Terms & Privacy

Last updated 2026-10-26.

Terms

Veritula is run by Dennis Hackethal (“we” or “us”). See Contact below for how to reach us.

If you do not agree with these terms and the privacy policy, you must not use Veritula and you must leave immediately.

You must be 18 or older to make an account.

The following passage from the MIT license applies (bold emphasis added), where “SOFTWARE” refers to this website, Veritula:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

We grant use of Veritula at our discretion and may discontinue the service at any time and without notice.

We are not responsible for the accuracy of quotes or any other information provided by users. We are not responsible for third-party content of any kind, including links to other sites and content hosted on other sites.

Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising out of or relating to Veritula is limited to the greater of USD 100 or what you paid Veritula in the 12 months before the claim arose.

If someone makes a claim against us over what you posted or how you used Veritula, you agree to cover our resulting losses and costs, including reasonable legal fees.

Your content

You keep the rights to what you post. By posting it, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license to host, store, reproduce, format, excerpt, display, and distribute it in any form and anywhere Veritula appears, including but not limited to the site itself and its emails, link previews, preview images, and MCP endpoint, and to let the services listed under Data sharing do so for us.

You warrant that you have the right to post what you post, and that posting it breaks no law and infringes no one’s rights.

Rules

Don’t use Veritula to:

We may remove anything that breaks these terms, and suspend or close the accounts of people who break them.

Copyright

If you believe something on Veritula infringes your copyright, email us a notice with:

If we remove something you posted because of such a notice and you believe that was a mistake, you can send us a counter-notice as described in 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3).

We close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe others’ copyrights.

Chronicles

Chronicles retell discussions that took place before Veritula. Ideas under historical profiles are our retellings of what those people said or wrote, drawn from the sources each event cites, not their own posts. They never posted on Veritula, and their profiles don’t mean they endorse it. If you’re one of them, or speak for one, and something misstates their views, email us and we’ll correct it.

Privacy

Information collected

What information Veritula processes depends on whether you submit any content and the information contained in those submissions. Submissions are public unless they’re in a private discussion, and you consent to Veritula publicly displaying public submissions in perpetuity.

It also depends on whether you make an account.

Note that typing content transmits information as you type. This is to generate a preview of the content for you before you submit it.

Certain types of information are processed automatically, even if all you do is browse Veritula. That information is sent by your browser and beyond Veritula’s control. It usually includes:

Any website processes this information when you visit it; Veritula is no exception.

If you make an account, we collect:

If you pay for something, Stripe handles your card details; we store only Stripe’s references to you and your payments. If you connect a Stripe account to receive bounty payouts, we store its ID.

Tracking technology

Veritula does not use fingerprinting. It does use cookies for user authentication, a strictly essential part of Veritula. On pages where you pay, Stripe sets cookies of its own to prevent fraud.

Veritula uses web analytics offered by Cloudflare, listed under Data sharing below.

Data sharing

Collected information is shared with the third parties below, which may process it in the United States and other countries, under the safeguards their privacy policies describe. We use:

  1. Digital Ocean as a server. Privacy policy
  2. Proton to receive and respond to user inquiries. Privacy policy
  3. Mailgun to send automated emails. Privacy policy
  4. Stripe to securely process payments. Privacy policy
  5. wsrv.nl to resize and deliver pictures in posts, link previews, and emails. Privacy policy
  6. GitHub to host Veritula’s code, including fixes for errors, which can quote an error message. Privacy policy
  7. Telegram to alert us to errors on Veritula. Only an error’s type, message, and place in the code are sent, but the message can include text you typed. Privacy policy
  8. Anthropic, whose AI, Claude, helps us keep Veritula secure, fix errors, answer support inquiries, and develop features. For these purposes, we may share information about you with it, including your IP address and what you’ve written. Privacy policy
  9. Cloudflare to keep Veritula secure, for example against attacks and abuse, and for web analytics. For these purposes, we may share information about you with it, including your IP address. Privacy policy

  10. hCaptcha to guard against bots. Privacy policy and terms of service

    We use the hCaptcha security service (hereinafter "hCaptcha") on our website. This service is provided by Intuition Machines, Inc., a Delaware US Corporation ("IMI"). hCaptcha is used to check whether user actions on our online service (such as submitting a login or contact form) meet our security requirements. To do this, hCaptcha analyzes the behavior of the website or mobile app visitor based on various characteristics. This analysis starts automatically as soon as the website or mobile app visitor enters a part of the website or app with hCaptcha enabled. For the analysis, hCaptcha evaluates various information (e.g. IP address, how long the visitor has been on the website or app, or mouse movements made by the user). The data collected during the analysis will be forwarded to IMI. hCaptcha analysis in the "invisible mode" may take place completely in the background. Website or app visitors are not advised that such an analysis is taking place if the user is not shown a challenge. Data processing is based on Art. 6(1)(b) of the GDPR: the processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the website visitor is party (for example, the website terms) or in order to take steps at the request of the website visitor prior to entering into a contract. Our online service (including our website, mobile apps, and any other apps or other forms of access offered by us) needs to ensure that it is interacting with a human, not a bot, and that activities performed by the user are not related to fraud or abuse. In addition, processing may also be based on Art. 6(1)(f) of the GDPR: our online service has a legitimate interest in protecting the service from abusive automated crawling, spam, and other forms of abuse that can harm our service or other users of our service. IMI acts as a "data processor" acting on behalf of its customers as defined under the GDPR, and a "service provider" for the purposes of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). For more information about hCaptcha’s privacy policy and terms of use, please visit the following links: https://www.hcaptcha.com/privacy and https://www.hcaptcha.com/terms.

In the past, we have used:

  1. Heroku as a server, owned by Salesforce. Privacy policy
  2. plausible.io for web analytics. Privacy policy and data policy
  3. Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) for fonts. Privacy policy
  4. UI Avatars for avatars showing people’s initials. Privacy policy

Note that these third parties may use cookies or cookie-like technology. They may collect and process additional information about you and make it available to Veritula.

We don’t sell personal information or share it for advertising.

We do not knowingly collect information from minors, nor do we target minors, ie people under the age of 18.

Private discussions

You can make your discussions private if you don’t want the public to be able to view them or their ideas. Assume that contents of private discussions may accidentally get leaked. In addition, we cannot guarantee that other users adhere to your privacy expectations. Private discussions are not encrypted; Veritula admins can see and read them.

By enabling a private discussion, you agree to pay the stated fee. Payments are processed via Stripe. Once a payment is successful, your discussion’s privacy is activated.

Payments for private discussions are generally non-refundable. In the event of a technical error preventing activation, we will either issue a refund or credit toward another private discussion at our discretion.

Privacy for a discussion is purchased once. After payment, you may toggle privacy on or off for that discussion at no additional charge.

We reserve the right to modify the price or availability of private discussions at any time. Paid private discussions will remain accessible according to these terms.

We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from the use or inability to use private discussions, including loss of content or inability to access paid features.

You acknowledge that while a private discussion is restricted to invited participants, we cannot guarantee confidentiality. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any disclosure, publication, or distribution of any discussion’s content by users or third parties, including anyone who gains unauthorized access to Veritula.

Connected apps

You can connect apps, like AI assistants, to your account through Veritula’s MCP endpoint. When you connect one, you see what it asks to do and allow it or not: post ideas and replies as you, marked as written with AI, and read your notifications and mark them as read. It can’t see your private discussions or do anything else with your account.

For each connected app, we store its name, the addresses it asked to send you back to, and digests of the tokens it uses. Tokens expire within an hour unless the app refreshes them. You can disconnect an app in your settings anytime, which stops its tokens from working at once, and we email you whenever an app is connected or disconnected. Expired and revoked tokens are deleted daily.

What an app does with what it reads, such as your notifications, is up to the app and its provider, whose privacy policies apply.

Anyone can also search and read public ideas through the MCP endpoint without an account. We count how often each of its tools is used per day, without recording who used them or what they asked.

Bounties and Paid Contributions

Nature of bounties

Bounties are a paid, voluntary mechanism for inviting user-generated criticisms. Participation in a bounty does not create any employment, contractor, partnership, or agency relationship between you and Veritula, or between you and a bounty owner or any funders of a bounty.

There is no guarantee that any participation in a bounty will result in payment.

You are solely responsible for any taxes, reporting obligations, or other legal duties arising from payments you receive.

Eligibility and review

Only submissions that meet all bounty-specific terms and Veritula’s site-wide terms are eligible for payout. If bounty-specific terms and the site-wide terms conflict, the site-wide terms override the bounty-specific terms.

The bounty owner reviews submissions. Submissions not explicitly rejected are automatically accepted.

Veritula is not obligated to judge the quality of submissions and is not responsible for review decisions made by bounty owners.

Stripe integration and payout requirements

To be eligible for any payout, all of the following conditions must be met:

You are responsible for ensuring your Stripe account is correctly configured, including geographic eligibility.

If you fail to set up Stripe properly in time for a payout, you forfeit the payout, and funders aren’t charged for it.

Stripe supports cross-border transfers only between certain regions. Ensuring eligibility is your responsibility, not Veritula’s.

Revisions of existing criticisms are eligible under these same terms. However, bounty owners may, at their discretion, reject revisions that are not different enough from other versions of the same idea.

Bounty amount and platform fee

Veritula charges a platform fee equal to 5% of the stated bounty amount.

The platform fee is added to the stated bounty amount. The bounty owner authorizes Veritula to charge their payment method a total amount equal to 105% of the bounty amount.

The stated bounty amount represents the gross amount available for distribution to eligible participants, before proration, rounding, minimum payout thresholds, or other conditions described in these terms.

Funding a bounty

Third parties may add funding to an existing bounty, thus increasing the total bounty amount. The same fee structure applies: funders authorize Veritula to charge their payment method a total amount equal to 105% of their added funding. Funders agree that whether their card is charged is up to the bounty owner: if the owner accepts any submissions by the end of the review period, the funders’ cards are charged.

When you fund a bounty, you agree that Veritula may charge your card and initiate payment, or a series of payments, on your behalf.

For temporary bounties, cards may be charged as many times as eligible participants participate in the bounty. Each charge is a result of proration, and the total amount is capped as indicated by the funder. For example, if a funder indicates they are willing to add USD 100 to a temporary bounty, and the bounty receives three submissions eligible for a payout, submitted by two different people, the funder’s card will be charged twice: once for USD 66.66, and once for USD 33.33.

For standing bounties, cards may be charged for as many submissions as the funder indicates during funding. For example, if a funder indicates they are willing to pay for three submissions for USD 100 each, their card may be charged at most three times, for USD 100 each time.

Funders aren’t charged for submissions whose authors can’t be paid, for example because they haven’t set up Stripe.

Bounty owners are also considered funders.

The bounty owner will expect third-party funders to enforce the bounty terms. If a funder undermines them, for example by telling participants they’d accept a submission that breaks them, Veritula may charge the funder’s card for the full amount they pledged, plus the platform fee, and pay that amount out to the bounty’s eligible participants. Veritula decides based on what the funder said or did, and tells the funder before charging their card.

Proration, rounding, and minimum payouts

Funds for temporary bounties are prorated among eligible participants. Funds for standing bounties are assigned on a per-submission basis.

Payout calculations use integer arithmetic. As a result:

No refunds and reversals

All bounty payments are final.

We reserve the right to withhold, reverse, or recover payouts in cases including, but not limited to:

Beta feature disclaimer

The bounty feature is experimental and provided on a best-effort basis.

You acknowledge that bugs, errors, delays, miscalculations, unexpected charges, payment failures, or other issues may occur, including situations where you receive no payout despite apparent eligibility.

By participating in a bounty, you accept these risks.

Data retention

Server logs are ephemeral (usually lasting only a few days max) and not stored in perpetuity. Information in and associated with discussions is stored in perpetuity to display on the site. If you send us an email, we keep it as long as we need it, for example to answer follow-ups, keep records of requests such as arbitration opt-outs, or defend legal claims. Error-tracking information may be stored in perpetuity for quality assurance. All other information is potentially stored in perpetuity – check the respective third-party privacy policies above for data-retention limits.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see the information we have about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, to get a copy of it, to object to how we use it, and to withdraw consent you gave. Email us to do any of these, and we’ll answer within a month. Veritula doesn’t let you delete your account yourself. To have it deleted, email us, and we’ll handle your request as the law requires.

Deleting your account doesn’t necessarily delete what you posted: where others have replied to it, we may keep it, as the law allows, so their discussions still make sense.

If you’re in the EU or UK and believe we’ve mishandled your information, you can complain to your data protection authority.

Legal basis (EU, UK)

We process information based on your consent and/or to protect and enact our legitimate interests, including offering Veritula to the public, preventing fraud, ensuring the security of Veritula more generally, improving Veritula by eg diagnosing problems, and responding to user inquiries. We also process information to provide what you sign up or pay for, such as your account, private discussions, and bounties.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us, but note that this has no effect on information already processed. The best way to stop producing processable information is to stop visiting this website.

Security

No technology is ever 100% secure, but we take reasonable measures to keep your information safe. Just don’t divulge anything in your submissions that you might later regret. That said, visit and use Veritula at your own risk.

Dispute resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois and, for arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to Veritula, including bounties and payouts, shall be resolved through binding individual arbitration, not in court, except where prohibited by law. The American Arbitration Association administers the arbitration under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, including its Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules where they apply. Hearings take place by video, or in the county where you live.

Either of us may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court, in Cook County, Illinois, or in the county where you live.

You waive any right to participate in class actions or representative proceedings.

You can opt out of arbitration by emailing us within 30 days of making your account, or, if you made it before we offered this opt-out, within 30 days of our email telling you about it. Disputes that aren’t arbitrated go to the state or federal courts in Cook County, Illinois.

Severability

If any provision of these terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

Any invalid, illegal, or unenforceable provision shall be deemed modified and replaced by a valid and enforceable provision that most closely reflects the original intent of Veritula.

Updates

We may revise these terms and privacy notice. We’ll email account holders about material changes when we make them, and the date of the last update is posted at the top. If you keep using Veritula after a change takes effect, you accept it. Changes to Dispute resolution don’t apply to disputes we already knew about when we made them.

Contact

Dennis Hackethal, 9169 W State St #1274, Garden City, ID 83714, USA

You can contact us at veritula@dennishackethal.com