# Flag members in your community

https://help.circle.so/p/administration/moderation/flagging-a-member

Category: [Administration](https://help.circle.so/p/administration) › [Moderation](https://help.circle.so/p/administration/moderation)

---

_Last updated: October, 2026_

Maintaining a positive and respectful environment is essential to your community. As an admin, you can flag members when their behavior needs review or temporary restriction.

Circle gives you three independent controls to restrict a member's activity. You can moderate their posts and comments, disable their chat and direct messaging, or apply any combination of the three.

> **ℹ️ Note:** You can't flag other admins or moderators.

## About moderation controls

The edit account page includes three toggles that can be turned on independently:

- **Moderate posts and comments:** Restricts the member's post and comment activity. All future content they post is flagged for review before it becomes visible.

- **Disable chat messaging:** Blocks the member from sending messages in embedded rooms, including live rooms and chat spaces.

- **Disable direct messaging: ** Prevents the member from sending direct messages, including group DMs.

> ❗️ **Important:** Each moderation toggle works independently, this means that moderating a member's posts and comments has no effect on their chat or DM access, and disabling chat or DMs has no effect on their post and comment activity.

A member can be flagged in two ways:

- **Manually:** Admins can flag a member directly by editing their account.

- **Automatically:** Admins can set a moderation setting that turns on the **Moderate posts and comments** once reports on a member’s content cross a defined threshold (flag all member activity after X reports).

📚 To learn more about automatic moderation, see [Manage moderation settings](https://help.circle.so/p/administration/moderation/manage-moderation-settings).

## How moderation controls restrict member activity

In this section, we’ll take a look at how moderation controls restrict member activity.

### Posts and comments

When **Moderate posts and comments** is turned on, all future content the member posts in the following space types is flagged for review:

- **Post spaces:** Posts and comments

- **Image spaces:** Posts and comments

- **Event spaces:** Comments

When enabled, all a member’s content is hidden from other members. Only the moderator, admin, and the member who posted it can see it.

Admins and moderators can review flagged content and choose to approve or reject it:

- If approved, the content becomes visible to other members.

- If rejected, the content is permanently removed from the community.

### Direct messaging

When  **Disable direct messaging**  is enabled, the member can no longer send direct messages, including in group DM conversations.

The only exception is direct messaging with admins. When direct messaging is disabled on a member’s account, they can only continue conversations with community admins.

### Connection requests

When  **Disable connection requests**  is enabled, the member can't send connection requests to other members in the community. If they try, they'll see an error message telling them the action isn't allowed.

### Chat messaging

When **Disable chat messaging** is turned on, the member can no longer send messages in:

- Chat spaces

- Chat in live sessions

When restricted, members will see a banner notifying them that messaging is temporarily disabled.

## Restrict a member’s activity (flag a member)

1. Click  **Audience**  in the left sidebar, then select  **Audience**.

2. Hover over the member's name, click  **More actions**  **(three dots)** next to the name, and select  **Edit**.

3. On the Info tab, turn on the toggles for the restrictions you want to apply:

4. Click **Save.**  

## **Relevant articles**

- [Un-flag a member](https://help.circle.so/p/administration/moderation/un-flagging-a-member)

- [Reviewing flagged content](/p/administration/moderation/reviewing-flagged-content)