Section 1: Introduction
MSN provides access to content across multiple services and devices from thousands of premium publishers and creators from all over the world. We aim to provide a trusted, safe, and highly engaging experience suitable for users of any age. We welcome a broad spectrum of thoughtful and engaging viewpoints. Still, we need to ensure that the content we present meets our standards.
We judge content based on criteria that include transparency and adherence to media industry best practices and our publishing guidelines. We do not address or judge political stance or decide what is true.
Below you will find MSN’s standards for all content on our site. MSN uses both automation and humans to review content. Content submitted for publication that does not meet these standards will be taken down and removed from our platforms.
Section 2: Before you get started
To be considered for inclusion in the MSN experience, you should first be familiar with and adhere to the core principles which guide our content experiences.
All content published on MSN must adhere to the Microsoft guidelines and policies. The auto-publishing feature allows content to be ingested and published automatically if it complies with Microsoft News content publishing rules. For serious guideline violations, excessive violations, technical issues such as incomplete content, or other problems with a feed that could lead to escalations, the auto-publishing feature can be disabled, meaning all content will no longer be published automatically in a particular feed. In addition, repeat copyright infringement by your content will result in termination of your license agreement. Please review the Auto-Publishing Requirements and the Publishing Content Guidelines for further information on prohibited content that could lead to disabling auto-publishing or control-listing a feed. If a feed has been control-listed and an underlying issue is addressed, contact us to review and determine if auto-publishing can be enabled again.
Section 3: Privacy
MSN will respect user privacy and personal data. View the Microsoft Privacy Policy.
Section 4: Overview of prohibited content
Partners must refrain from posting the following prohibited content. Learn more about prohibited content.
- Sexually explicit content
- Borderline adult, suggestive, and unpleasant content in thumbnail images
- Gratuitous images and/or descriptions of violence
- Hate speech
- Child sexual exploitation or abuse
- Bullying and harassment (this could include public figures)
- Hoaxes, false information, propaganda, and deliberate misinformation
- Misinformation about the following topics:
- COVID-19
- QAnon conspiracy theory
- Russia-Ukraine conflict
- Monkeypox
- School shootings
- US elections
- Suicide and self-harm content: Microsoft recognizes that suicide and self-harm are significant social and public health challenges, particularly among teens. While we do allow content on these topics, we do not allow content that promotes or glorifies suicide or self-harm.
- Clickbait tactics: This includes shocking topics, sensationalist headlines that exaggerate and the use of hyperbole/inflammatory language to grab attention and/or excitable punctuation (for example, exclamation points), stories that exaggerate the impact of a minor or insignificant event, or misrepresent the actual information contained in the article.
- Sensationalist content: Exaggeration or distortion of information, or uses of inflammatory language to provoke emotional reactions without factual basis.
- Manipulated and synthetic media will be removed unless it is clearly identified and labelled and not intended to deceive or cause real-world harm.
- Advertising and advertorial content.
- Content that contains only links.
- Marketing-focused content primarily designed to promote products or services.
- Content written or otherwise created by a person that is not directly affiliated with a partner (e.g., guest posting for a fee) unless agreed to by Microsoft.
- Aggregated content scraped from other sites without full written permission.
- Infrequent publishing: News sites must publish a minimum of 10 articles daily, including live/breaking coverage. Non-news sites should publish at least five times per month.
- Content that does not meet the basic standards of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, spelling, and word usage.
- Content that contains medical information or advice not reviewed by a licensed medical professional or medical board.
Section 5: Responsibilities for Multimedia
Partners are responsible for ensuring any embedded video and images within their content meet our standards and that they have copyright permission to use the media.
Section 6: Accountability and Transparency
Every Partner’s website must contain the following:
About Page: Identifying the company or individual partners’ mission or founding story. Ownership of the site must be identified. Information should include:
- Publisher name and owner
- A way for readers to contact them, like a physical address, phone number or email address.
*Video-only partners are excluded from this requirement
Terms of Use: This is an agreement that a user must agree to and abide by to use a website or service.
Disclosure Statement: Partners must disclose external funding, support, or conflicts of interest on the article page.
Privacy Policy: This is to inform users about what data you collect, how it's used, stored and protected.
Conflicts of Interest: If a Partner has a real or perceived conflict of interest (including financial or personal) in the topic of their content, they must disclose that noticeably on their content.
Product Endorsements with Compensation: If a product is being endorsed by a Creator or Publisher and they receive any financial incentive to endorse the product it must be clearly disclosed in the content. Suggested wording: ‘This author receives a commission through recommended links in this content.’
Product Endorsements with No Compensation: If a Creator or Publisher endorses a product and is not receiving any financial incentive to endorse the product it must be clearly disclosed in the content. Suggested wording: ‘This author does not receive a commission through recommended links in this content.’
Section 7: Content Attribution and Representation
Any content sent to MSN must have the following:
- Must provide clear, verifiable credit for content, such as an article, photo, photo gallery, slideshow, music, video and graphic. It is preferable that the credits are on each piece of content (for slideshows and galleries each one should have a credit). The exception is if the About page clearly states that all content (text, video, images) is created by one person.
- Bylines must primarily use the full names of the writers (no pseudonyms or posts by “Admin”) (Exceptions can be made for writers who have a strong reason to remain anonymous, or use a pseudonym, such as personal safety or an established brand name).
- Do not create a fake profile, fake name, or falsify information about yourself or an author on your site. We don’t allow fake profiles or entities. Do not use an image of someone else, or any other image that is not your likeness for a profile photo, or for the profile image of an author on your site.
- Sources must be named for facts, quotes, and opinions.
- Headlines and link text must accurately represent the connected content.
- Content from a brand is expected to conform to its stated and demonstrated domain/expertise. Content outside of a brand’s core subject area will be demoted in the ranker. Brands repeatedly sending content outside their expertise or changing their content topic after brand approval may be suspended or terminated.
- Content must make clear with a label the boundary between opinion and fact. All commentary, opinion, and reviews must be clearly labeled as such.
- If your contract allows affiliate links, ensure that they are not excessive and comply with the Creative Acceptance Policy
- Content created by one brand should not be duplicated and distributed under multiple brands under the same or different partner for the purposes of greater exposure.
Section 8: Content Rights and Responsibility
Our partners must have legal rights to publish the content on their sites and in articles and assume responsibility for the content published within that is from a third-party site.