At Sephora, we believe in championing all beauty, living with courage, and standing fearlessly together to celebrate our differences. Our social media spaces allow us to highlight the diversity of our community and applaud beauty in all forms. Sadly, we recognize that online harassment is a growing epidemic, hurting those who simply want to shine their light and dampening healthy conversations. As a leading beauty retailer with a large social presence, we feel a responsibility to ensure that our social platforms are inclusive, welcoming, and free of hateful speech.
We want to create open spaces for respectful discussion. To do this, we must ensure that our clients, Sephora Squad members, Beauty Directors, and other content creators feel safe and encouraged on all our platforms without the fear of hateful or judgmental comments. That’s why we’ve partnered with Right To Be, a leader in the movement to end harassment in all its forms, to create this set of social media guidelines. Sephora is what it is today because of our dedicated, passionate, and diverse community, and this change isn’t something that we can do alone—we need your support. So please join us in making our social media platforms a safe space for followers and talent to experiment and play with beauty.
As we continue to learn and educate others, we’re relying heavily on experts like Right To Be to help us define the issue and the path forward. Here’s what you need to know: Online harassment includes a wide range of targeted behaviors such as: threats, continued hateful messages, doxxing, DDoS attacks, swatting, defamation, and more. Online harassment can target (or come from) a group or individual and often has the express purpose of having the individual or group leave the internet, take down their content, or to discourage them from publicly having a point of view. One way we often see this is in the purposeful misgendering of content creators on our platforms. This action can have an extreme effect on a person’s self-confidence and overall mental health.
While there is space for discussion and debate online (as well as conflicting opinions!), what distinguishes harassment from healthy discourse is its focus on harm. To help keep this space clear and healthy, do not publish personal information, do not send threats with the intention to scare or harm, do not use discriminatory language against an individual, and do not promote harm against a person or organization. We want Sephora to be a space where you can be your most authentic self and create space for others to be too. Let’s work together to make our social media spaces fearless places for all of us.