---
title: "Moderation and roles in Sblurp"
description: "Permissions in a Sblurp community (owner, admin, moderator, member), custom roles that limit channels, channel modes, kicks and bans."
nav: "Moderation and roles"
doc_version: 1
last_updated: 2026-10-16
---

# Moderation and roles

Two separate ideas decide what someone can do and see:

- **Permission** decides what a member may do: owner, admin, moderator or member.
- **Roles** decide which text channels a member can see. Roles never change what someone may do.

## Permissions

Rank goes owner > admin > moderator > member. Nobody acts on someone of equal or higher rank.

| Permission | May |
|---|---|
| Member | Post, react, edit and delete their own messages, open DMs, add people to private channels they are in. |
| Moderator | Everything a member may, plus read reports, delete anyone's messages, kick, ban and lift bans, remove people from private channels, and add or delete custom emoji. |
| Admin | Everything a moderator may, plus make and change channels, roles, invites, bots and community settings, and set other members' permission below their own. |
| Owner | Everything. There is one owner: the first person who joined. Ownership cannot be handed over in the app, and the owner cannot leave. See [Hand over ownership](#hand-over-ownership). |

To change someone's permission, open **Community settings**, then **Members**.

## Hand over ownership

Sblurp has no button to hand over ownership, so nobody can take a community by mistake or by trickery. The only way is to edit the server's database directly. You need shell access to the computer that runs the community server, and the `sqlite3` tool.

1. Stop the community server.
2. Make a copy of `sblurp.db` in the server's data folder.
3. Run this command in the data folder. Change `newowner` and `oldowner` to the two usernames.

   ```sh
   sqlite3 sblurp.db "UPDATE members SET role = CASE username WHEN 'newowner' THEN 4 ELSE 3 END WHERE username IN ('newowner', 'oldowner');"
   ```

4. Start the server again. The new owner has every permission, and the old owner is now an admin.

Do not edit the database while the server runs.

## Reports

Members report messages from the message menu, with an optional note. Moderators, admins and the owner open **Reports** from the community menu. Each report shows who wrote the message, where it is, who reported it and when, the note, and a copy of the text.

- You see reports about members with a lower permission than yours. The owner sees every report.
- Choose **Go to message** to open it in its channel. Then delete it, or **Kick** the author from the report.
- A report from a direct message holds only that message. Moderators cannot open the conversation.
- Choose **Resolve** when you are done. This deletes every report of that message, with its copy of the text.

## Kick and ban

- **Kick** removes someone. They leave every channel and lose their roles. They may join again.
- **Ban** does the same and stops their account from joining again.

Their messages stay. Their member record stays too, so if they come back they keep the same member id, as a plain member. Lift a ban on the **Bans** tab.

Bots are removed by deleting them on the **Bots** tab, not by kicking.

## Roles

Admins make roles on the **Roles** tab. A role has a name, an optional color and a place in the list.

To limit a text channel to some roles, open **Channels** and pick the roles. Members with one of those roles can see it, and so can admins and the owner. A channel with no roles is open to every member. A role cannot be deleted while it still limits a channel, so deleting a role never opens a channel to everyone.

## Channel modes

A community is in one of two modes. Switch at any time in Community settings.

| Mode | How it works |
|---|---|
| Roles (the default) | Like Discord. Everyone is in every text channel they can see. |
| Opt-in | Like Slack. Members browse the channels they can see, and join and leave them. New members join the channels marked default. |

Private channels and DMs keep their own member lists in both modes.

## Message history

By default a community keeps every message forever. An admin can change this under **Community settings**, then **About**, then **Message history**: delete messages after 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, or after any number of days up to 3,650.

- The server checks every hour and deletes messages older than the limit, in small batches. Thread replies, reactions, attached files and search results go with them.
- A thread goes with its first message, even replies that are newer than the limit.
- No message is exempt. Every message older than the limit is deleted.
- Apps hide expired messages at once, before the server deletes them.
- Deleted messages cannot be brought back. Making the limit shorter deletes older messages within the hour.

## Private channels

Any member of a private channel may add others to it. Anyone may leave. Removing someone else needs moderator or higher, and a higher rank than theirs.

## Sitemap

- [Sblurp: chat for communities](https://sblurp.chat/index.md): Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them.
- [About Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/about.md): Why Sblurp exists: chat for communities that each run their own server, with no ads, no unasked-for AI and an honest word on encryption.
- [Privacy at Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/privacy.md): What sblurp.chat stores about you, what it never stores, what it shares with communities you join, and how to get a copy or delete it.
- [Terms of use](https://sblurp.chat/terms.md): The terms for a sblurp.chat account: who can sign up, what you must not do, and what we do and do not promise. A first draft.
- [Create your Sblurp account](https://sblurp.chat/signup.md): Create a Sblurp account: one account for every Sblurp community you join. You need an email, a username, a password and to be 13 or older.
- [Sign in to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/login.md): Sign in to your Sblurp account with your email or username and password, or with a passkey. One account works in every Sblurp community.
- [Reset your password](https://sblurp.chat/forgot.md): Forgot your Sblurp password? Type the email you signed up with and we send a link to choose a new one. The link works once, for one hour.
- [Sblurp docs](https://sblurp.chat/docs.md): Sblurp documentation: how accounts and communities work, how to run a community server, how to add bots, and the full API reference.
- [Accounts and communities](https://sblurp.chat/docs/accounts.md): How a Sblurp account relates to the communities you join: what sblurp.chat keeps, what each community server sees, and what stays private.
- [Join a community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/join.md): Join a Sblurp community: add it by address or invite link, answer its questions, choose what to share, and join.
- [Sblurp glossary](https://sblurp.chat/docs/glossary.md): The words the Sblurp docs use, from account and community to issuer, track, bot token and seq, each with a link to the page that explains it.
- [Run a Sblurp community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/self-host.md): Run a Sblurp community on your own server: one small program and one data folder. What you need, how to start it, and what it stores.
- [Run a server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/create.md): For developers: start your own Sblurp community. Run the open-source server, join it first to become the owner, then set it up and invite people.
- [Set up a server with AI](https://sblurp.chat/docs/ai.md): Not a developer? Ask an AI assistant such as Claude to set up your Sblurp community server.
- [Sblurp server sizes and costs](https://sblurp.chat/docs/hosting.md): Which server size to rent for a Sblurp community and what it costs each month: measured limits per size and prices at Fly.io, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud and AWS Lightsail.
- [Run Sblurp on Render](https://sblurp.chat/docs/render.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Render: one Starter web service with a persistent disk, the released image, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Railway](https://sblurp.chat/docs/railway.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Railway: one service from the released image, a volume for /data, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Fly.io](https://sblurp.chat/docs/fly.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Fly.io: one always-on machine with a volume, h2c streaming, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on any VPS](https://sblurp.chat/docs/vps.md): Run a Sblurp community server on a small virtual server from Hetzner, OVHcloud, Akamai Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean or any other host, with Docker Compose.
- [Run Sblurp with Docker and Compose](https://sblurp.chat/docs/docker.md): Run a Sblurp community server with Docker Compose and Caddy: the files, the settings, where the data lives, and how to run it behind your own proxy.
- [Run Sblurp with Podman](https://sblurp.chat/docs/podman.md): Run a Sblurp community server with a Podman Quadlet file, with daily automatic updates that roll back when a new image does not start.
- [Sblurp server configuration](https://sblurp.chat/docs/configuration.md): Every flag and environment variable of the Sblurp community server, with defaults, plus the backup variables of the container image and the built-in limits.
- [TLS and reverse proxies for Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/proxies.md): Put Caddy, nginx or Cloudflare in front of a Sblurp community server without breaking live streams: h2c, no buffering, no compression.
- [Back up a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/backups.md): Back up a Sblurp community server: Litestream copies the database to Cloudflare R2 within 10 seconds, an encrypted backup tool copies the files, or make a plain copy. How to restore.
- [Update a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/updates.md): Release tracks for the Sblurp server image, the daily update check, manual and automatic updates, and how to roll back.
- [Verify a Sblurp release](https://sblurp.chat/docs/provenance.md): Check that a Sblurp server image was built by the public release workflow, with GitHub attestations or cosign.
- [Troubleshooting a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/troubleshooting.md): Fix common problems with a Sblurp community server: sign-in fails, messages arrive late, certificates, file links, and where the logs are.
- [Invites in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/invites.md): Make a Sblurp community invite only, create invite links with an expiry and a use limit, and revoke them.
- [Moderation and roles in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/moderation.md): Permissions in a Sblurp community (owner, admin, moderator, member), custom roles that limit channels, channel modes, kicks and bans.
- [Safety in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/safety.md): Who can read your messages, how to protect your account, what to do about unwanted messages, how to report a message, what moderators can do, age rules, and how to reach sblurp.chat.
- [Your data in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/data.md): What sblurp.chat stores about your account, what a community server stores, who controls each, how long data is kept, backups, export and deletion.
- [Sblurp bots](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bots.md): Two ways to add a bot to a Sblurp community: a JavaScript plugin on the server, or a program anywhere that uses the API with a bot token.
- [Sblurp bot tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bot-tokens.md): Make a Sblurp bot with a token, run the example bot, and call the API from any language: subscribe to events and reply to mentions.
- [Connect an AI agent to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/agents.md): How to connect a self-hosted AI agent, such as OpenClaw, NanoClaw or Hermes Agent, to a Sblurp community with a bot token. No built-in connector exists yet.
- [Use Sblurp from Claude Code and other MCP clients](https://sblurp.chat/docs/mcp.md): Add a Sblurp community to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code or another MCP client by URL, sign in with your sblurp.chat account, and let the agent read and post as you.
- [Sblurp plugins](https://sblurp.chat/docs/plugins.md): Write a Sblurp bot as one JavaScript file and install it in the app, with the API or in the plugins folder: hooks for joins, messages, slash commands and timers, replies, limits and the dice example.
- [Sblurp API: protocol and transport](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api.md): How clients and bots talk to a Sblurp community server: Connect RPC over HTTP, the proto contract, JSON and binary bodies, auth, streaming and versioning.
- [Sblurp API explorer](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/explorer.md): Browse and try every call of the Sblurp community server API in your browser, from the OpenAPI 3.1 description in openapi.json.
- [Sblurp API: sign-in and tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/auth.md): How sign-in works across Sblurp: OAuth 2.0 with PKCE at sblurp.chat, per-server access tokens, JWT claims, refresh token rotation, JWKS, and bot tokens.
- [Sblurp API: events](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/events.md): The Sblurp live event stream: Subscribe, sequence numbers, replay and resync, heartbeats, every event kind, who receives it, and unread counts.
- [Sblurp API: uploads and files](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/files.md): The plain HTTP endpoints of a Sblurp community server: uploads, signed file URLs, custom emoji, invite links and the health check.
- [Sblurp API: errors and rate limits](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/errors.md): Error codes the Sblurp community server returns, what each one means for a client, and the rate limits for people and bots.
- [ServerService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/server-service.md): Every ServerService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [ChatService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/chat-service.md): Every ChatService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [BotService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/bot-service.md): Every BotService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [API types](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/types.md): The messages and enums the Sblurp community server API shares between calls, with every field.