terms of service

what folk.zone is

folk.zone is an independent, community-operated collection of free and open-source internet services hosted by a single person. It is not a company. It is not venture-backed. It runs on consumer hardware in a home. The services are offered freely and without warranty as a contribution to the IndieWeb commons.

The operator reserves the right to suspend, limit, or shut down any service at any time. Advance notice will be provided whenever possible.

eligibility

You must be at least 13 years of age to register on any folk.zone service. If you are under 18, you should have a parent or guardian's consent. Certain services, particularly those with public social features, require you to be at least 16 years of age in the European Economic Area, in accordance with GDPR Article 8.

account responsibility

You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account. Keep your credentials secure. The operator cannot recover accounts on your behalf if you lose access to your email address.

Registering multiple accounts to evade a suspension or ban is prohibited and will result in permanent removal.

acceptable use

You may use folk.zone services for personal, creative, educational, and community-building purposes. You agree not to use folk.zone services to:

• Post, share, or host content that is illegal under Canadian law, international law, or the laws of your jurisdiction
• Harass, threaten, stalk, or intimidate any person
• Spam, phish, or conduct social engineering attacks against other users
• Distribute malware, exploit code, or any software intended to cause harm
• Scrape or crawl folk.zone services in ways that degrade performance for other users
• Misrepresent your identity, particularly in ways designed to deceive other users
• Impersonate the operator, moderators, or other users
• Post sexual content involving minors (CSAM). This results in immediate account termination and will be reported to authorities
• Use folk.zone services to launder, facilitate, or promote activity prohibited by Canadian criminal law

content ownership

You retain full ownership of content you create and post on folk.zone services. By posting content, you grant folk.zone a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to display, distribute, and transmit that content within the folk.zone services solely as necessary to provide those services. This licence terminates when you delete the content or close your account.

The operator will not sell your content to third parties.

privacy

folk.zone collects only the data necessary to operate each service. This typically includes:

• Email address, for account creation and notifications
• Username and display name
• Content you post
• IP addresses in server logs, retained for no more than 30 days

folk.zone does not sell, broker, or share user data with third parties for advertising purposes. Data may be shared if required by a valid legal order from a Canadian court.

folk.zone services are hosted in Canada and/or on servers operated from Canada. If you are in the EEA, you are using these services with the understanding that they are operated by an individual under Canadian law, not a GDPR-covered organisation. The operator makes reasonable efforts to apply GDPR principles, such as data minimisation and right to deletion, voluntarily.

account deletion

You may request deletion of your account and associated data at any time by contacting the operator at the address listed in each service's footer. Account deletion will be completed within 30 days. Some content, such as posts that have been federated to other servers via ActivityPub, may persist on those external servers. folk.zone has no control over third-party federation partners.

termination by the operator

The operator may suspend or terminate accounts without notice for violations of these terms, for prolonged inactivity (more than 24 months with no login), or if maintaining the account presents undue operational risk.

registration policy

At launch, all folk.zone services will use invite-only or application-based registration. This is not a permanent policy. It is a pragmatic choice to avoid being overwhelmed and to build the community intentionally. The plan is to open registration as capacity and moderation capacity allows.

See the content policy for service-specific registration details.

uptime and reliability

folk.zone is a homelab project. Services may be unavailable due to power outages, ISP issues, hardware failure, OS or software updates, or the operator going to sleep. The operator makes no SLA or uptime guarantee. Status information is available at status.folk.zone.

Planned maintenance windows will be announced at least 24 hours in advance via social.folk.zone and the wiki.

changes to these terms

The operator may update these terms at any time. Material changes, such as changes to what data is collected or major changes to acceptable use, will be announced on social.folk.zone and, where the service supports it, by email to registered users. Continued use of folk.zone services after a policy change constitutes acceptance of the new policy.

Policy version history will be maintained at wiki.folk.zone/policy-history.

contact

For all policy matters, abuse reports, appeals, and data deletion requests:

• Email: hello@folk.zone
• Mastodon: @folkzone@social.folk.zone
• Wiki: wiki.folk.zone/contact