Privacy Policy

Effective October 14, 2026

1. Who we are, and the short version

This Privacy Policy explains how Poli-Sci, LLC ("Poli-Sci", "we", "us"), 529 14th Street NW, Suite 712, Washington, DC 20045, collects, uses, shares and protects information when you use the Poli-Sci mobile apps, the website at poli-sci.com and related services (the "Service"). It is part of our Terms of Service. Words defined in the Terms mean the same here.

The short version:

• Poli-Sci is a place for public video debate. Your videos, what you say in them, the analysis of what you say, your agree and disagree votes and your profile are public. Do not post anything you want to keep private.
• When you post, our software transcribes your video and analyzes the arguments in it. Those results are shown publicly with your post and feed into reputation scores on your profile.
• Because the Service is about current events, public policy and other timely and impactful concerns, much of what you post reveals your political opinions. We treat that information with care, and we explain in section 6 how we use it.
• Poli-Sci shows ads. Advertising partners help us choose and measure them, and you can opt out of the sale or sharing of your information for advertising (section 8).
• You can delete your account at any time in the app. Section 11 explains what deletion removes and what stays.
• You must be 18 or older to use Poli-Sci.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Account: your email address. You sign in with a one-time code sent to that address; we do not use passwords. Sign-up may be limited to email addresses at participating institutions or to invited users.
• Profile: your name, handle, display name, bio, profile photo, profile background image or video, and profile statement videos.
• Credentials: your organization, degree, focus and graduation year, chosen from lists. These are self-declared. If your email domain matches the organization, we mark the affiliation verified.
• Preferences: the topics and interests you choose.
• Your content: the videos you record or upload, including the audio and anything visible or audible in them, the topics you start and reply to, and the IP address and browser or app user agent from which you post.
• Your activity: agree and disagree votes on claims, the people you follow, the topics you watch, the users you block and the content you report.
• Agreements: your date of birth, when you accepted the Terms, and which version of the Terms you accepted.
• Messages to us: what you send to support, including reports, appeals and privacy requests.

Information collected automatically

• Viewing: each time a video plays, we record which video, the account that watched it (if signed in), the time, the IP address, the browser or app user agent and a device identifier.
• Sign-in events: the time, IP address and browser or app user agent of each successful sign-in.
• Device and app: device type, operating system, app version, language, and, if you allow notifications, a push notification token and your device's time zone, which we use to avoid sending notifications overnight.
• Usage analytics: the screens you view and similar app events, collected through Google Analytics for Firebase in the apps and Google Analytics on the website, which use cookies or similar identifiers, including your device's advertising identifier.
• Advertising: the ads you see and tap, your approximate location derived from your IP address, and device identifiers used to choose and measure ads.
• Crash and error reports: technical details when the app or our servers fail.

Device permissions. The app asks for camera and microphone access to record videos, and photo library access to choose an image or video. It asks for notification permission to send alerts. You can turn these off in your device settings; recording and uploading will not work without them.

Information from others. Other users may mention or reply to you, or show or describe you in their videos. Our sign-in provider tells us when you have verified your email.

3. What our systems infer from your posts

Analyzing arguments is the core of Poli-Sci. When you post a video:

1. A speech-recognition model transcribes it, and we use the transcript for captions.
2. A language model reads the transcript and identifies the claims you make, your stance on each claim, how strongly you hold it, whether you cite evidence, possible logical fallacies, which other speakers you respond to, and the topic's category.
3. We combine that analysis with votes and activity to compute reputation measures for each category, such as authority and influence, shown on your profile as percentiles.

The models run on servers we control. They are given the transcript and an anonymous label for each speaker, not your name or account details. No outside AI company receives your videos or transcripts.

These results are inferences: automated readings that can be wrong. They are personal information about you, and we treat them that way in this policy, including your right to see, correct and delete them (section 12). To dispute a label, report it in the app or write to support@poli-sci.com.

We also keep internal measures that are not shown publicly, such as how often fallacies are flagged in your posts, to run and improve the Service.

4. What is public

Debate on Poli-Sci is public by design. "Anyone" below includes people who are not signed in, people who open a shared link on the web, and search engines.

Video files are delivered through a content delivery network at web addresses that anyone holding the link can open, and copies may be cached. Once something is public, others can copy, record or share it outside the Service, and we cannot recall those copies, even after you delete it.

5. How we use information

We use the information above to:

• Run the Service: create and secure your account, store and deliver videos, transcribe and caption them, analyze posts, show votes and reputation, and build share pages.
• Personalize it: rank and select topics for your feed from your interests, follows, watched topics and viewing, and time notifications to your time zone.
• Show ads: select, show and measure ads, including ads personalized from your activity on Poli-Sci unless you opt out.
• Communicate with you: send sign-in codes, push notifications you allow (such as replies and activity on topics you watch), service notices and answers to your messages.
• Keep people safe: detect and prevent spam, abuse, fake engagement and fraud, review reports and appeals, enforce our Terms and Community Guidelines, and meet legal duties.
• Measure and improve: count views and engagement, understand how features are used, fix crashes, and build, train and improve our recommendation and analysis models.
• Create de-identified insights: produce de-identified and aggregated information about opinions and trends, as section 6 describes.
• Meet the law: respond to valid legal requests, and establish or defend legal claims.

Where a law requires a legal basis, we rely on our contract with you (to run the Service), our legitimate interests (safety, advertising, measurement and improvement), your consent (notifications, device permissions, tracking where the law or your device requires it, and anything we ask you to opt in to), and legal obligations.

6. Political opinions and other sensitive information

Some laws treat political opinions, along with information such as religion, health or sexual orientation, as sensitive. On Poli-Sci, your posts, votes and the analysis of your posts will often reveal your political opinions, and you may choose to talk about other sensitive subjects.

When you post, vote or fill in your profile, you choose to make that information public, and we process it to provide the features you are using. We use it only for the purposes in section 5. We do not:

• sell information that identifies you, or use your political opinions or other sensitive information to target advertising to you;
• give political campaigns, parties or advocacy groups information that identifies you;
• use it to decide anything about you outside Poli-Sci.

De-identified and aggregated information. We may create information that is de-identified or aggregated so that it no longer identifies you, such as estimates of how views on an issue are distributed across places, groups or time. We may use, share and sell that information, including to researchers, media organizations, businesses, political campaigns, parties and advocacy groups. We keep it in de-identified form, we do not try to re-identify anyone from it, and we require anyone who receives it not to try either.

If we want to use information that identifies you for a new purpose, we will ask for your consent first where the law requires it, and we will update this policy before we begin.

Do not put information about other people's health, sexual life, finances or other private matters into your posts without their permission. Our Community Guidelines prohibit sharing other people's private information.

7. Who we share information with

Service providers and partners. These companies process information for us under contracts that limit their use of it and require them to protect it.

Google's use of analytics data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Everyone. What section 4 lists as public is shared with anyone who uses or visits the Service.

Legal and safety. We may share information when we believe in good faith that the law, a court order or legal process requires it; to protect the safety, rights or property of any person, the public or Poli-Sci; to report child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children; or to enforce our Terms. Where the law allows, we will tell you before we disclose your information in response to a legal demand.

Business changes. If Poli-Sci is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization or sale of assets, information may transfer to the new owner, who must keep honoring this policy for information collected under it.

With your consent. We share information in other ways only if you ask us to or agree.

8. Analytics, advertising and your choices

Analytics. Google Analytics for Firebase (apps) and Google Analytics (website) tell us which screens and features are used. On the website you can block analytics cookies in your browser or with Google's opt-out add-on. You can ask us to delete analytics data linked to you by writing to privacy@poli-sci.com.

Advertising. Poli-Sci shows ads, including sponsored topics and video ads. Sponsored content is labeled. We work with advertising partners to select, show and measure ads. They may receive your device's advertising identifier, your IP address and approximate location, and information about the ads you see and tap. Ads may be personalized from your activity on Poli-Sci.

Sale and sharing under state law. Giving advertising partners this information may count as a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information, or as targeted advertising, under California and other state laws. You can opt out at any time under Privacy Choices in the app's settings, through the Privacy Choices link on our website, or by writing to privacy@poli-sci.com. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as an opt-out. We do not sell sensitive information, and we do not use your political opinions or other sensitive information to target ads.

On your device. On iPhone, we ask your permission before tracking you across other companies' apps and websites, and you can change your answer in iOS Settings. On Android, you can reset or delete your advertising identifier in your device settings.

9. Where information is processed, and how we protect it

Poli-Sci is based in the United States, and most information is stored there. To transcribe and analyze videos, we send each video's audio and its transcript to a server we operate in Germany. Results come back to the United States. If you use the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States and Germany, where privacy laws may differ from yours.

We protect information with measures that include encryption in transit, encrypted storage, access limited to staff and systems that need it, separate credentials for production systems, and monitoring for errors and abuse. Sign-in uses one-time codes, so there is no Poli-Sci password to steal. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

10. How long we keep information

We keep information for as long as we need it for the purposes in section 5, including training and improving our recommendation and analysis models, and as described below. When we no longer need information in a form that identifies you, we delete it or de-identify it.

We may keep information longer when the law requires it, to resolve a dispute, or to enforce our Terms, for example after removing an account for abuse.

11. Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in the app under Edit Profile, or on our website. Deletion takes effect right away and cannot be undone.

What deletion removes: your profile details and credentials, your date of birth, your profile photo, profile background and profile videos, your votes, your follows and followers, and your videos. Your posts are removed; where another user's reply depends on yours, a placeholder remains showing that the original was deleted, and claims you shared with other speakers may remain shown as from a deleted user. Your email is removed from our sign-in system.

What deletion does not remove:

• copies others made, shared or cached outside the Service (section 4);
• viewing records, sign-in events, analytics and advertising data, which we de-identify instead;
• reports and moderation records, until their period in section 10 ends;
• database backups, until they expire as section 10 describes;
• de-identified and aggregated information, which no longer identifies you;
• information we must keep for legal reasons.

Your handle stays reserved after deletion and is not given to anyone else, so no one can impersonate you with it.

You can also delete individual posts at any time. Deleting a post removes its video, transcript and analysis from the Service.

12. Your choices and rights

Choices everyone has. You can edit your profile, delete posts and votes, unfollow, block users, turn off notifications and device permissions, opt out of the sale or sharing of your information for advertising, and delete your account, all in the app.

Rights under state privacy laws. Depending on where you live, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and other states with comprehensive privacy laws, you may have the right to:

• know what personal information we have about you, including the inferences in section 3, and get a copy in a portable format;
• correct inaccurate information, including an analysis label you believe is wrong;
• delete your information;
• opt out of the sale or sharing of your information, targeted advertising, and profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects (section 8 explains how);
• limit the use of sensitive information to what is needed to provide the Service (we already do, as section 6 explains);
• not be treated differently for using any of these rights.

How to make a request. Write to privacy@poli-sci.com from the email address on your account. We verify requests by confirming control of that email address. You may use an authorized agent; we will ask for proof of their authority and may ask you to confirm your identity directly. We respond within 45 days, and will tell you if we need up to 45 more.

Appeals. If we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our decision within 60 days. We will answer within 60 days of receiving the appeal. If you disagree with the outcome, you can contact your state attorney general.

Outside the United States. Poli-Sci is intended for users in the United States. If you use it from elsewhere, you may also have rights under your local law, such as rights to object to processing and to complain to a data protection authority. Contact us to use them.

13. Age, changes and contact

Age. Poli-Sci is only for people 18 and older. We ask for your date of birth when you create an account to confirm you are old enough, and a device used by someone under 18 cannot be used to create an account. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close it and delete its information. If you believe a minor is using Poli-Sci, tell us at support@poli-sci.com.

Changes. We may update this policy. If we make a material change, such as a new use of your information or a new kind of recipient, we will tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, and we will ask for your consent where the law requires it. The date at the top shows when the policy last changed.

Contact.

Poli-Sci, LLC
529 14th Street NW, Suite 712
Washington, DC 20045

• Privacy requests and questions: privacy@poli-sci.com
• Support and reports: support@poli-sci.com