OuterTalk

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 15, 2026

OuterTalk LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company ("OuterTalk," "we," "us," or "our"), is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, store, and protect your personal information when you use the OuterTalk platform, including our website (outertalk.com), our mobile apps, and all related features and services (collectively, the "Platform"). By using the Platform, you consent to the practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform.

This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Terms of Use.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Information You Provide

• Account Registration: When you create an account, we collect your email address, username, and authentication credentials. Only a username and a first name are required. You may also provide optional profile information including your last name, bio, profile picture, date of birth, city, state, country, and zip code. Providing this information is entirely optional — you can use OuterTalk without it, and you can clear it at any time from your profile. Date of birth is required only if you choose to take part in the Smart Forum or Chip In, which are 18+ features — it is optional everywhere else. To vote, react to a plan, or pledge in Chip In, you also need a home town on your profile that has stayed the same for 14 days, so we can tell that you live in the county or state.
• Demographic Information: You may voluntarily provide demographic details such as age range, gender, political affiliation, profession, upbringing background, and use case (personal or business). Every one of these is optional, can be left blank, and can be cleared at any time by tapping your selected answer again. They are used only for anonymized aggregate breakdowns — on polls, and on governance grades as described in Section 1.4. We never display an individual’s answers alongside their demographic details, and other users cannot see which demographic group any particular response came from.
• User Content: Content you create and share on the Platform, including Talks (text and media posts), Polls, poll votes, comments, Community Notes, endorsements, ratings, media uploads (images and videos), the interests you pick when you join, and your answers to Yon’s questions on the Ark, together with the map view each question was asked over. Other users never see who gave an answer to Yon; they see only totals, and only once enough people have answered. For a photo you attach to a post (other than a field photo taken on the Ark, described in Section 1.2), we read from the photo the month it was taken and show it with the post; we keep the month only, never the day or the time.
• Smart Forum Activity: The Smart Poll options you back with Virtual Currency (Credits), your backing history, poll selections, and settlement results within the Smart Forum — including any verdict you back on a place's quarterly governance scorecard. In Chip In, we keep the plans you file, the places you point out, your reactions to plans, your vote, and the Credits you pledge or take back. Other users see plans and totals, never who voted, reacted or pledged; who filed a plan, pointed out a place or called a vote is stored with it and can be read by other signed-in users.
• Gold Tier Applications: If you apply for Gold Tier verification, we collect business name, entity type, registration number, website or social media URL, and a business description. For child (employee) accounts, we collect your role and association details.
• Communications: When you contact us at support@outertalk.com, we collect the content of your messages and any attachments. When you send feedback from inside the app, we collect what you write, the screen you sent it from, your app version, and any screenshot you attach, after removing the hidden details stored inside the image file. Feedback sent from the app is deleted with your account. When you report content, we keep your report and the reason you give. If we make a decision about your account, we keep a record of it (the rule, the item it was about, and any note we wrote to you), and of any appeal you send and our answer.

1.2 Information Collected Automatically

• Usage Data: We collect information about how you interact with the Platform, including pages visited, features used, polls viewed or participated in, content interactions (likes, reposts, saves, shares), and navigation patterns.
• Device Information: Device type, operating system, browser type, screen resolution, app version, and unique device identifiers.
• Log Data: IP address, access times, referring URLs, and error logs.
• Location Data: If you use location-based features (such as the Ark globe, governance tagging, or location tagging on posts), we may collect geographic data you provide or that is derived from your content. We do not collect precise GPS location without your explicit action. When you post from where you are, we store that exact point on our servers in a sealed record that is never shown to other users; what they see is a pin placed inside the area the post belongs to, or no pin at all if you choose not to show the post on the Ark. Some choices show an exact point instead. If you turn off “Scramble location,” the post is pinned at your exact coordinates for everyone to see, and the app tells you so before you post. If you tag a place by searching for it, the post is pinned at that place. A field photo taken on the Ark is pinned where it was taken, and its coordinates, their accuracy, and the date and time are printed on the photo itself, so they show even if you choose not to show the post on the Ark. For a field photo we also keep the full-resolution original and what your phone recorded when it was taken (the camera's photo details, and the location fix's accuracy, altitude, heading, and time), and other users can see these too. You can remove a sealed point at any time by editing the post's place or by deleting the post. The coordinates printed on a field photo are part of the picture and cannot be removed from it.
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: We use cookies, local storage, and similar technologies for session management, analytics, feature preferences, and to remember your settings. You can manage cookie preferences through your browser settings.

1.3 Information from Third Parties

• Sign in with Apple: If you sign in with Apple, we receive your email address and, if you choose to share it, your name, as permitted by your settings with Apple. If you choose Hide My Email, Apple gives us a private relay address instead of your real one, and we never see your actual email address. Signing in with an emailed one-time code gives us only the email address you typed.

1.4 Governance Grades

OuterTalk lets you grade a place — a town, county, state, country, national park, tribal nation or watershed — on a set of governance questions. Anyone can grade anywhere, whether or not they live there, and we keep every grade as data rather than discarding the ones cast by visitors.

For that to mean anything, a grade has to record something about the person who cast it. When you grade a place, or back a verdict on its quarterly scorecard, we store alongside the grade or the backing:

• the public place identifier (a U.S. Census GEOID) of the area you have told us you live in, so grades can be grouped as local, nearby, or from further away — this is a place identifier at the same level of detail as a town name, never a coordinate or an address;
• how long that stated location had been unchanged, so a grade cast by a long-term resident can be told apart from one cast the day after a move;
• a copy of whichever optional demographic details from Section 1.1 you had chosen to provide at that moment.

These are recorded as they were at the time you graded or backed, and are not updated afterwards, so that later changes to your profile do not silently rewrite past records. They are used to break grades down by group — for example, how residents rate a town compared with visitors — and never to attach your identity to an opinion. Your individual grade and the details stored with it are readable only by you.

We also keep a record of when a grade is cast, changed, or withdrawn, and of each verdict you back, so that shifts in opinion over time remain visible. See Section 4.4 for what happens to that record if you delete your account.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use your information for the following purposes:

• Provide and Operate the Platform: To create and manage your account, deliver features, facilitate the Smart Forum, and enable social interactions.
• Personalization: To customize your feed, recommend content, rank categories based on your engagement, and tailor the Platform experience to your preferences.
• AI Features: To power Yon AI’s Smart Polls, content summaries, and analytical insights, and the AI writing tools described in Section 9.
• Verification: To process Gold Tier applications and verify business accounts.
• Communication: To send you notifications about your account, activity on your posts, poll results, and settlements, and important notices about the Platform, such as changes to this policy. We do not send marketing notifications or marketing emails.
• Safety and Security: To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, manipulation, and violations of our Terms of Use, and to protect the security of the Platform and its users.
• Analytics and Improvement: To analyze usage patterns, measure feature performance, diagnose technical issues, and improve the Platform.
• Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, or enforceable governmental requests.

3. How We Share Your Information

3.1 We Do Not Sell Your Personal Information

OuterTalk does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for advertising or marketing purposes.

3.2 Public Information

Certain information is publicly visible by design:

• Your username, the first and last name you give, your profile picture and bio, and, if you have a Gold business account or are an Investigator, that status and the organization or beat it covers
• Talks, Polls, and comments you post
• Community Notes and endorsements on Smart Polls, and which note leads for, or has earned, a poll’s top-note share
• Your poll votes and the Smart Poll options you back (within the Platform)
• Location information you attach to posts

Please consider this before posting content or providing information on the Platform.

3.3 Service Providers

We share information with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in operating the Platform, including:

• Supabase: Cloud database, file storage, and authentication infrastructure
• Apple: Sign in with Apple, when you choose it
• Google Firebase: App analytics, crash reporting, and delivery of push notifications. Firebase receives a random app-installation identifier, your account identifier and account tier, the screens and features you use, crash and performance logs, and the device token needed to deliver notifications to your phone. It never receives your email address or your demographic details. The only content that passes through it is the text of each notification it delivers — for example, who commented on your post, and that post’s title. We do not use it for advertising or for tracking you across other apps or websites.
• OpenAI: Powers Yon AI and the AI writing tools. It receives the text described in Section 9, never your account identifier, email address, or demographic details.
• Mapbox: Draws the maps and looks up places. It receives the search text, the map area, or, when you post from where you are or use your current location, that point. Its map software also sends Mapbox anonymous usage statistics, such as when a map loads.
• Google Maps Platform: Looks up places and addresses you search for and, when you ask, the place at your current location. It receives the search text or that point.
• Public data services: To work out which town or district a ZIP code or location falls in, the app asks public services such as the U.S. Census Bureau and Zippopotam.us, sending only the ZIP code or point. Map layers on the Ark come from public map hosts such as ArcGIS, which receive only the map area. Our servers also look up public information about the area you are viewing (from sources such as Wikipedia, the National Weather Service, USGS, NASA, GDELT, Polymarket, Kalshi, Open States and USAspending.gov) and send them only the area or place names.
• jsDelivr: Delivers the code that shrinks photos on your device before they are uploaded.

Services your device contacts directly also see its IP address, as any website does. Supabase, Google Firebase and OpenAI process information on our behalf and may use it only to provide their services to us. The mapping and public-data services handle what they receive under their own privacy policies.

3.4 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law, or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to: (a) comply with a legal obligation, court order, or governmental request; (b) protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of OuterTalk, our users, or the public; (c) detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues; or (d) enforce our Terms of Use.

3.5 Business Transfers

In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

4. Data Storage and Security

4.1 Storage

Your data is stored using Supabase cloud infrastructure with encryption at rest and in transit. Row-Level Security (RLS) policies restrict data access at the database level to ensure users can only access data they are authorized to view.

4.2 Security Measures

We implement industry-standard security measures including:

• Encryption of data in transit (TLS/SSL) and at rest
• Row-Level Security (RLS) database policies
• Secure authentication via OAuth 2.0 and one-time passcode verification
• Regular security reviews and monitoring

While we strive to protect your information, no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

4.3 Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with the Platform's services. We may retain certain information after account deletion for legitimate business purposes, including compliance with legal obligations, resolving disputes, enforcing our agreements, and maintaining security. Temporary data collected during Gold Tier verification may be deleted after approval or rejection of the application. When we remove content for breaking our Terms of Use, it disappears from the Platform at once, but we keep a sealed copy, visible only to our moderators and its author, for 30 days so it can be restored if an appeal is granted; then it is deleted, even if its author has deleted their account in the meantime. Material removed as sexual content involving a minor is not deleted on that schedule; it is preserved as US law requires, together with the account details needed to report it (the username, name, email address and phone number on the account), for at least one year and for as long as the material is preserved, even if the account is deleted. When you delete your account, some records stay with other services for a time: analytics and crash records held by Google Firebase are deleted on Google’s own retention schedule, and text sent to OpenAI may be held for up to 30 days to detect abuse.

4.4 Anonymized Governance Grade Records

We keep a permanent, anonymized record of governance grades and scorecard backings — what was graded or backed, the score, or the side and the Credits on it, when it changed, and the place and demographic details described in Section 1.4. We do this because the value of these records is historical: how a community’s view of a place changed over time is not something that can be reconstructed later if it is thrown away.

These records do not contain your account identifier. Each person is represented by a random key that means nothing on its own, and the only link between that key and an account is held in a single separate table. When you delete your account, that link is destroyed. After that the records still show that one person held these views, but there is no longer any way — for you, for us, or for anyone compelling us — to determine who that person was. This is deliberate and it is not reversible.

5. Your Rights and Choices

5.1 Account Information

You can access, update, or correct your profile information at any time through the Platform's profile settings.

5.2 Data Deletion

You can permanently delete your account at any time from inside the app: open your profile, tap the settings (gear) icon, and choose Delete Account. Deletion takes effect immediately and removes your account and associated personal data. If you prefer, you may also request deletion by contacting us at support@outertalk.com. Please note that some information may be retained as described in Section 4.3, and content you posted publicly may remain visible even after account deletion if it has been reposted or cached by other users or systems. Chip In plans you filed and places you pointed out stay on the Platform without your name, because a county’s project depends on them.

Specifically, for governance grades: your current grades are deleted along with your account and stop counting towards any place’s score. The anonymized historical record described in Section 4.4 is kept, permanently severed from your identity at the moment of deletion.

5.3 Communication Preferences

Push notifications can be turned on or off at any time in your device’s settings (on iPhone: Settings → OuterTalk → Notifications). The Notifications tab inside the app always lists activity on your posts and account. We do not send marketing notifications or marketing emails.

5.4 Cookie Preferences

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of the Platform.

5.5 Data Portability

You may request a copy of your personal data in a commonly used, machine-readable format by contacting us at support@outertalk.com.

6. Rights for Specific Jurisdictions

6.1 European Economic Area (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have the right to:

• Access your personal data and receive a copy
• Rectify inaccurate personal data
• Request erasure of your personal data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restrict or object to processing of your personal data
• Data portability
• Withdraw consent at any time (where processing is based on consent)
• Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

Our legal bases for processing include: performance of a contract (providing the Platform), legitimate interests (improving the Platform, ensuring security), consent (where applicable), and compliance with legal obligations.

6.2 California (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Opt out of the sale of your personal information (we do not sell personal information)
• Non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights
• Correct inaccurate personal information
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@outertalk.com. We will verify your identity before processing your request.

6.3 Other Jurisdictions

If you are located in a jurisdiction with specific data protection laws (such as Brazil's LGPD, Canada's PIPEDA, or Australia's Privacy Act), you may have additional rights regarding your personal information. Please contact us to exercise any applicable rights.

7. Children's Privacy

The Platform is intended for adults. Everyone must confirm they are 18 or older before they can use OuterTalk, and the App Store lists the app as 18+. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us at support@outertalk.com and we will take steps to delete it promptly.

8. Virtual Currency and Smart Forum Data

When you participate in the Smart Forum or Chip In, we collect and store your Virtual Currency balance, each time you add free Credits, your backing and pledge history, settlement results, and related activity. This data is used to operate the Smart Forum, tally and settle Smart Polls and scorecard verdicts, detect manipulation, and improve the feature. Virtual Currency has no real-world monetary value. Your Smart Forum activity may be visible to other users within the Platform.

9. AI-Generated Content

Yon AI writes Smart Polls and content summaries from public information: posts and polls on the Platform, and outside sources such as news. Apart from the county name described below, we do not use your private personal information (such as email or demographic details) to generate AI content. When you use an AI tool (fix grammar, suggest categories, clarify or polish a poll you are writing, sort something you point out on the Local tab, or ask Yon a question), the text you entered is sent to our AI provider, OpenAI, to produce the result. Sorting on the Local tab also sends the name of the county the tab is showing, so the item lands in the right place. Smart Poll questions are also sent to OpenAI to write their summaries. No account identifier, email address, or demographic detail is sent. OpenAI does not use this text to train its models and does not store it for later use; it may keep it for up to 30 days to detect abuse, then deletes it. AI-generated content is clearly labeled on the Platform.

10. Blockchain and On-Chain Data

OuterTalk may introduce blockchain-based features in the future. If you interact with blockchain features, certain information (such as wallet addresses and transaction data) may be recorded on a public blockchain and cannot be modified or deleted due to the immutable nature of blockchain technology. We will provide additional disclosures before activating any blockchain features that involve personal data.

11. Third-Party Links and Services

The Platform may contain links to third-party websites, services, or content. This Privacy Policy does not apply to third-party services, and we are not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party services you access through the Platform.

12. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in countries other than your country of residence, including the United States. These countries may have data protection laws that differ from your jurisdiction. By using the Platform, you consent to the transfer of your information to these countries. We take steps to ensure that your data receives adequate protection in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law.

13. Do Not Track

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting. There is currently no industry standard for how companies should respond to DNT signals. At this time, OuterTalk does not respond to DNT signals. We will update this policy if a standard is adopted.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or other factors. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy on the Platform with a revised "Last Updated" date. For significant changes, we may also notify you through the app or via email. Your continued use of the Platform after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.

15. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

OuterTalk LLC (a New Jersey limited liability company)
Email: support@outertalk.com
Website: outertalk.com

Thank you for using OuterTalk. Your trust and privacy are important to us.