Candidate policy version public-beta-v1-draft.2 — not in effect and not for assent. Account creation cannot accept assent to a draft.

User Terms of Service

DRAFT — NOT FOR ASSENT. This document incorporates the owner's approved U.S.-only and age posture, but it is not legal advice or evidence of legal review. Its effective date, dispute terms, and verified legal contact remain release gates.

Policy Version: public-beta-v1-draft.2

Effective Date: PENDING_RELEASE_APPROVAL

Last Updated: 2026-09-02

Contracting Entity: PENDING_CONTRACTING_ENTITY_VERIFICATION

Legal Contact: PENDING_CONTACT_CHANNEL_VERIFICATION

Welcome to comentr. These Terms govern the United-States-only Public Beta. By creating an account or accessing our services, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the platform.

1. Eligibility

The Public Beta is offered only to people located in the United States. You must be at least 13 years old to create or use an account. People under 13 may not use the service, and there is no parent or guardian consent pathway for an under-13 account.

A verified email address before an account may participate is part of the Public Beta eligibility bar. Participation includes creating threads, comments, votes, direct-message writes, and communities. Browsing, signing in, email verification and recovery, required account management, and authorized moderation remain available while an account is unverified.

2. Your Account and Identity

2.1. Account Standing

Our platform operates on a reputation-based system called Standing. Your ability to perform certain actions (e.g., creating threads, posting comments, or creating forums) is gated by your Standing Tier (NEWCOMER, MEMBER, TRUSTED, PARAGON).

  • Earning Standing: You earn standing through positive contributions and adherence to rules.
  • Losing Standing: Violations of System or Community rules will lower your Global or Local standing, potentially restricting your access to features.

2.2. Account Security

You are responsible for safeguarding your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. We employ an "Immune System" to detect compromised accounts; unusual activity (e.g., sudden location changes or mass posting) may trigger a temporary Protective Lock requiring re-verification. You must notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access.

2.3. Anonymity and Handles

You have a single Global Account but may choose different Community Handles for specific communities to maintain pseudo-anonymity. However, your Global Account remains liable for all actions taken under any handle. "Anonymous" posting features hide your identity from the public but not from the system or administrators for enforcement purposes.

3. Content and Conduct

3.1. Rule Hierarchy

You are subject to two layers of rules:

  1. System Rules (Tenant Laws): Immutable rules applicable everywhere (e.g., No Spam, No Illegal Content, No Harassment). Violating these harms your Global Standing.
  2. Community Rules (House Rules): Custom rules defined by the creators of specific forums (e.g., "No Memes", "Spoilers"). Violating these harms your Local Standing within that community.

3.2. Content Ownership and License

You retain ownership of the content you create. By posting, you grant comentr a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable license to display, distribute, store, and format your content for the purpose of operating and promoting the platform. This license continues for as long as your content remains on the platform and terminates upon deletion of that content (subject to reasonable caching and backup retention periods, and any legal obligation to preserve records).

3.3. Prohibited Behavior

You may not:

  • Engage in brigading or coordinated harassment.
  • Exploit multiple accounts to manipulate voting or standing.
  • Post automated spam or malware.
  • Use the reporting system to harass others ("Report Abuse").
  • Circumvent suspensions, bans, or rate limits.
  • Impersonate other users, moderators, or administrators.
  • Scrape, crawl, or bulk-download content except as permitted by our robots.txt or a written agreement.

3.4. Automated Abuse Prevention

To keep the platform safe from spam, bots, and coordinated abuse, we use automated systems — including Cloudflare bot management and Cloudflare Turnstile — that analyze traffic for signs of automation. When activity looks automated or high-risk, you may be asked to complete a brief human-verification challenge (for example, a Turnstile checkbox) before your action proceeds. Repeated or high-confidence automated abuse may be blocked outright.

The challenge supports assistive technologies (audio, keyboard, and screen-reader modes). The launch support route for users who cannot complete a challenge is a CONTACT CHANNEL PENDING VERIFICATION release gate and must be verified before this draft is offered for assent. How these systems process data is described in our Privacy Policy.

4.1. Repeat Infringer Policy

We will terminate the accounts of users who are repeat copyright infringers.

4.2. Takedown Notices

DMCA Agent: PENDING_DMCA_AGENT_VERIFICATION

DMCA Notice Delivery: PENDING_DMCA_AGENT_VERIFICATION

If you believe content on comentr infringes your copyright, the release version will provide the verified delivery method for a copyright notice. DMCA DESIGNATED AGENT PENDING VERIFICATION: this draft does not claim that Comentr, any person, or any email address is registered as a designated agent. The agent identity, Copyright Office directory record, and delivery route must be verified before this draft is offered for assent.

Your notice must include:

  1. Identification of the copyrighted work.
  2. Identification of the infringing material and its location on the platform.
  3. Your contact information.
  4. A statement of good-faith belief that the use is not authorized.
  5. A statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate and you are the rights holder or authorized to act on their behalf.
  6. Your physical or electronic signature.

4.3. Counter-Notices

If your content was removed and you believe the takedown was in error, you may submit a counter-notice with the information required under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

5. Moderation and Enforcement

5.1. Moderation Paths

The current system supports direct enforcement and a separate sanction-case path.

  • Direct enforcement: An authorized moderator may warn, suspend, or apply a direct permanent user ban without a sanction case.
  • Sanction cases: When this deliberative path is used, the current default quorum is three approvals for tenant- or platform-scoped cases and two approvals for community- or forum-scoped cases. Votes are de-duplicated by voter. An eligible proposing moderator may cast one approval; the current path has no single-approver top-tier override.

5.2. Public Audit Logs

The anonymous public surface is a sanitized, community-scoped moderation log. It exposes display-safe action facts for one community and omits raw user IDs, reporter identities, IP addresses, and internal notes. Actor- and target-oriented moderation records, and the target-filtered community log, remain moderator-only. Not every moderation record is public.

5.3. Appeals

The current moderation-history experience marks a user-targeted action as appeal-eligible when it is fewer than 90 days old and has no recorded appeal. Appeal submission verifies that the action targeted the appellant and limits each user to five appeals that are open or under review at one time. Content-targeted actions are not self-appealable in the current version. Submitted appeals enter a dedicated moderation queue, where the resolving moderator and outcome are recorded.

6. Privacy and Data

6.1. Data We Collect

We collect information you provide (account details, content you post) and information generated by your use of the platform (standing scores, reporter reliability scores, view events). For full details, see our Privacy Policy.

6.2. View Tracking

We count views on threads to highlight trending content. This process is privacy-preserving; we aggregate view counts by country and time but do not maintain a persistent log of which threads you specifically visited.

6.3. Reliability Scoring

Your reporting history is analyzed to generate a Reporter Reliability Score. If you consistently file false or abusive reports, your future reports may be quietly de-weighted or ignored. This score is not publicly visible.

6.4. Why We Process Data

We process personal data to operate accounts and deliver the service, detect abuse and protect platform integrity, generate aggregate service analytics, and comply with applicable law, court orders, and valid governmental requests.

6.5. Your Data Rights

You may ask to access a copy of your personal data, correct inaccurate account data, or delete your account and associated personal data, subject to the retention and legal exceptions described in the Privacy Policy. The request route is a CONTACT CHANNEL PENDING VERIFICATION release gate. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law.

6.6. Third-Party Services

We use third-party providers for infrastructure, analytics, and content delivery. These providers process data on our behalf under agreements that require them to protect your information. We do not sell your personal data.

7. Termination

7.1. User-Initiated

You may delete your account through your account settings. Deletion proceeds in two stages:

  1. DELETION_PENDING — the account is immediately removed from public discovery and participation, and its active sessions and access keys are revoked. During the 30-day recovery window, identity, authored content, social graph, email reservation, and credentials are kept only so an authenticated recovery can restore the account. Recovery never weakens a sanction imposed during the window.
  2. DELETED — after the deadline, deletion is terminal and irreversible. Optional profile and personal account data are scrubbed, while the non-public terminal account row retains its required username and status fields. Authored threads and comments are hard-removed rather than retained as public anonymous content: comment bodies and author linkage are cleared, and thread bodies, URLs, and author linkage are cleared while the required title remains in the non-visible terminal row. Derived indexes are cleaned. For a conversation that still has another participant, delivered direct-message bodies remain available to that participant but the deleted user's attribution is removed.

Completed erasure records remain in an internal terminal ledger, and there is no public account-deletion-history endpoint. That internal ledger alone does not make a backup restore safe: release requires a separately retained erasure record and a fail-closed restore/replay fence that reapplies completed erasures before restored data can be served. This is a PENDING_BACKUP_RESTORE_ERASURE_FENCE_VERIFICATION release gate.

7.2. Platform-Initiated

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that repeatedly violate System Rules or drop below minimum Global Standing thresholds. Where practicable, we will provide notice and an opportunity to appeal before permanent termination.

8. Disclaimers and Limitations

8.1. No Warranty

The platform is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

8.2. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, comentr and its operators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of data, revenue, or profit, arising out of or related to your use of the platform. Our total aggregate liability for any claim shall not exceed USD $100.

8.3. User Content

We do not endorse, verify, or assume responsibility for any content posted by users. You interact with other users and their content at your own risk.

9. Dispute Resolution

9.1. Informal Resolution

Before filing a formal dispute, you agree to use the verified contact route identified in the released Terms and attempt to resolve the matter informally for at least 30 days. That route is currently a CONTACT CHANNEL PENDING VERIFICATION release gate.

9.2. Binding Arbitration

Any dispute not resolved informally shall be resolved by binding arbitration under the rules of JAMS, conducted in California. You agree to arbitrate on an individual basis; class actions and class arbitrations are not permitted.

9.3. Exceptions

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive or equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction for matters involving intellectual property, data security, or unauthorized access.

10. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. A substantive change receives a new immutable policy-bundle version and effective date. Before an updated version governs, it must be connected to the service's versioned notice and assent flow. Server issue #3772 and comentr-web PR #810 have completed the fail-closed assent mechanism. comentr-web issue #615 remains pending for final rendered publication and assent enablement of the released bundle, so PENDING_POLICY_ASSENT_INTEGRATION remains a release gate.

11. General Provisions

11.1. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

11.2. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force.

11.3. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Content Policy, and any community-specific rules, constitute the entire agreement between you and comentr regarding your use of the platform.

11.4. No Waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that right or provision.

11.5. Assignment

You may not assign your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights and obligations without restriction.

12. Contact

The contracting entity is the value identified at the top of these Terms. The current PENDING_CONTRACTING_ENTITY_VERIFICATION value does not infer that entity from an older policy draft or a repository name.

For questions about these Terms, use the contact route that will appear in the released version. CONTACT CHANNEL PENDING VERIFICATION: no email address is represented by this draft as a verified inbound or reply-capable legal contact.