Terms of Service
The agreement between you and us.
The operator has not yet published: legal entity name, registered address, governing law / jurisdiction, legal contact address, privacy contact address. Each missing item is marked in the text below. Until they are published this service should not be taking money from the public.
Announced 30 August 2026 — 30 days’ notice. Until then the version you already accepted continues to apply to you. What is changing:
- §4 Marketplace — staff may now refund a paid order without a formal dispute having been opened, and may remove a listing that is already live.
- §2 Your account — an administrator may issue a temporary password; doing so signs the account out of every device.
Who you are contracting with. [not yet published: legal entity name], of [not yet published: registered address] ([not yet published: country of establishment]), operating Whinchat (the “Service”).
1. Accepting these terms
By creating an account you agree to these Terms, the Privacy Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
2. Who may use it
You must be at least 16 years old. Some countries set their own age of digital consent, which may be lower or higher than that; where your country sets one, it is the age that applies to you. The full table we enforce is published in Child Safety. You must not be a person or entity we are prohibited from dealing with under the sanctions rules described in Sanctions & Export.
3. Your account
You are responsible for your password and for what happens under your account. Turn on two-factor authentication if you can. Tell us at once if you suspect someone else has access. Accounts are personal; do not sell or share one.
4. Your content stays yours
You keep ownership of everything you write, photograph, record or list. You give us only the permission we need to run the Service: to store your content, transmit it to the people you send it to, and display it back to you and to them. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account, except where we must keep something to meet a legal obligation (see Data Retention).
5. What you may not do
The Acceptable Use Policy is part of these Terms. In short: nothing illegal, nothing that harms other people, and nothing that attacks the Service itself.
6. Buying and selling
Where you use the marketplace you are contracting with the other user, not with us. We provide the venue, the payment rail and an escrow that holds the buyer's money until the order is confirmed or 14 days pass. The Marketplace & Seller Terms govern that relationship, including our commission and what we do when a transaction goes wrong.
7. Paid plans
Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. What you will be charged, when, and how to stop it are set out in Billing & Renewals, and are shown again on the screen where you subscribe. You can cancel at any time from the app.
8. Calls and meetings
Calls are limited by the technology, not by your plan: every participant sends their audio and video to every other participant directly, so a call or meeting is capped at 6 people. On the Business plan the host can instead make a meeting large, for up to 50 people: its audio and video then go through LiveKit's servers, which forward them to everyone in it (see Subprocessors). Recording a call notifies everyone in it. On the Business plan the host of a meeting can also record it to the cloud, where it is kept for two days and then deleted. If you record, getting any consent the law requires is your responsibility. See Recording & Consent.
Going live. You must be 18 or over to host a live. Your plan sets how many people may watch one and for how long, and the live ends when that time is up. You are responsible for what you show and say, and for anything you offer for sale in it, which is sold on the same terms as any other listing (see the Marketplace Terms). The Acceptable Use Policy applies to a live exactly as it does to a message. We may stop a live at any time, and one reported as child sexual abuse is stopped automatically, before anyone has looked.
The host's controls. The host of a live can mute someone in its chat (they can still watch), pin a comment for everyone, and mute a guest's microphone or turn a guest's camera off. Nobody — the host included — can turn another person's camera or microphone on; the host can only ask. Watching a live from a shared link is for people 18 or over.
On stage. The host of a live can let viewers who ask onto the stage, to be seen and heard by everyone watching, and can take anyone off the stage or out of the live at any time. You must be 18 or over to go on stage. The Acceptable Use Policy applies to what you show and say there. Comments are checked automatically: slurs, threats, sexual harassment and rude emoji are refused and swearing is masked.
Recording a live. On any plan, the host can record their own live to download it and share it elsewhere. The recording shows the Whinchat name. You are responsible for having the right to publish everything in it — music playing in the background, for example, or another person who appears on camera. See Recording & Consent.
9. Things we can suspend or remove
We may remove content or suspend an account that breaks these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, or the law. Where we can, we tell you what happened and how to appeal. Where the law requires us to act without notice — child sexual abuse material, a valid court order — we act first.
10. The Service is provided as it is
We work to keep the Service running and correct, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. To the extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited — and nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer under the mandatory law of your country.
11. Limits on liability
To the extent the law allows, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to what you paid us in that period, or US$100 if you paid us nothing.
12. Ending it
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time, from Settings → Your data & privacy. Deletion is described in Data Retention. We may end your access if you materially break these Terms.
13. Changes
We may update these Terms. Material changes are signalled in the app before they take effect, and the date at the top of this page changes. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the new version; if you do not, you can delete your account.
14. Law and disputes
These Terms are governed by [not yet published: governing law]. How disputes are handled, and what you can do before going to court, is set out in Dispute Resolution.
15. Contact
[not yet published: legal contact address] — see Legal Notices & Contact.
What has changed
24 September 2026 · version 9
- §8 Calls and meetings — watching a live from a shared link is for people 18 or over. The host of a live can mute someone in its chat, pin a comment for everyone, and mute a guest's microphone or turn their camera off; the host cannot turn anyone's camera or microphone on, only ask.
24 September 2026 · version 8
- §8 Calls and meetings — the host of a live can let viewers on stage to be seen and heard, and takes them off at will; guests must be 18 or over. Comments in a live are checked automatically: slurs, threats, sexual harassment and rude emoji are refused, everyday swearing is masked, and repeated refusals pause commenting for 10 minutes.
24 September 2026 · version 7
- §8 Calls and meetings — the host of a live may record it, on any plan, to download and share; the recording carries the Whinchat name. The host is responsible for having the right to publish what is in it.
24 September 2026 · version 6
- §8 Calls and meetings — going live: you must be 18 or over to host; your plan sets how many people may watch and for how long; you are responsible for what you show and sell; we may stop a live at once, and a live is stopped automatically if it is reported as child sexual abuse.
24 September 2026 · version 5
- §8 Calls and meetings — on the Business plan a host can make a meeting large, for more people than a direct call can carry, through LiveKit's servers.
24 September 2026 · version 4
- §8 Calls and meetings — the host of a meeting on the Business plan can record it to the cloud; it is kept for two days. Getting any consent the law requires is the responsibility of whoever records.
30 August 2026 · version 3
- §4 Marketplace — staff may now refund a paid order without a formal dispute having been opened, and may remove a listing that is already live.
- §2 Your account — an administrator may issue a temporary password; doing so signs the account out of every device.
7 August 2026 · version 2
- §9 added: sanctions screening, and what a false match means for you.
12 July 2026 · version 1
- First published.