The rules for using playbakk.

In short: this is an early version. Things may break, change or stop.

• playbakk is in a private pilot. You can join only by invitation, and only if you are 18 or over and live in the UK.
• Features may change, be switched off, or be removed. We may reset or close the pilot. We will try to give you notice and a chance to export what you can.
• The app runs in your web browser and as an app installed from your browser.
• We have tested playbakk with automated tools, not on every phone, browser or network. It has not yet been independently security audited.
• Paid features are switched on one at a time. Until a paid feature is switched on, nothing is charged for it.

In short: adults only, for now.

• You must be 18 or over. During the pilot the app will not let anyone under 18 create an account, and an age we do not know is treated as under 18. Accounts for 14 to 17-year-olds come later, with extra protections, and these terms will be updated first.
• When you join you tell us the year and month you were born. Please be honest. Saying you are older than you are breaks these terms.
• You must not use playbakk if the law where you are does not allow it, or if we have closed a previous account of yours for breaking these terms.

In short: your keys are on your devices. If you lose all of them without a backup, we cannot get your messages back.

• Your account is protected by encryption keys made on your device. We do not have your private keys and cannot read your messages.
• This means we cannot get back your messages, call notes or wellbeing data if you lose every device and have none of the ways to restore your account listed below. Deleting and reinstalling the app on a phone deletes the keys on that phone.
• To protect yourself, you can add a passkey, make an encrypted backup, and write down your 24-word recovery code. Keep the recovery code private and offline. Anyone who has it and access to your account could open your backup.
• Backups made in the app include your chats and your account's name, settings and age band. They do not include photos, files, wellbeing data or your keys. Because the keys are not included, a backup restores your chats onto a device that is still part of your account; to keep your account after losing every device, you need a passkey.
• You are responsible for what happens on your unlocked devices. If a device is lost or stolen, remove it in Account → Devices & passkeys, and sign out everywhere else.
• Your username must not impersonate anyone or mislead people about who you are.

In short: nobody can message or call you unless you allow it.

• People who want to reach you send a request. You decide whether to allow it, and give them access that says what they can do (for example messages only, or calls) and for how long. You can take access back at any time.
• If you choose Not now, the person is not told; a request you leave unanswered expires after 7 days.
• You can set standing rules, for example always allowing a verified business's booking assistant. You are responsible for the rules you set.
• You can block anyone. They are not told.
• Do not try to get round someone else's choices: for example, by making new accounts after being blocked, by forwarding an invite you were given to someone else, or by asking others to contact someone for you.

In short: you decide what any AI assistant may do for you, and you are responsible for that choice.

• You can connect your own AI assistants (for example Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini). You give each one signed permissions that list what it may do, how often, for whom, and until when.
• You are responsible for the permissions you give and for what an AI assistant does within them, unless it happened because we failed to apply our own checks or broke these terms. Read each permission before you approve it.
• Some things need your approval every time (for example a first message to someone, anything a message asked the assistant to do, and anything you set to "after I approve"). Some things are never allowed, whatever the permissions say: sharing codes or passwords, adding payees, changing your security settings or deleting your account.
• Every message an AI assistant sends for you is labelled as coming from an AI, with who it acts for. You must not remove or hide that label, or use an AI assistant to pretend to be a human.
• You can revoke permissions at any time in Account → AI assistants & permissions, or turn every AI assistant off at once. Something an assistant did before you revoked it still stands.
• Requests from businesses' AI assistants are quiet by default: they do not ring or notify you unless a rule you set allows it.
• Other companies provide third-party AI assistants under their own terms. We do not control them and are not responsible for them, except for the checks playbakk itself makes.
• playbakk's own Assistant, which sorts requests and drafts replies, is not available during the pilot.

In short: do not use playbakk to hurt people, break the law or attack the service.

The acceptable use policy and the community guidelines apply to the app. In addition, you must not use playbakk to:

• contact, groom, sexually exploit or harm a child, or share any content that sexualises a child;
• harass, threaten, stalk, bully, intimidate or blackmail anyone, including sextortion;
• commit or help with fraud or scams, impersonate a person, business or playbakk, or trick people into paying;
• recruit people to move money for someone else ("money mules"), launder money, or offer financial services you are not allowed to offer;
• share content that is illegal where you or the recipient are, including terrorist content and intimate images shared without consent;
• send spam, bulk or automated messages or requests, except through an AI assistant within its permissions and our limits;
• scrape, enumerate or look up large numbers of people, or try to find out who is on playbakk from lists of numbers;
• attack, overload, reverse-engineer or test our systems (except under our security policy), or use another person's account or keys;
• get round a block, a suspension, an age rule, a rate limit or a region rule, for example by hiding where you are;
• use paid groups for gambling, betting tips, trading or investment signals, adult content, or anything the payment provider's own terms forbid.

Content that is not allowed anywhere on playbakk, for anyone. The following is prohibited for all users, on every part of the service, including private and group chats, calls, posts, channels and live streams, whatever the age of the people involved:

• pornographic content;
• content that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for suicide;
• content that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for deliberate self-injury;
• content that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for an eating disorder or behaviours associated with one.

We act on this content when we become aware of it, including by removing what we host, ending live streams, and suspending or closing accounts. If you or someone you know is struggling, see section 9 for where to get help.

Where the acceptable use policy and this list differ, this list applies to the app.

In short: you are responsible for following recording law where you and the other person are.

• A solo clip records your own camera and microphone. It starts only after the other person agrees in the app. Their call audio is not recorded, but your microphone can still pick up their voice if they use a loudspeaker; use headphones if that matters.
• Recording laws differ. In some places, including some US states, everyone on a call must agree before anyone records. Some places also restrict publishing a recording. You are responsible for getting any permission the law requires where you and the other people are, and for how you use and share recordings.
• Live streams: only the host records. Co-hosts must agree before they can be recorded, and must agree separately before a recording with them in it is posted. Do not post a recording of someone who has not agreed.
• Do not record anyone secretly, and do not use screen recording or another device to get round these protections.
• Recording for your own use is generally a personal matter. Posting a recording of someone else, or sharing it widely, is not, and data protection law may then apply to you.

In short: you own what you create. You give us only the permission we need to deliver it.

• You keep all rights in the messages, files, recordings, posts and other content you create ("your content").
• End-to-end encrypted content: we cannot read it, so we need no licence to use it beyond carrying encrypted data.
• Content that is not end-to-end encrypted (profiles, channels, posts, comments, paid group posts, public live streams, live chat, things in a report): you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, copy, show and send it only as needed to run playbakk for the audience you chose, and to moderate it. This permission ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep (privacy notice, section 9) and content other people already received.
• You must have the rights to anything you share, including other people's images and voices.
• Public means public. Anyone with the link can watch a public live stream or read a public channel, and can copy it. We cannot recall copies others made.
• Messages and files other people received stay on their devices after you delete them or your account.

In short: report anything that worries you. We may limit or close accounts that break the rules. You can ask us to look again.

• Use Report on any request, chat, post, comment or live stream. You choose whether to include recent messages. A report also blocks the person for you.
• If someone is in immediate danger, call 999 (or 112). playbakk does not watch your chats and cannot send help.
• How quickly we act. We aim to look at every report within 24 hours, and reports about child sexual abuse or a risk to someone's life within 1 hour while our reviewer is awake (first thing in the morning otherwise). We acknowledge reports, complaints and appeals sent by email within 2 working days.
• If you break these terms, we may: hide or remove content we host; stop a live stream; pause sales on a paid group or take it down; limit features; suspend or close your account; and report you to the police or other authorities where the law requires or a child may be at risk.
• Where it is safe and lawful, we will tell you what we did and why.
• Appeals: if you think we got a decision about you or your content wrong, email hello@playbakk.com within 30 days of being told about it, with your username and what happened. We will acknowledge it within 2 working days. During the pilot, our founder reviews every appeal himself, looking at the whole record again rather than at the first decision, and replies with the outcome and reasons within 14 days. If we got it wrong, we undo what we did. The reports and complaints page has the details.
• You can also use this route to ask a person to review any automatic restriction.
• Because we cannot read end-to-end encrypted content, we rely on reports and the evidence people choose to send. We cannot check that reported messages are genuine.

In short: not available yet.

Charging for access (a price to send you a request or to call you) is not available yet. Before it is switched on we will publish its terms and tell you in the app.

In short: creators sell memberships through their own Stripe account. The creator is the seller.

A creator can charge a monthly price for a paid group. The creator sells the membership and is paid straight into their own Stripe account; playbakk takes a platform fee and never holds members' money. The paid group terms set out how it works for creators and members, including cancelling, the 14-day right to cancel and refunds, and they form part of these terms for anyone who sells or buys a membership.

Pay (in-chat money records) is not available in the pilot. When it is switched on, it will have its own terms, which will then form part of these terms.

In short: we take reasonable care, but the pilot is a test, and some things are outside our control.

• Your legal rights. If you are a consumer, you have legal rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including that services we provide are performed with reasonable care and skill and, where you pay for digital content, that it is as described. Nothing in these terms takes away those rights.
• We never limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.
• Otherwise, we are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable, or for business losses if you use playbakk for business.
• We are not responsible for: what other users, AI assistants or businesses say or do; what a creator provides in a paid group they sell (the paid group terms explain who is responsible for what); third-party apps you connect or open; losses from someone using your unlocked device, your keys or your 24-word code; content you lose because you had no backup; or events outside our reasonable control.
• Our limit. Apart from the liability we never limit (above), our total liability to you is limited to £100, or the total you paid us in the 12 months before the claim if that is more.

• You can delete your account at any time in Account → Delete account. This cannot be undone. What is deleted and what is kept is in the privacy notice, section 9.
• We may suspend or close your account under section 9, or if we close the pilot or the service. Unless there is a safety or legal reason, we will give you reasonable notice so you can export what you can.
• When your account ends, these terms end, except the parts meant to continue (for example sections 8, 13 and 16).

We may change these terms, for example when we add or change features or the law changes. We will tell you in the app at least 30 days before a change that reduces your rights, and at least 14 days before other important changes. A change needed for legal or safety reasons may take effect sooner. If you do not agree, you can delete your account before the change takes effect.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can bring proceedings in your local courts.

If you have a complaint, please contact hello@playbakk.com first. When we tell you the outcome, we will also tell you whether any alternative dispute resolution scheme applies. None currently does.

• General, safety reports by email, complaints and appeals: hello@playbakk.com
• Privacy: privacy@playbakk.com
• Legal: legal@playbakk.com
• Security vulnerabilities: security@playbakk.com