Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 09/02/2026

Your privacy matters to us. This Privacy Policy explains what information this site collects, why we collect it, how we use it, when information may become public or be shared with others, and the choices you have regarding your information.

The site is currently operating as an Alpha proof of concept. Features and data practices may change as the service develops. When they do, this Privacy Policy will be reviewed and updated to reflect what the site actually does.

This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service.

1. Our Approach to Privacy

We try to collect only information that has a reasonable purpose.

In general, we collect information when you voluntarily provide it, when it is necessary to create or operate your account, when you contribute or interact with content, and automatically when necessary to operate, secure, and improve the site.

Some information is private and used to operate your account or the service. Other information is intentionally public because this is a creative community built around publishing, discovering, discussing, and sharing creative work.

We want that distinction to be understandable before you decide what to provide.

2. Information You Provide to Us

Google Sign-In

The site allows users to sign in or create an account using Google Sign-In. If you choose this option, Google may provide us with basic account information necessary to identify and authenticate you, such as your Google account identifier, email address, name, and profile information made available through the sign-in process.

We use this information to create or connect your site account, authenticate you, and provide account functionality. We do not use Google Sign-In to access your Gmail messages, Google Drive files, contacts, calendar, or other Google services.

Information received through Google Sign-In is used only for account authentication and related site functionality and may be stored with your WordPress account as necessary to maintain the connection. We do not sell information received through Google Sign-In.

Account Information

When you create an account, we may collect information such as your:

• Username;
• Email address;
• Password;
• Display name; and
• Other account information you choose to provide.

Passwords are handled through the site’s WordPress authentication system. We do not display your password to other users.

Your username and display name are different from your email address. Information intended for account administration, such as your email address, is not made public merely because you create an account.

Your chosen display name and other information identified as public may appear with your contributions and activity.

Alpha Contributor Applications

During Alpha, contributors must apply before receiving permission to publish Seeds.

The Alpha Contributor application currently may collect:

• Your full name;
• Username;
• Public display name;
• Email address;
• Optional telephone number;
• Optional links to your portfolio, personal website, or examples of your work;
• The types of Seeds you may be interested in contributing;
• Your explanation of why you would like to participate as an Alpha Contributor; and
• The date and time at which you accepted the Terms of Service.

Your real/full name, telephone number, application explanation, and other application-review information are collected for administration of the Alpha and are not automatically displayed as part of your public profile.

Your display name, however, is intended to be public if you contribute to the community.

Alpha applications are manually reviewed by site administrators.

Profile Information

Members may choose to provide additional information for their public creator profile.

Depending upon the information you choose to add, this may include:

• A biography or description;
• Profile/avatar image;
• Website;
• Portfolio;
• Social-media accounts;
• Stores;
• Other creator profiles; and
• Other links you choose to associate with your public identity.

This information is optional unless specifically identified otherwise.

Information you place on your public profile should be considered public information.

Creative Content

When you create or submit a Seed, we collect the content and information necessary to store, review, publish, organize, and display that contribution.

Depending on the Seed, this may include written material, images, titles, excerpts, descriptions, About This Seed information, Discovery and Hero Images, categories, genres, tags, links to externally hosted audio or video, and other material you voluntarily include.

The site also records relationships between Parent and Child Seeds. These relationships form the site’s creative genealogy and are intended to be publicly visible when the associated Seeds are published.

Draft Seeds are not intended to be publicly displayed simply because you have entered information into the submission process. Published Seeds are intended to be public.

Discussions and Community Activity

The site includes forums and discussions associated with Seeds and other community subjects.

When you post a topic, reply, comment, or other community contribution, we collect and store the information you submit along with information necessary to associate that contribution with your account.

Community discussions are generally intended to be visible to other members or the public according to the visibility of the area in which you post them.

Communications With Us

When you contact us, we may retain the information you provide and information necessary to respond to your request.

The site’s Contact Us process may be used for general questions, Alpha feedback, technical problems, account assistance, reports of inappropriate content or conduct, harassment or bullying reports, copyright and permission concerns, Seed-removal requests, and other matters requiring human review.

Please do not include sensitive personal information in a message unless it is genuinely necessary for us to address your request.

3. Information Collected Automatically

Like most websites, some technical information is collected automatically when you access or use the site.

This may include information such as:

• Internet Protocol (IP) address;
• Browser and device information;
• Date and time of requests;
• Pages or resources requested;
• Login/session information;
• Referring information where available; and
• Information about errors, suspicious activity, or attempts to misuse the service.

Some of this information may also be collected by WordPress, the site’s hosting provider, security systems, or other services necessary to operate the website.

We use this information primarily to operate and secure the service, diagnose problems, prevent abuse, and understand whether the site is functioning properly.

4. Security Logging and Abuse Prevention

The site currently maintains a limited Alpha security log to help identify abuse, automated submissions, invalid form requests, suspicious activity, and technical problems.

The plugin records information that may include:

• Date and time of the event;
• Type and severity of the security event;
• User ID, when applicable;
• A cryptographic hash derived from the originating IP address;
• A partially masked version of the originating IP address;
• The Site object or contribution involved, where applicable; and
• A short diagnostic description of the event.

The site’s Alpha security log is automatically deleted after 30 days.

The site also uses rate-limiting mechanisms designed to reduce automated or excessive submissions. Depending on whether you are logged in, these controls may use your account ID or information derived from your IP address to identify repeated submission attempts within a limited period.

These systems are intended to protect the site and its community, not to create behavioral profiles of visitors.

5. How and Why We Use Information

We use information when we have a legitimate reason to do so.

Those purposes currently include:

• Creating and maintaining user accounts;
• Authenticating users and keeping them signed in;
• Processing Alpha Contributor applications;
• Communicating with applicants and members;
• Allowing creators to create, save, edit, submit, and publish Seeds;
• Displaying creator profiles and attribution;
• Creating and maintaining Parent-Child Seed relationships;
• Operating forums and discussions;
• Providing discovery, search, genealogy, and other community features;
• Reviewing and moderating content;
• Responding to Contact Us requests and reports;
• Protecting users and the site from spam, fraud, abuse, and security threats;
• Diagnosing technical problems;
• Enforcing our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines;
• Complying with applicable legal obligations; and
• Improving and developing the Alpha service.

We do not need every piece of information for every purpose. We try to use information only where it is reasonably relevant to what we are doing.

6. Information You Choose to Make Public

One of the most important privacy distinctions on this site is the difference between account/application information and information you intentionally publish.

When you publish a Seed, create a public profile, participate in a public discussion, or otherwise submit information to a public portion of the site, that information is intended to be seen by other people.

Public information may include your:

• Display name;
• Public biography;
• Avatar or profile image;
• Website and creator/social links;
• Published Seeds;
• Images and other media included with those Seeds;
• About This Seed information;
• Parent and Child relationships;
• Public forum posts, replies, or discussions; and
• Other information you deliberately place in publicly visible areas.

Public information may be viewed, linked to, shared, quoted where permitted, or indexed by search engines.

Automattic’s adaptable privacy framework makes the same important distinction: information users deliberately make public can be indexed by search engines and encountered or used by third parties.

Please keep this in mind when deciding what personal information to include in your creative work, profile, or public discussions.

7. Search Engines and Discovery

Published content is intended to be discoverable.

Search engines such as Google and others may crawl and index public pages, including published Seeds, creator profiles, public discussions, titles, excerpts, images, and other publicly available information.

Removing information from this site does not necessarily cause it to disappear immediately from search-engine indexes, caches, previously shared links, or copies outside our control.

This is one reason you should avoid including private information in content intended for publication.

8. How We Share Information

We do not sell your creative work merely because you publish it here.

We may disclose or make information available in limited circumstances necessary to operate the site.

Public Information

Information you intentionally publish is made available publicly as described above.

Service Providers

We may provide information to companies or individuals that perform services necessary to operate the site, such as hosting, email delivery, security, backups, technical services, or other infrastructure.

Those providers may process information only to the extent necessary to perform the services involved and according to their own applicable contractual and privacy obligations.

Legal Requirements and Protection of Rights

We may preserve or disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law, a valid legal process, court order, or other legally enforceable requirement.

We may also disclose information when reasonably necessary to investigate fraud or abuse, protect the security or integrity of the service, enforce our Terms, or protect the rights, property, or safety of the site, its users, or others.

Business Transfers

If ownership or operation of the site is transferred through a sale, merger, reorganization, acquisition, or similar transaction, information associated with operation of the service may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law and the commitments contained in this Privacy Policy.

These are conventional circumstances in which online services may need to share information, and they are also reflected in Automattic’s adaptable privacy framework.

9. Third-Party Media, Links, and Services

The site may contain links to third-party websites and may display media hosted by third-party providers.

For example, Audio and Video Seeds may use supported external media providers rather than storing the underlying audio or video directly on this site.

When you interact with embedded media or follow a third-party link, that third party may receive information about your interaction according to its own technology and privacy practices.

Third-party services may use cookies or similar technologies and may collect information such as IP address, browser information, or interaction with their content.

We do not control the privacy practices of third-party websites and services. You should review their privacy policies if you want to understand how they handle your information.

10. Cookies and Similar Technologies

The site uses cookies and similar technologies where necessary to provide website functionality.

Cookies are small pieces of information stored by your browser. Among other purposes, they can allow a website to remember that you are logged in, maintain a session, remember preferences, and protect forms and accounts.

The site may use cookies for purposes including:

• Account registration and authentication;
• Keeping members logged in;
• Security;
• Site and form functionality;
• Remembering appropriate preferences; and
• Functionality supplied by WordPress or third-party embedded services.

Third-party content embedded on the site may also set or access cookies according to the provider’s own policies.

11. Analytics and Advertising

The current site does not itself implement an advertising network or a general-purpose behavioral advertising system.

12. How Long We Keep Information

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, to operate the service, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, meet legal obligations, or protect the site and its users.

Different information may therefore have different retention periods.

The Alpha security log described above is automatically deleted after 30 days.

Account information generally remains while an account exists and may be retained afterward where reasonably necessary for legitimate administrative, security, legal, or genealogy purposes.

Alpha Contributor application records may be retained during the Alpha to document applications, approvals, rejections, Terms acceptance, and administration of the private testing program.

Published Seeds are treated differently from ordinary account information because they may become part of the site’s creative genealogy. As explained in the Terms of Service, deleting an account does not automatically delete published Seeds. Creators may request removal of individual Seeds, while a minimal placeholder or relationship record (Withdrawn Seed) may need to remain so that existing Parent-Child genealogy is not destroyed.

Contact Us correspondence may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to resolve the matter and maintain an appropriate record of the request.

13. Deleting Your Account and Your Information

You may request changes to or deletion of appropriate account information through the mechanisms provided by the site or by contacting us.

Deleting your account does not automatically delete published Seeds for the reasons described in our Terms of Service.

Before deleting an account, contributors should review their published Seeds and request removal of any individual Seeds they no longer want publicly displayed.

When a Seed is removed, the creative content may be removed while a minimal genealogy record such as “Withdrawn Seed” remains so that Child Seeds created by other people do not lose their documented ancestry.

Information may also remain temporarily in backups, caches, search-engine indexes, security records, or third-party services beyond our immediate control.

14. Protecting Your Information

We use reasonable technical and administrative measures intended to protect information against unauthorized access, misuse, alteration, or loss.

The plugin currently includes measures such as server-side validation, permission checks, WordPress security nonces, anti-bot honeypots, submission rate limiting, restricted administrative access, and security logging.

No website or Internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure. You are also responsible for protecting your account credentials and choosing an appropriate password.

If you believe your account or information has been compromised, please contact us.

15. Children and Teenagers

This site is not intended to be an adults-only community. We expect teenagers may browse and participate in appropriate portions of the site, and our Alpha content standards are designed around a generally PG-13 environment.

However, during the Alpha proof of concept, only adults age 18 or older may apply to become Alpha Contributors and publish Seeds.

We do not knowingly invite children under 13 to create accounts or provide personal information through the Alpha Contributor process.

16. Your Privacy Choices

Depending on the feature involved, you may be able to:

• Choose what optional information to place on your public profile;
• Change your display name and profile information;
• Edit information contained in your Seeds;
• Leave optional Alpha application fields blank;
• Request removal of published Seeds as described in the Terms;
• Delete or request deletion of appropriate account information;
• Control cookies through your browser and any cookie controls the site provides; and
• Contact us with questions or requests concerning your personal information.

Remember that changing or deleting something on the site cannot necessarily recall copies already shared, cached, indexed, embedded, or otherwise stored by third parties.

17. Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, applicable privacy law may give you rights concerning your personal information. These can include rights to request access, correction, deletion, or information about how personal information is used or disclosed.

Where applicable, we will respond to valid privacy requests as required by law. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request in order to avoid disclosing or deleting information at the request of someone who is not authorized to act for you.

During Alpha, privacy requests may be submitted through the Contact Us process.

18. International Visitors

The Site may be accessible from locations outside the country in which it is operated or hosted.

If you access the Site from another country, information may be processed or stored in a country whose privacy laws differ from those where you live.

19. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Site develops, particularly during Alpha and Beta.

When we make changes, we will update the “Last Updated” date. For material changes, we may provide additional notice through the Site, account interface, email, or another reasonable method.

The Alpha Privacy Policy will be reviewed before Beta and again before broader public launch.

20. Contact Us

Questions about this Privacy Policy or requests concerning your personal information may be submitted through the site’s Contact Us page.

The Contact Us process can also be used for account questions, content-removal requests, copyright or permission concerns, community reports, and other matters requiring human review.