Publishing a list doesn’t transfer ownership of your words to us.
To make Passport work, though, you give Bar & Cocoa a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to:
  • Display your list on Passport, including in caches, link previews, and share thumbnails.
  • Quote reasonable excerpts from your list, with attribution to your handle, in Bar & Cocoa marketing — emails, social posts, and the storefront — when we’d like to highlight it. We won’t imply that you were paid or that you endorse a product unless you separately agree.
  • Keep your list available for as long as it remains published. If you delete the list, this permission ends, with practical exceptions for backups, legal compliance, caching, and the notes below in If you edit or delete a list.
This permission is non-exclusive: you keep the right to publish the same list anywhere else you want.

How publishing works

  • The moment you save a list, it has a public URL. You can paste that URL into a message, an email, or social — anyone with the link can read it. That’s the share button working as advertised.
  • Shared lists may be reviewed by Bar & Cocoa. We may review shared lists to make sure they are on-topic, lawful, and consistent with this policy.
  • Review is not an endorsement. If we leave a shared list available, feature it, or allow it to appear in more public areas of Passport, that only means it fits this policy. The opinions still belong to the person who wrote them.
  • Private lists stay private. A list set to private has no public URL. Only you can see it from your dashboard.

What’s allowed

The baseline: a list is a list of chocolate bars and products with a title, a one-sentence intro, and at least three bars. That’s it. Within that, we want this to feel like a place real people share real opinions — so we approve a wide range:
  • Idiosyncratic curation. “Bars that taste like Tuesday afternoon.” “What I bring on long train rides.” Creative framings welcome — the only requirement is that the contents are about chocolate.
  • Amateur writing. Sincere beats polished. You don’t need to be a critic.
  • Overlap is fine. Multiple Madagascar tours from different tasters is a feature, not a duplicate.
  • Strong personal voice. It’s your list. Sound like yourself.

What’s not allowed

A list may be removed, hidden from public areas of Passport, or restricted if it:
  • Attacks a specific maker, brand, or person. Negative opinions about individual bars are fine. Negative opinions about a maker as a person, business, or character are not. Stating a fact you know to be false about a maker (defamation) is never allowed.
  • Contains slurs, harassment, threats, or discriminatory content. Zero tolerance. This affects your account, not just the list.
  • Contains personal information about anyone other than yourself (doxxing).
  • Is off-topic. Passport is for chocolate. “Best craft beers” doesn’t belong here, no matter how well written.
  • Is spam, promotional, or contains external commercial links. No URLs in titles, intros, or notes (with rare exceptions for approved maker links). No affiliate links, no referral codes, no embedded promo codes.
  • Is clearly low-effort. A list needs at least 3 bars, a title, and a one-sentence intro. A single bar with no context isn’t a list.
  • Duplicates an existing published list of yours. One Madagascar tour per author.
  • Appears to be AI-generated without disclosure. Using a tool like Grammarly to polish your own writing is fine. Using ChatGPT to write your tasting notes for you is not, unless you say so in your intro.
  • Impersonates another person, maker, or brand.
  • Uses someone else’s writing, photos, or other work without permission.

Photos and other media

At launch, Passport lists are text-only. We don’t currently accept photo or video uploads. If we add image support in the future, we’ll update this page first. Don’t try to embed images via Markdown, base64, or other workarounds — they’ll be stripped, and repeated attempts count toward the spam rules above.

Reporting content

If you see a list that violates this policy, click Report this list on the list page. You’ll see a short form asking what’s wrong. Reports go directly into our internal review queue.
Items that merit review:
  • Slurs, threats, or doxxing. While we review, the list is removed by default.
  • Other reports: Will be reviewed and considered based on reasons for removal.
You don’t need to be signed in to report a list, and reports are private. If you report someone’s list, they don’t see your name.

Copyright claims

If you believe a list copies your writing, photos, or other work without permission, email infol@barandcocoa.com with the information below. For a formal DMCA notice, include everything required by DMCA Section 512, subsection c, paragraph 3:
  1. A description of the work you say is being infringed (a link to the original is ideal).
  2. The Passport URL of the list you say is infringing.
  3. Your contact information (name, email, phone).
  4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  5. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the rights-holder or are authorized to act on their behalf.
  6. Your physical or electronic signature (typed is fine).
We respond to copyright complaints promptly and remove or disable access to content when appropriate. Knowingly false claims may carry liability under applicable law.

Illegal content

Content that is illegal under applicable law has no place on Passport and will be removed without notice. This includes — but is not limited to — child sexual abuse material (CSAM), true threats, content that incites violence against real people, and unlawful use of someone else’s private information. We cooperate with law enforcement and, where required, report illegal content to the appropriate authorities, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) for CSAM.

Consequences

If one of your lists is removed for a content-policy violation, we’ll let you know via account email. Generally:
  • Two lists removed in any rolling 12-month period may suspend new publishing for 30 days and remove any account privileges tied to trusted publishing.
  • Three lists removed in any rolling 12-month period results in a permanent publishing ban, with account review.
  • One violation involving slurs, threats, doxxing, or illegal content is a single-strike permanent ban; all of your lists are removed.
If you think a moderation decision was wrong, reply to the email. We read every appeal.

If you edit or delete a list

Editing a shared list keeps the same public URL unless you make it private or delete it. Major edits — a new title, replacing most of the bars, rewriting the intro — may trigger another review.
Deleting your own list removes it from public view immediately. Search engines may take a few days to drop it from results; we submit removal requests to speed that up. We keep the underlying record for 30 days in case you want to undo, then hard-delete it.
Deleting your account removes your published lists from public view. Direct links return a “no longer available” page. We keep only the minimum information legally required after that.

What this policy doesn’t cover

Lists on Passport reflect the opinions of the people who wrote them, not Bar & Cocoa. A list isn’t an endorsement by us, even if it remains available or appears in public areas of Passport. Editorial lists from Bar & Cocoa are clearly labelled as such.
Bar & Cocoa reserves the right to remove any content or restrict any account, with or without notice, when we believe it’s necessary to keep Passport safe, lawful, or on-topic. We try to use this discretion narrowly and to communicate the reason whenever we can.
This policy doesn’t replace our Terms of Service or Privacy Policy, both of which apply when you use Passport. If any part of this policy is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

Changes to this policy

We update this page when the rules change. Material changes are posted at the top of the dashboard for one week so people who use Passport can see them without hunting.

Questions and appeals

Effective date: April 29, 2026
Last updated: April 29, 2026