**Update**
As of March 30th, 2017 we've made some temporary changes to Public Groups. Our goal is for our Kik users to feel safe and respected when they use our services, and we are doing everything we can to promote our users’ safety, as well as the safety of our Kik Community.
At Kik, we regularly review and update our features to make sure that we’re acknowledging our users’ experiences and are doing everything we can to protect user safety. These changes are only temporary while we work towards finding a more permanent solution that will make sure both user safety and promotion of good communities are at the forefront of Public Groups.
The temporary changes are as follows:
- You may only send Kik approved content (Stickers, Smileys, GIFs) for the first 12 hours that you're in a new public group.
- After you've been banned from multiple groups, you'll be unable to join any new groups for 48 hours.
- You may have a maximum number of group joins in a 24 hour period.
As part of keeping Kik safe, please make sure that you follow our Community Standards. You can always check them out here.
We appreciate your patience as we work to make Public Groups the best it can be!
Thank you,
The Kik Team
***
Public Groups (previously known as Hashtags) are the easiest ways for you to meet friends that have the same interests as you! Interested in Fifth Harmony? There's a group! Want to talk about Pokemon Go? Search #PokemonGo. Think of them like a Kik username but for groups.
Public Groups are searchable to anybody with the most recent version of Kik and as long as there's room in the group, anyone can join. If you want to have control over who can join your group, you can create a Private Group.
Public Groups must comply with our Community Standards. If you or the group you're in doesn't comply with these standards, action may be taken against you or the group. If you're repeatedly banned from a group multiple times, you may be banned from joining Public Groups altogether.
Currently you can only create up to 3 Public Groups within 24 hours.