At Instinct Magazine, our mission is to bring you stories, reviews, and recommendations that you can actually trust. Whether we’re exploring dating apps, travel destinations, health trends, or lifestyle tech, we hold every recommendation to a clear standard of accuracy, integrity, and authenticity.
We know that our readers rely on us to help them make smart choices, so here’s exactly how we do that.
Examples of the community and reputation checks we perform before recommending a site.
2. Our Quality Standards
We take pride in featuring only brands that meet our standards for quality and trust.
Before a site or product is ever linked in our content, it must:
- Be secure (HTTPS) and free of malware or deceptive practices.
- Have a track record of at least two years or a strong reputation within its industry.
- Show active customer support and verified contact information.
- Follow legal and safety requirements — for example, adult-oriented platforms must have age gates and responsible-use policies.
- Offer a positive user experience, including mobile compatibility and honest business practices.
We also look at factors like popularity within the community, brand transparency, and user feedback before inclusion.
3. LGBTQ+ Editorial Review Board
To make sure our recommendations truly reflect the needs and values of our community, Instinct Magazine works with an LGBTQ+ Editorial Review Board, a small group of contributors and advisors from across the queer community who help evaluate the products, services, and brands we feature.
The board reviews:
- Whether the product or brand is authentically supportive of LGBTQ+ people, not just performative.
- If the company has a track record of inclusion, fair marketing, and respectful representation.
- The real-world usefulness and quality of the product or platform for our audience.
Our goal is to ensure that everything we highlight, from dating apps to health products, aligns with our community’s standards and lived experiences.
4. Editorial Independence
Our editors and contributors choose what to feature based on relevance and reader value — not just on partnerships.
While we sometimes receive compensation through affiliate links, this never affects the tone, ranking, or outcome of our reviews.
We believe readers deserve recommendations they can trust, not ads disguised as advice.
4.1 Financial Transparency and Affiliate Disclosure
Instinct Magazine maintains full transparency about how we fund our content and operations. Some articles and reviews may include affiliate links, which means we might earn a commission if readers make a purchase through those links.
This does not influence our opinions, rankings, or recommendations in any way — all products are chosen and reviewed independently by our editorial team.
We follow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines on endorsements and testimonials to ensure clear, honest communication with our readers.
Every page that includes affiliate links displays a disclosure statement at the top, for example:
“All products featured on Instinct Magazine are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases made through these links.”
This transparency ensures readers understand how Instinct operates financially while trusting that our reviews remain unbiased and grounded in research.
5. How We Choose Who to Feature
We look for sites and services that are:
- Well-established and trusted within their niche.
- Loved by real users — not just hyped online.
- Unique or innovative, bringing something new to the space.
We use a mix of Google Trends, Reddit, YouTube, and direct user feedback to discover what’s genuinely popular, not just promoted.
Our goal is to help you find things that are both credible and interesting, not just the same names you see everywhere else.
6. Continuous Review Process
Our content isn’t static. We regularly update our recommendations to keep up with new information, policy changes, or better options.
Example of our internal comparison table used to evaluate site safety, inclusivity, and community reputation before recommending it to readers.
If a site we’ve listed changes ownership, stops meeting our standards, or receives consistent user complaints, we remove or revise it.
Quality isn’t a one-time box to check, it’s something we monitor constantly.
7. Our Promise
We’ll continue to grow, refine, and hold ourselves accountable to the same values that have made Instinct a trusted voice for over two decades:
Honesty, Inclusivity, and Genuine Curiosity.
Because at the end of the day, we’re here to make sure our readers feel informed, empowered.
