Terms of Service

1. Eligibility & Access

You must be at least 18 years of age to access or use Verdict. By using the platform, you represent and warrant that you meet this age requirement and possess the legal capacity to enter into these Terms.

Verdict provides public access as an online intermediary. We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or terminate features, feeds, or access at our sole discretion without prior liability.

2. The Cardinal Rule: Zero-Doxxing & Anti-PII

Do not identify anyone other than yourself. You are encouraged to write candidly about dilemmas, personal conflicts, work situations, and social drama that happened to you, but you must strictly omit or pseudonymise third-party details:

• No Real Names: Use fictional aliases (e.g. "Alex", "my manager", "Roommate B").
• No Contact Information: Do not include phone numbers, email addresses, residential addresses, or postal codes.
• No Social Handles: Do not post Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Telegram, WhatsApp numbers, or profile handles.
• No Direct Workplace Doxxing: Do not combine a specific corporate or university name with targeted personal accusations against identifiable colleagues or individuals.
• No Conversation Screenshots: Verdict is text-only. Do not paste unredacted transcripts intended to expose another party's private identity.

Our automated AI Privacy Shield scans submissions prior to publication and prompts you to pseudonymise identified entities. However, the AI Privacy Shield is an automated advisory tool; you retain sole legal responsibility for the content you transmit.

3. Prohibited Conduct & Unacceptable Content

You agree not to post, distribute, or promote content that:

• Contains Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) or any form of minor exploitation (subject to immediate zero-tolerance reporting to law enforcement).
• Shares or threatens to share non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) or sexually explicit material.
• Constitutes unlawful harassment, stalking, hate speech, defamation, or credible threats of physical violence or self-harm.
• Impersonates any real individual, public entity, or organisation in a misleading or malicious manner.
• Involves automated bot posting, vote manipulation, brigading, spamming, commercial solicitation, or malicious software scripts.
• Violates intellectual property rights, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), trade secrets, or contractual confidentiality obligations.

4. Community Verdicts Are Opinions, Not Facts

Verdict provides an interactive crowdsourced opinion mechanism (the 3-way poll verdict: "Nah, you're good", "You're wrong", and "Need more context").

5. Intellectual Property & License to Verdict

You retain ownership of the original text content you compose. However, by submitting content to Verdict, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable license to store, host, cache, display, reformat, distribute, and analyze your content across the platform as required for core product operations.

You warrant that you hold all necessary rights to publish the stories you share and that doing so does not infringe any third party's legal rights.

6. Reporting, Moderation & Intermediary Takedowns

Verdict operates as an intermediary under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and complies with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

• Automated Precautionary Hiding: When a piece of content accumulates multiple distinct community reports, it is automatically hidden from public discovery feeds pending moderator review.
• SLA Timelines: We acknowledge reported grievances within 36 hours and resolve formal complaints within 15 days.
• Emergency Takedowns: Inquiries relating to non-consensual intimate imagery or severe privacy violations are prioritized for expedited removal within 24 hours under Rule 3(2)(b).

7. Disclaimer of Warranties

Verdict is provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, completely secure, or that stories posted by third parties are truthful, accurate, or complete.

8. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permissible under applicable law, Verdict, its operators, affiliates, and developers shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including loss of reputation, emotional distress, or data loss, resulting from your access to or inability to access the platform, or any conduct or content of third parties.

9. Governing Law & Dispute Jurisdiction

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of India. Any dispute or controversy arising out of or in connection with these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts in India.

10. Modifications to Terms

We reserve the right to revise these Terms periodically to reflect product evolutions, safety enhancements, or statutory updates. The revised date will always be visible at the top of this document. Continued use of the platform after updates indicates your agreement to the modified Terms.