Privacy Policy

Account Information: When you create an account, we collect your email address via magic link authentication or Google OAuth. We do not collect or store passwords for magic link users.

Profile Information: You may optionally provide a display name, bio, avatar photo, timezone, and location (latitude/longitude). Location is used to personalize your feed with nearby content and to determine sunrise/sunset times for automatic light/dark theme switching.

Content You Create: Articles, reviews, comments, and photos you submit to community newsrooms or the community photo gallery.

Preferences and Activity: Topics, locations, organizations, and authors you follow. Theme preference (light/dark/auto). TTS voice preferences for article audio. Saved locations for location-aware feed ranking.

Payment Information: Subscription and tip payments are processed by Stripe. We do not store credit card numbers or bank account details. We retain your Stripe customer ID, subscription tier, and transaction history.

Usage Data: We collect anonymized analytics including page views and article view counts (using SHA-256 hashed IP addresses for deduplication). Audio playback data (play events, listening duration, playback speed) is collected for analytics. External link clicks are tracked via redirect for click analytics. We do not store raw IP addresses.

Photos: Photos you upload to the community gallery or article comments are stored in our cloud storage. Uploaded photos are analyzed by AI for content moderation, title/description generation, and semantic matching. Photo metadata (EXIF data) is not retained after processing.

Community News uses AI to assist with content creation, moderation, and accessibility. Government meeting transcripts are processed through our pipeline to extract key statements and draft articles. Uploaded photos are analyzed for content moderation and tagging. Published articles can be converted to audio using text-to-speech. All AI-drafted content is clearly labeled and must pass community peer review before publication.

We do not use your personal data to train AI models. Content processing uses third-party AI services (see Section 4) solely to operate platform features for your community newsroom.

We implement industry-standard security measures including encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS), row-level security policies on all database tables, rate limiting on API endpoints, Content Security Policy headers, and private storage buckets with signed URLs for media access.

Article view tracking uses SHA-256 hashed IP addresses for deduplication. We do not store raw IP addresses. Audio files are stored in private buckets and accessed via time-limited signed URLs.

Essential cookies: Authentication session cookies required for login to function. A short-lived cookie to prevent hero article reshuffling during browsing sessions.

Local storage: Your theme preference (light/dark/auto) is stored in browser local storage for instant page rendering without flash.

We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies.

Account data: Retained until you delete your account.

Published articles: Retained as part of the community record, even if your account is deleted. Author attribution may be anonymized upon request.

Photos: Retained until you delete them or your account. Photos used as article cover images may be retained with the article.

Audio playback data: Aggregated periodically. Individual heartbeat records are compacted weekly into summary statistics.

Credit transactions: Retained as a permanent ledger for accountability and dispute resolution.

Usage logs: Retained for up to 90 days, then deleted.

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Export your articles, photos, and profile data
• Delete your account and associated personal data
• Correct inaccurate information
• Unfollow topics, locations, organizations, and authors at any time
• Remove your location data from your profile at any time
• Opt out of non-essential communications

California Residents (CCPA): You have the right to know what personal information we collect, request deletion, and opt out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell your personal information.

EU Residents (GDPR): You have additional rights including data portability, restriction of processing, and the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.