Privacy and Legal

Privacy Policy

Content Policy

Terms of Use

Copyright Notice and DMCA Policy


Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 26, 2019

Our privacy practices are simple. This policy outlines the type of data we collect, how we use that data and any sharing that we may do. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us through our website.

Data that we gather from you

We may collect the following types of data from your use of our service:

  • Your name, email address, and homepage URL (if you provide this information to us)
  • Your IP address
  • Your Facebook, Twitter, Pushover, Gravatar, or Github ID and associated information (if we request it and you choose to provide it to link those accounts)
  • Information about your device (for example, what operating system and what version you're using)
  • Your activity on our services (for example, the links that you share, the messages that you send, and the comments that you post)
  • Your location (if you provide it)
  • Any other information that you may provide us (for example, through communicating with us directly, through our Web site, through e-mail, through any iOS or Android apps we publish, or through social networks)

Depending on your operating system, cached files may exist on your device that we are unable to remove.

How do we use your data?

We may use your data for the following purposes:

  • to provide, maintain and improve our services
  • to respond to your inquiries
  • for analytics and reporting
  • to protect our users

Talking's server presence is currently in Dallas, Texas, though this may change without advance notice. We generally process your information in the United States, although sometimes processing may occur in other countries as well. We generally use encryption when transmitting your information through the Talking website, including when you log in or create an account.

Sharing

We don’t share your personally identifiable information with third parties, unless we have your consent or in certain situations:

  • where required by law or legal process
  • where a third party is processing data on our behalf
  • if necessary, for fraud, terms violations or security purposes
  • in a merger or acquisition situation with the other party

We may share aggregated data about our users publicly (for example, statistics showing which topic tags on the Talking website are the most popular).

Government demands

As of September 26, 2019, we have not received any legal process or demand from any federal, state, or local government that includes a gag order. We have received no National Security Letters, civil subpoenas, search warrants, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders, grand jury subpoenas, or any other form of compulsory process accompanied by a gag order.

As of September 26, 2019, we have received no legal orders requiring us to monitor users' future activities or to modify our service.

If we do receive any form of compulsory process from any government entity, we will do our best to ensure that our users' legal rights and privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are protected. That includes challenging overly broad orders in court.

We intend to post an updated version of this notice on the Privacy Policy section of our web site.

Retention

If you ask us to delete your account, we will attempt to place your your account into a deleted state. This means that your username will remain reserved and will not be available for anyone else to use, your private messages will be deleted as soon as we reasonably can, and your comments with negative scores will be deleted as soon as we reasonably can. Your submitted stories will not be deleted.

Privacy Policy Changes

We may revise our privacy policy at any time. If we make a material revision, we will notify you by posting a notice on our homepage, by emailing you, or by notifying you from within the Talking service.

The Talking website and other services are owned and operated by:

Talking LLC
340 South Lemon Ave. #1787
Walnut, California 91789
United States


Content Policy

Last updated September 28, 2019

Our Content Policy is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The First Amendment is not absolute. U.S. law treats certain categories of speech as prohibited. Those categories include obscenity, child pornography, defamation, fraud, speech that leads to liability under state privacy torts, and threats of violence directed against an identifiable person.

Unfortunately, there are wingnuts out there on the Internet, so we need to reserve the right to take actions including removing content or banning accounts. We hope we do not have to do so. If we do exercise this right, we aim to be transparent about it.

We do have an important content rule: We require that you use the term "mediajackals" to refer to members of the Fourth Estate who are acting as media jackals. You may use the term media jackal, mediajackal, or #mediajackal, though the last is preferred.


Terms of Use

Last updated September 26, 2019

We’re glad you're joining us! Before you join, please take a moment to read our terms of use and privacy policy carefully. By using our Talking service (“service”), you agree to our terms as set out below as well as our privacy policy.

Your Use of the Service

  • You may not use this service if you are under the age of 13. Sorry!
  • You do not have any ownership or intellectual property rights in our services or the content that you access through the service.
  • Your may only use this service for your non-commercial, personal purposes. You may not copy, modify, distribute or sell the service. If you would like to use or distribute any of our services (including any apps) or a modified version of our service for commercial purposes, please contact us.
  • You may not infringe anyone’s rights, including anyone's intellectual property or privacy rights, when using this service.
  • You may only access our service through our website or other methods (such as apps) that we provide. Any scraping or automated access of our website or service is expressly prohibited without our written consent (except as authorized through our robots.txt file). You may not reverse engineer or extract the source code of any of our apps. Any interference or disruption of our service is expressly prohibited.
  • We may update our service (including apps) automatically from time to time. You may be able to control the updates through your operating system.
  • You must comply with any U.S., California and local laws when using this service, including any export regulations.
  • This service displays links to content that is not ours. The content belongs to the entity that makes the content available. The content may not always be available or accurate. We won’t always be able to review content to ensure that it’s accurate, isn’t illegal or violating our policies. If you have a concern about content that you see, please contact us. Unless specifically stated by us, we don’t endorse any third party content available through our service.
  • We may send you service announcements and other communications in conjunction with your use of this service.
  • We may in the future provide advertisements or promotions targeted based on the type of content that you access or the data you provide. By using the service, you agree that we may provide these advertisements or promotions in the future. We do not do this now.
  • We currently provide this service for free, although we reserve the right to charge for it in the future, if permitted by law.
  • You are prohibited from using this service while driving.
Violations of these terms may result in suspension, termination and/or cancellation of your account. We have the right to suspend or terminate your use of our app or service at any time and for any reason.

Your Rights

You retain copyright and any other rights to content you submit to our service (for example, any public comments you post on our site, private messages you send to another user, or email messages you send us directly). If you choose to post public comments on our service, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive and royalty-free right to use, copy, adapt, modify, sublicense, publish and distribute that content in all media methods as part of providing our service.

We use encryption when transmitting your information, including when you log in or create an account. If you suspect unauthorized access, please contact us immediately. We encourage you to use a strong password and not to share your Talking account. You may not register with the same email address and password that you used with another service.

You are welcome to link to or promote our website and any applicable authorized downloadable app page (for example, any of our pages on the Google Play or Apple App Store). However, you may not use our logo or our branding without our written permission, and you may not obscure our name, logo, branding or legal notices when linking to the services. You may not distribute any of our apps directly from your site.

Any feedback, comments, or suggestions that you provide us are voluntary and we may use them as we see fit and without obligation to you.

We are constantly improving our service and we may change, suspend or revise it at any time, temporarily or permanently. If you don’t like the service, you may terminate your use of this service at any time and for any reason.

Necessary Legal Jargon

These terms govern the relationship between Talking and you. The service is provided AS-IS and AS-AVAILABLE and we make no promises as to ongoing service, reliability, availability or performance.

SOME JURISDICTIONS PROVIDE FOR CERTAIN WARRANTIES, LIKE THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE EXCLUDE ALL WARRANTIES.

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, TALKING LLCTALKIN AND ITS OWNERS, INVESTORS, AFFILIATES, SUPPLIERS AND DISTRIBUTORS (“ENTITIES”) SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, FINANCIAL LOSSES, LOST PROFITS, REVENUES, DATA, EQUIPMENT, GOODWILL OR THIRD PARTY CONDUCT - WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY - THROUGH YOUR ACCESS TO OR USE OF THE SERVICES.

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE TOTAL LIABILITY OF TALKING LLC AND ENTITIES IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US TO USE THE SERVICES. THE LIMITATIONS OF THIS SUBSECTION SHALL APPLY TO ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, STATUTE, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER OR NOT TALKING LLC AND/OR ENTITIES BEEN INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF ANY SUCH DAMAGE.

We may assign our rights in and to the service to a third party at any time and at our sole discretion. To the extent a part of these terms are found to be unenforceable, the rest of the terms will remain in full effect.

Your use of this service is governed by the laws of the State of California without reference to conflict of laws principles, with the exclusive venue for any dispute relating to this agreement in San Mateo County, California.

We may modify these terms at any time. If we make a change, we will notify you by posting a notice on our homepage or by emailing you.


Copyright Notice and DMCA Policy

We comply with the process set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Talking LLC will respond expeditiously under the DMCA to claims of copyright infringement on our site or service that are submitted to our Designated Agent listed in the Copyright Office's Designated Agent Directory.

Upon receipt of a notice alleging copyright infringement, Talking LLC will take whatever action it deems appropriate within its sole discretion, including removal of the allegedly infringing materials and termination of access for repeat infringers.

If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated by Talking LLC or by a third party who has used our service, provide the following information to our Designated Agent through certified U.S. Mail:

  • A description of the copyrighted work that you allege has been infringed and is not fair use, and
  • A description, including URL if available, where the material that you claim is infringing is located on our website or other service, and
  • An address, telephone number, and email address where we can contact you and, if different, an email address where the alleged infringing party, if not Talking LLC, can contact you;
  • A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that is alleged to be infringed; and
  • Your electronic or physical signature.

We may choose to deliver some of our services through the use of public third party APIs, websites, or feeds. If you would like us to stop accessing your content through your API, website, or feed, please contact us.

We reserve the right to remove any content alleged to be infringing without prior notice and at our sole discretion.