How to start a confession page for your university or school

Short answer. Create a Facebook Page and a linked Instagram professional account, choose an anonymous submission form and test exactly what it records, put the rules at the top of the form, and recruit at least three admins. The accounts take about an hour. What keeps a page running is who reads the queue, what they refuse to publish, and who takes over when the founder leaves.

Most confession pages are started in an afternoon and abandoned within a semester. The page itself is the easy part: a Facebook Page, an Instagram account and a form take about an hour. What decides whether it is still running a year later is everything around it — who reads the submissions, what they refuse to publish, and what happens when the founder graduates.

This guide walks through the decisions in the order you will meet them. None of it depends on a particular tool.

Decide what the page is for

"A confession page for our campus" is not specific enough to moderate against. Before you create anything, write one sentence that says who the page is for and what belongs on it. For example:

• "Anonymous posts by and for students of one college — campus life, crushes, complaints about facilities, questions people are embarrassed to ask."
• "A place for alumni of one school to share memories and ask where people ended up."

That sentence does two jobs. It tells submitters what to send, and it gives you a reason to decline things that do not fit without it feeling personal. A page with no stated purpose ends up publishing whatever arrives, and what arrives unprompted tends to be whatever is most dramatic.

Decide at the same time what the page is not for. The three things almost every long-lived page rules out are accusations against named individuals, anything sexual about identifiable people, and material that belongs with the police or a counsellor rather than an audience.

Check what your institution says

Read your university's or school's student code and social media policy before you launch, not after the first complaint. You are looking for three things:

1. Use of the name and logo. Most institutions restrict their crest and official name. Calling the page "XYZ University Confessions" is usually tolerated; using the crest as your profile picture usually is not.
2. Whether students can be disciplined for online conduct. If they can, your submitters and your admins are both exposed.
3. Who to talk to. Some student affairs offices would rather know a page exists and who runs it than discover it during an incident.

Add the word "unofficial" to the page description. It costs nothing and removes any suggestion that the institution endorses what you publish.

Choose a name and claim it everywhere

Pick a name that says what the page is and whose it is, and check that the same handle is free on Facebook and Instagram before you commit. A page called one thing on Facebook and another on Instagram loses people every time it is mentioned out loud.

Keep a short numbering prefix in mind as well. Most confession pages number their posts — #UTMC1284 — and that prefix ends up being how people refer to posts in comments and group chats. Short, unique and easy to type on a phone is what you want.

Set up the accounts properly

Create the Facebook Page from a personal account that will still exist in three years, then immediately give full access to at least one other trusted person. A page with a single owner is one lost phone away from being unrecoverable. The details are in our guide to Facebook Page access for student teams.

For Instagram, create the account with an email address the team controls together — not someone's personal inbox — switch it to a professional account, and link it to the Facebook Page. Linking matters for more than convenience: most scheduling and publishing tools can only post to Instagram accounts that are professional and connected to a Page.

Turn on two-factor authentication for every account involved, using an authenticator app rather than SMS, and store the backup codes somewhere two people can reach.

Pick how submissions will arrive

You need a way for people to send text — and possibly images — without telling you who they are. There are three common approaches.

Whichever you choose, test it as a submitter before launch. Open the form in a private browser window, submit something, and check exactly what the admin side shows about you. If the form asks people to sign in, or records an email address, it is not anonymous and you must not describe it that way. Our guide on what anonymous really means explains what a submitter can and cannot assume.

Write the rules before the first post

Rules written after an incident look like they were aimed at someone. Write them first, keep them short, and put them where a submitter sees them before typing — at the top of the form, not in a pinned post nobody opens.

A workable set of rules covers what you will not publish, what you may edit, how someone can ask for a post to be removed, and what you do with submissions you decline. There is a template you can adapt in Writing rules for an anonymous page.

Recruit a team of at least three

One admin cannot run a page that receives more than a handful of submissions a day without either burning out or approving things unread. Three is the practical minimum:

• with three, any two can cover while the third has exams;
• a borderline submission can be decided by majority rather than by whoever happens to be online;
• nobody is the single person who knows the password.

Choose people for judgement rather than enthusiasm. The admin you want is the one who will say "I'm not sure we should post this" — not the one who finds everything funny. Agree from the start that admins do not discuss who they think wrote a submission, even among themselves. That guessing game is how anonymous pages lose the trust they run on.

How to divide the reading is covered in A moderation workflow for a small team.

Understand what you are responsible for

The person who publishes a statement is responsible for it, even if someone else wrote it and even if nobody knows who that was. In Malaysia this is not a figure of speech: the law of defamation treats republication as publication, and section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950 presumes that the administrator of a page published what appears on it unless they can prove otherwise.

You do not need a law degree to run a confession page. You do need to know roughly where the lines are. Read Malaysian law for page admins before you approve your first submission, and make sure every admin on the team has read it too.

Plan the first thirty days

A new page has no submissions, and an empty page attracts none. The first month is about getting past that honestly.

Week one. Publish the rules, an introduction that says who the page is for, and the link to the form. Share it in the group chats and societies you are already part of. Do not invent submissions to fill the feed — people can tell, and a page caught writing its own confessions does not recover.

Weeks two and three. Publish what arrives at a steady rhythm rather than all at once. Four posts spread across a day are read; twelve posted in a burst are scrolled past. See How often should a confession page post? for how to find your page's rhythm.

Week four. Look back at what you declined and why. If the same kind of submission keeps arriving and keeps being declined, the rules are not reaching people — rewrite the wording at the top of the form.

Decide now how it ends

Every student-run page reaches the point where its founders leave. Decide before launch what happens then: who is eligible to take over, how they are chosen, and what is handed to them. A page that plans its succession is handed over in a week. A page that does not is either deleted or left running with nobody reading the queue — which is worse. Handing over a community page without losing it has a checklist.

Common questions

How do you start a confession page?

Write one sentence saying who the page is for and what belongs on it, and check your institution's social media policy. Claim the same handle on Facebook and Instagram, give at least two people full access with two-factor authentication on, choose a submission form and test it from a private window, put the rules at the top of the form, and recruit three admins.

How do confession pages collect anonymous submissions?

In one of three ways: a general form tool such as Google Forms, direct messages to the page, or a dedicated submission platform. Direct messages are not anonymous at all, because the admins see who sent each one. Whichever you choose, submit something yourself from a private browser window and check exactly what the admin side shows about you.

How many admins does a confession page need?

At least three. Any two can cover while the third has exams, a borderline submission can be decided by majority, and nobody is the single person who knows the password. Choose people for judgement rather than enthusiasm.

Is the admin of a confession page responsible for what it posts?

Yes. The person who publishes a statement is responsible for it, even if someone else wrote it. In Malaysia the law of defamation treats republication as publication, and section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950 presumes that the administrator of a page published what appears on it unless they can prove otherwise.

Can a confession page use the university's name and logo?

Most institutions restrict their crest and official name. A name such as "XYZ University Confessions" is usually tolerated; using the crest as the profile picture usually is not. Read the student code and social media policy first, and add the word "unofficial" to the page description.

A launch checklist

• One-sentence purpose written down, and a list of what is out of scope
• Institution's code and social media policy read; "unofficial" in the description
• Same handle on Facebook and Instagram; numbering prefix chosen
• At least two people with full access to the Page; two-factor authentication on; backup codes stored
• Submission form tested from a private window — you know exactly what it records
• Rules visible at the top of the form
• Three admins who have all read the rules and the legal overview
• A named contact address for removal requests
• A written note on who takes over, and when