Consent, visibility and withdrawal

This page is written to be forwarded. If someone asks what happens to their recording, send them here. No account is needed to read it.

The short version

Private by default. Silence at the end of a sit keeps it private.

The person who sat decides. Not the organizer, and not us.

Recordings are kept permanently unless the person who sat asks for theirs to be deleted. Nothing expires on a schedule.

Deletion means the recording. Withdrawing removes the video and audio themselves, not just who can reach them.

The choice, and when it is made

It is made once, at the close of a sit, by the person who sat. Two options are offered, in these words:

Only me Kept for you alone. No one else ever sees or hears it.

Let it stand publicly Yours joins the room's material, and the organizer may publish it — anyone with the link can see and hear it.

Closing without answering, or abandoning the sit, keeps it private.

What the second option grants

Two things at once:

The sit joins the room's material, so the organizer can read and hear it.
The organizer may publish it at a public address, where anyone with the link can see and hear it.

There is no second confirmation at publishing time. Everything being granted is said once, at the close. If that is more than someone wants to grant, the answer is Only me.

What the organizer sees

The line is: presence is always visible, content is not.

Always visible: That you arrived, that you sat, how long it ran, whether it finished. Somebody running an event needs to know who is still expected.
Visible only if you chose to let it stand publicly: Anything you said — the words, the recording, and anything derived from them.

A private sit does not reach the organizer's material at all. Moving a sit from public back to private also deletes what was derived from it, rather than hiding it.

Publishing

A room has no public page by default. The only thing the world ever sees is a lens the organizer composed and chose to publish, at its own link.

Publishing cannot widen anyone's consent. Only sits already marked public can appear.
A published page is a live query, not a copy. Going private or withdrawing removes you from it on the next load.
Unpublishing breaks every copy of the link at once. Publishing again produces a new link.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal goes further than going private. The room says so before anyone agrees to anything:

at the door It is yours alone unless you choose otherwise, and you can delete it — the recording itself, not just who can see it — at any time.

Withdrawing removes:

The video and audio from storage.
The transcript and every answer.
Anything derived from them, including any position on a published lens.

It is not recoverable afterwards, by us or by anyone. One record survives: the fact that a sit happened, so the organizer still knows someone came. There is nothing left to say what they said.

How to do it today

There is not yet a button for this in the app. To change your choice in either direction, or to withdraw, tell the organizer who invited you and it will be carried out. The self-serve control is being built.

Common questions

Can the organizer change my choice?

No. It belongs to the person who sat.

What if the room has been closed?

You can still go private or withdraw. You cannot join a closed room, because that would change a record someone else finished.

Do models process what I say?

Yes. A sit is transcribed, what the room asks next is chosen from the transcript, and what the organizer reads is derived from it.

Who else is in the room during a sit?

Nobody. It is not a call. No person watches, live or later, unless the sit was made public.

Not published yet

Written terms covering processors and retention do not exist yet. If you need them before you can run a room somewhere, ask.