Terms of Service

Welcome to Culturily™. These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a legal agreement between you and Jake Geise, an individual based in California, United States, operating the Culturily app and website ("Culturily", "we", "us", or "our"). By downloading, accessing, or using Culturily, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use Culturily.

Who can use Culturily

You must be at least 16 years old to use Culturily. By using it, you confirm that you are 16 or older. If you are not, you may not use the service.

What Culturily is

Culturily asks you one question a day about where you come from and about your family, and keeps your answers. You can answer in writing, or out loud: if you use the microphone, your browser records your answer as an audio file and your browser's own speech recognition produces a written transcript alongside it. Typing is always available and works on every browser; recording is offered where your browser supports it, and an answer always saves even if the recording does not.

Your answers are collected in a private vault, organised by the day each one belongs to. You can invite specific people to listen to what you have recorded, and you can withdraw that access later. You can download your vault, including the audio files themselves.

Culturily also publishes editorial writing about the cultures you follow. Nothing you record or write is public. There are no public profiles, no social feed, no comments, and no way for a stranger to find your answers — the only people who can see or hear them are you and the listeners you personally invite and can personally remove.

Culturily is offered for personal and family use. It is not an archival, professional or genealogical records service, and you should not treat it as the only copy of anything that matters to you.

Your account

You can create an account with an email address and password, with Sign in with Google, or — in the iOS app — with Sign in with Apple. You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure. You agree to provide accurate information and not to impersonate anyone or misrepresent your age. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms (see "Suspension and termination" below).

You can also answer a question without an account. An answer made that way is tied to an identifier stored in that browser, not to you as a person, and it can only be reached from that device until you create an account and claim it. If you clear your browser storage or switch devices before claiming it, we have no way to find it for you or connect it back to you.

Your recordings and answers

What you record and write stays yours. You keep ownership of your recordings, transcripts and written answers. You give us only the permission we need to run the service: to store them, to play them back to you, and to play them to the listeners you have approved.

We do not publish your recordings, sell them, or share them with anyone you have not approved. We do not use them to train or generate content, and answers you write are barred by our own rule from ever entering the editorial content we publish. Your recordings are not sent to any transcription company — see the Privacy Policy, which also explains that whether your browser performs speech recognition on your device or on its maker's servers is your browser's decision and outside our control.

We currently keep recordings indefinitely. There is no expiry and no automatic deletion, and when you re-record an answer we keep the earlier recording as well. Deleting your account deletes your recordings, including the superseded ones. The Privacy Policy sets out in detail what deletion removes and what it leaves behind, including that a cancellation or withdrawal request keeps your name and email address after your account is gone. Please read it — it is the honest version, not a summary.

Recording other people, and inviting them

Culturily is a product about families, so what you record will often be about — or spoken by — someone other than you. That comes with responsibilities that are yours rather than ours, because we have no relationship with those people.

• Only record people who have agreed to be recorded. Laws about recording another person's voice differ by country and by US state, and some require the consent of everyone recorded. You are responsible for having whatever permission the law where you are requires.
• Only write and record what you have the standing to share. When you save someone else's birthday, tell a story about a living relative, or record their voice, Culturily does not ask that person's permission and does not notify them. There is no consent step in the product for them. Please act as though they will one day hear it.
• Invitations. When you invite someone to listen, we store the email address you enter from the moment you send it, and we email them. You are the reason we hold that address, so please only enter the address of someone who would expect to hear from you. If they would rather we did not keep it, they can reply to that email and we will delete it.
• Access you grant is yours to withdraw. You choose who listens, and you can revoke a listener at any time; it takes effect the next time they try to play anything. An invitation that is never accepted expires after 14 days.

If someone tells us they are in a recording on Culturily and wants it removed, contact us at support@culturily.com and we will look at it. We may remove content where we believe it was recorded or shared without the permission of the person in it.

AI-generated content

The editorial writing Culturily publishes — including the facts and background explanations in each day's edition — is drawn from published historical sources and prepared with the assistance of AI, then checked, but may contain errors. That editorial content is provided for general interest purposes only, and we do not warrant that it is accurate, complete, or current. This applies to what Culturily publishes, not to what you record: your own answers are yours and are not generated, edited or altered by us.

Historical accuracy

Culturily publishes facts drawn from named published historical sources. Each is checked for faithfulness to its source and carries a source citation. We do not warrant that any fact is objectively true, only that it faithfully represents the source we cite. Historical sources contain errors, and scholarly interpretation changes. Culturily is offered for general interest and is not a scholarly, professional, or reference resource; it should not be relied on for academic, legal, medical, financial, or any other decision-making purpose.

Corrections

If you believe a fact is inaccurate, report it through the in-app reporting tool. We review reports against the cited source. Where a fact misrepresents its source, we withdraw or correct it and annotate the archive entry. Where we conclude the cited source is itself mistaken, we withdraw the fact and record the reason. We are not obliged to withdraw a fact on request alone.

Subscriptions and payments

Culturily is free to use today. We plan to offer an optional paid membership for additional features in the future — no paid subscription is available for purchase yet, on the web or in any app. Once membership opens, the following will apply:

• Billing and merchant of record. A web membership is sold through Stripe, using Stripe's Managed Payments service. For that purchase, Stripe (not Jake Geise) is the merchant of record and seller — Stripe charges your payment method, issues your receipt, and handles any applicable sales tax or VAT on the sale. Your purchase contract for the sale itself is with Stripe. If an in-app purchase is ever offered in an iOS app, Apple is the merchant of record for that purchase instead. Stripe or Apple acting as merchant of record for the sale does not change who you're contracting with for the Culturily service itself, or who is responsible for the consumer-protection commitments in this section (see "14-day money-back guarantee" and "Right of withdrawal (EU/UK)" below) — that remains Jake Geise.
• Auto-renewal. Subscriptions automatically renew unless you cancel before the end of the current billing period. For an annual subscription, we'll send a renewal reminder by email approximately 7 days before it renews.
• Managing and canceling. You can cancel anytime from your account settings in the app, or through the withdrawal function described below — cancellation stops future renewals; you keep full access through the end of the period you already paid for, with no proration or partial credit for the unused remainder. For an in-app purchase, cancel through your Apple App Store account settings.
• 14-day money-back guarantee. Any charge — your first purchase or a renewal, monthly or annual — is fully refundable if you ask within 14 days of that charge, no questions asked, wherever in the world you are. Contact support@culturily.com, or use the withdrawal function linked in the footer of every page. This is a first-refund guarantee: if you repeatedly resubscribe and request a refund on the same membership, we may decline further refunds under this guarantee. After the 14-day window, charges are non-refundable by default, though we may still issue a refund at our sole discretion for a genuine case (for example, a billing error or a service outage).
• Founding rate. The discounted annual "founding" price is a grandfathered rate for as long as you stay continuously subscribed — it is not a one-time or lifetime purchase. If your membership lapses and you rejoin later, you rejoin at the then-current list price.
• Price changes. If we change subscription prices, we will notify you, and changes will not take effect until your next renewal period.
• Membership is not what keeps your vault. Ending a membership, or never buying one, does not delete your recordings or your answers. Only deleting your account does that.

[JAKE: needs legal review before live billing — this subsection and "Right of withdrawal (EU/UK)" below are drafted from a decided, web-researched policy, not reviewed by a lawyer.]

Right of withdrawal (EU/UK)

If you're a consumer in the European Union or United Kingdom, you have a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract — like a Culturily membership purchase — within 14 days, without giving a reason, for a full refund.

Culturily's 14-day money-back guarantee above meets or exceeds that statutory right for every member, everywhere — so there's nothing for you to waive, and we don't ask you to. We don't use an immediate-access consent checkbox at checkout; the guarantee already covers the same 14 days the law does, worldwide, not just for EU/UK consumers.

To exercise this right (or the guarantee — they run on the same 14 days and the same process), contact support@culturily.com, or use the withdrawal function linked in the footer of every page. Withdrawing cancels your membership; it does not delete your account, your recordings or your vault — see "Suspension and termination" below.

Note that a withdrawal or cancellation request itself creates a record holding the name, email address and message you enter, and that record is kept even after an account is deleted. This is described in the Privacy Policy.

The withdrawal function described in this section is also provided as required by EU law (Directive (EU) 2023/2673), independent of and in addition to Culturily's own guarantee.

[JAKE: needs legal review before live billing.]

Getting your data out

If you have an account, you can download your vault at any time: every answer and earlier revision, the transcripts, and the audio files themselves in the formats they were recorded in. That download covers the vault only — it does not include your profile, private notes, saved family dates, heritage answers, reactions or analytics, and there is no export for answers you made before creating an account. Email support@culturily.com for anything the download leaves out.

Content you submit to us

Separately from your vault, Culturily lets you submit fact reports and feedback to us. This content is sent privately to us — it is not published to other users. By submitting reports or feedback, you grant us permission to read, use, and act on that content to operate and improve Culturily (for example, to correct or remove a reported fact). You agree not to submit anything unlawful, abusive, or infringing.

Our content and intellectual property

The facts, editorial text, design, logos, and other materials Culturily publishes are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. "Culturily" is our trademark. We grant you a personal, limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to use Culturily for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may not copy, scrape, resell, redistribute, or create derivative works from Culturily's published content, or reverse-engineer the app, except where the law expressly allows it. None of this applies to your own recordings, transcripts and answers, which remain yours as set out above.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use Culturily for any unlawful purpose.
• Record a person who has not agreed to be recorded, or upload a recording you do not have the right to share.
• Invite someone to listen using an email address you have no legitimate reason to hold.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to our systems, other accounts, or data — including anyone else's recordings.
• Attempt to keep, redistribute or republish a recording another person invited you to listen to.
• Interfere with, disrupt, overload, or attack the service.
• Scrape, harvest, or bulk-extract content or data from Culturily.
• Circumvent, disable, or tamper with security, rate-limiting, or usage features (including manipulating streaks, progress, or any subscription entitlement).
• Use automated means to access the service except as permitted by us.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to Culturily if you violate these Terms, misuse the service, or where required by law. You may stop using Culturily at any time, and you can delete your account from within the app. Deleting your account removes your recordings and answers as described in the Privacy Policy, which also lists what deletion leaves behind — download anything you want to keep first, because deletion of your recordings is not reversible. Some provisions (such as intellectual property, disclaimers, and limitation of liability) survive termination.

Copyright / DMCA

If you believe content in Culturily infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@culturily.com including: a description of the work, the location of the material in Culturily, your contact information, and a statement of good-faith belief that the use is unauthorized. We will respond to valid notices as required by law.

Disclaimers

Culturily is provided "as is" and "as available." While we work hard to make our published facts accurate and well-sourced, we do not warrant that all content is error-free, complete, or current. Culturily is for general interest and personal use and is not professional, historical, legal, or academic advice.

We also do not warrant that speech recognition will transcribe your words correctly. Transcripts are produced by your browser, kept exactly as produced, and are frequently imperfect — the recording, not the transcript, is the record of what you said.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Jake Geise (operating Culturily) will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or data, arising from your use of Culturily. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us (if any) in the 12 months before the claim.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have under mandatory consumer-protection laws (including for EU/UK consumers).

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you in the app or by email. Your continued use after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Nothing in this section deprives EU/UK consumers of the protection of mandatory laws of their country of residence.

Contact

For any questions about these Terms, contact us at support@culturily.com. Jake Geise, California, United States.