By business type

Acceptable Use Policy Generator for creators

Written for newsletters, affiliate links, sponsorships, comments and audience analytics.

Generate your acceptable use policy Read the acceptable use policy guide

Once a publication has comments, a community or a paid membership, moderation stops being optional. The acceptable use policy is what lets you remove something without the removal itself becoming the story.

Publishing looks like a low-data business until you list what actually runs: an email list with open and click tracking, affiliate links that pass identifiers to networks, ad or sponsorship tracking, comment systems storing IP addresses, and analytics on every page. Each is a distinct processing purpose.

Email is the centre of it. A newsletter list needs a documented consent basis, open and click tracking is itself processing that most subscribers do not expect, and platform features like lead magnets and referral programmes each add their own collection.

Disclosure obligations run alongside data protection. Affiliate and sponsorship relationships must be disclosed clearly and before the link under the FTC endorsement guides, the UK CAP Code and EU unfair commercial practices rules - and "clearly" has been interpreted strictly.

What a acceptable use policy for a creator, blogger or newsletter publisher has to cover

Prohibited content in comments, community spaces and member submissions
Harassment of other readers, and of you, with the threshold stated
Promotional and spam behaviour, including affiliate link dropping
How a decision is made, communicated and appealed
Consequences for paid members, including whether a subscription is refunded on removal

How a creator, blogger or newsletter publisher actually moves personal data

Newsletter subscriptions

Email address plus the consent record, and usually behavioural data - opens, clicks, device and location inferred from the open pixel.

Affiliate link click-through

Passing a subscriber or visitor to an affiliate network, which sets its own identifier and attributes the sale.

Comments and community

Name, email, IP address and user agent, stored indefinitely unless configured otherwise.

Ad networks and header bidding

Real-time bidding transmits an enormous amount of contextual and identifier data to a large number of parties.

Lead magnets and gated content

A download in exchange for an email is consent for the download, not automatically for a newsletter.

Analytics and audience measurement

Page-level analytics, scroll and engagement tracking, and any A/B testing on content.

Third parties the draft will ask you about

Beehiiv, Substack, ConvertKit or Mailchimp · Amazon Associates and affiliate networks · Google AdSense or Mediavine · Disqus or a native comment system · Google Analytics 4 or Plausible · Stripe for paid subscriptions

The rules that apply

Marketing consent for newsletters

Opt-in in the UK and EU, with the consent record retained. Double opt-in is effectively expected in Germany and is good practice everywhere.

Open and click tracking

Processing that subscribers rarely anticipate, and that several EU regulators have said should be disclosed and, in stricter readings, consented to separately.

Affiliate and sponsorship disclosure

Clear and conspicuous, before the endorsement, in the same medium. Footer disclosures have repeatedly been found insufficient.

Comment systems

Storing commenter name, email, IP address and user agent, often through a third-party service that publishes some of it.

Advertising and analytics consent

Ad networks and analytics require consent before firing in the UK and EU, which for ad-funded publishing is a revenue-relevant constraint.

What the generated acceptable use policy contains

Prohibited content and conduct
The categories you will not host, written specifically enough to enforce and narrowly enough to defend.
Technical restrictions
Rate limits, scraping, load testing, resource abuse and circumvention of quotas.
Security research boundaries
What testing is permitted, how to report a finding, and what will not be treated as an attack.
Reporting and moderation
How abuse is reported, what happens next, and the timescales you work to.
Enforcement ladder
Warning, throttle, suspension, termination - with the emergency route for genuinely urgent harm.
Appeals
How someone contests a decision, which several online-safety regimes now require rather than merely encourage.

The creator compliance set

Document how each subscriber joined
Source, date and the wording they saw. Your email platform usually records this if you ask it to.
Put affiliate disclosure above the link
On every page and in every email where affiliate links appear.
Disclose open and click tracking
One sentence in the privacy policy and a line in the signup form.
Set comment retention
Especially for IP addresses collected for spam control.
Decide the ad consent position
And configure the banner to match it honestly.
Separate lead magnets from newsletter consent
With a distinct, unticked opt-in.

Where this usually goes wrong

Affiliate disclosure in the footer only

It has to be before the link, in the same medium, and unavoidable. Footer-only disclosure is the pattern regulators single out.

Lead magnet emails added to the newsletter automatically

Two different purposes. The second one needs its own consent.

Open tracking never disclosed

Subscribers do not expect a tracking pixel in every email, and several regulators expect it to be disclosed.

Ad tags firing before consent

For ad-funded sites this is the whole compliance problem, and the revenue trade-off has to be faced rather than avoided.

Comment IP addresses stored forever

Collected for spam control, retained long after that purpose expires.

Purchased or scraped subscriber lists

No valid consent, and importing them contaminates deliverability as well as compliance.

Frequently asked questions

Does a blog need a privacy policy?

If it has analytics, comments, a newsletter or ads - which is nearly every blog - then yes. Each of those is processing personal data.

How should I disclose affiliate links?

Clearly, before the link, in the same medium and unavoidably. A line at the top of the post or immediately above the link. Footer-only disclosure has repeatedly been found inadequate.

Can I add lead magnet downloads to my newsletter?

Only if you asked. The download and the newsletter are separate purposes, and the second needs its own unticked opt-in.

Do I need to disclose email open tracking?

You should. Subscribers do not expect it, and several EU regulators treat undisclosed tracking pixels as a transparency failure.

Do I need an acceptable use policy separate from my terms?

A separate AUP is easier to enforce and easier to update. It also gives moderation staff and automated systems a single reference to cite, which matters when a suspension is challenged.

Does an AUP help with platform liability?

It is part of the picture. Intermediary liability protections generally depend on acting on notice, and both the EU Digital Services Act and the UK Online Safety Act expect published rules, a reporting route and an appeals process.

How specific should prohibited-use lists be?

Specific enough that a moderator can apply it consistently, with a residual catch-all. Lists that are only catch-alls get challenged; lists that are only specific leave gaps.