Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are the agreement between you and Venoly for using the platform — the website, web app, desktop app, Android app, API and bots. By creating an account or using Venoly you agree to them, together with:

• the Law of Venoly — the foundational rules of the platform, which prevail over these Terms if the two conflict;
• the Privacy Policy;
• the Acceptable Use Policy and Code of Conduct;
• the Refund Policy for paid features, the Developer & Creator Terms if you build on the platform, and the Automated Decision-Making & Forensics Disclosures.

Nothing in these Terms takes away a right that consumer law, data-protection law or the Digital Services Act gives you. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use Venoly; there is nothing to sign or send to decline.

You must be at least 13 to use Venoly. We check age by the date of birth you declare at sign-up and in no other way — there is no identity-document check. If you are under 16, we do not rely on your own consent for the processing needed to run the service; we rely on the contract and on our legitimate interests (see the Privacy Policy). If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we disable it and delete its data.

The information you give us must be accurate and kept up to date. Accounts created with false information may be suspended or removed.

If you are under 18, some settings are set for you and stay that way until you turn 18: only friends can message you, call you or add you to a group chat; people can only send you a friend request with your add link, which works once for 5 minutes; and you are left out of people search. Other people are not told why. You can still use every other part of Venoly.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Use a strong, unique password, do not share it, and turn on two-factor authentication or a passkey in Settings → Security. If you think someone else has access, change your password, use Lock Account in Settings → My Account to revoke every session on every device, and tell us at security@venoly.nl.

We are not responsible for loss caused by someone using credentials you failed to protect, but we will help you recover the account.

One person, one account, unless we have agreed otherwise. Accounts created to evade a ban, manipulate features or deceive other users are removed, and we may merge or disable duplicates.

You own the content you create and share on Venoly — messages, images, files, profile information ("User Content"). We claim no ownership of it.

To run the platform we need a licence from you: a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, display, transmit, resize, transcode and cache your User Content for the purpose of operating and improving Venoly — showing your messages to the people you sent them to, generating link previews, resizing images, caching for performance. That is all the licence is for. We do not use your content for advertising and we do not train AI models on it.

When you delete content it is removed from the conversation immediately; copies remain in backups until they rotate, about 15 days. When you delete your account, your data is purged as the Privacy Policy describes.

You are responsible for what you post. Do not share content you have no right to share, that infringes someone else's rights, or that breaks these Terms.

The following is prohibited on Venoly:

Security & Integrity

• Attempting to gain unauthorized access to other users' accounts, servers, or data
• Launching DDoS attacks, brute-force attacks, or any form of service disruption
• Distributing malware, viruses, exploits, or other harmful software
• Reverse-engineering, decompiling, or attempting to extract source code from Venoly, beyond what Dutch law permits for interoperability
• Scraping, crawling, or using automated tools to extract data without authorization
• Attempting to obtain, copy, exfiltrate or decrypt Venoly's data, encryption keys or backups — a criminal offence in the Netherlands (Article 138ab Wetboek van Strafrecht); that the data is encrypted does not make the attempt permitted

Harassment & Harmful Behavior

• Harassment, bullying, threats, or intimidation of any kind
• Hate speech, discrimination, or content that promotes violence against individuals or groups
• Sharing personal information of others without consent (doxxing)
• Sexual content involving minors, or any content that exploits children
• Encouraging self-harm or suicide

Spam & Manipulation

• Spamming messages, servers, or users with repetitive or unwanted content
• Using bots, self-bots, or automated scripts outside the Developer Terms
• Artificially inflating server member counts, message counts, or engagement metrics
• Operating phishing schemes, scams, or deceptive marketing

Impersonation & Fraud

• Impersonating Venoly's founders, moderators, or other users
• Creating accounts or servers designed to mislead others about your identity or affiliation
• Falsely representing yourself as having authority or permissions you don't possess

Illegal Activities

• Sharing, promoting, or facilitating any illegal activity
• Distributing copyrighted material without proper authorization
• Engaging in any activity that violates applicable law, or using Venoly where EU or Dutch sanctions law prohibits us from serving you

Servers are community spaces run by their owners and the moderators they appoint. Owners may set their own rules, but every server must follow these Terms and Venoly's platform-wide policies, and owners are expected to remove content that breaks them.

Abuse of moderation powers — banning without cause, using roles for personal gain, enabling prohibited content — may lead to action against the server or the individuals involved. Venoly may restrict or remove servers that persistently break the rules or put people at risk; we warn first where we can, and act without warning where safety requires it.

We send email only when you need it: account verification, password resets, security alerts, notices about maintenance and outages, changes to these documents, and replies to things you asked us. These cannot be switched off because the account does not work safely without them. We do not send marketing email.

In-app notifications for messages, mentions and server activity are controlled in Settings → Notifications. We may also show in-app announcements about new features or important changes.

The Venoly platform — name, logo, design, interface, features and underlying software — belongs to Venoly and is protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual-property law. You may not copy, modify, distribute or create derivative works from it without written permission, except to the limited extent Dutch law allows.

You may use the Venoly name and logo to refer to or link to the platform, as long as you do not imply endorsement or affiliation and do not alter the branding. The brand guidelines set out the details.

Your User Content stays yours (Section 4). If you believe content on Venoly infringes your copyright or other rights, send a detailed notice to legal@venoly.nl or use the report form; we act on valid notices as Dutch law (Article 6:196c BW) and the Digital Services Act require.

You can sign in with Google or Discord. If you do, that provider sends us your name, email, provider ID and avatar under its own terms, and we never see your password for that service. The links you add to your profile (Discord, GitHub, X, Spotify, Steam and so on) are just links: we store what you type and do not connect to those services.

Bots and integrations built by other people run under the Developer Terms and are the responsibility of the people who run them. Links other users share do not imply our endorsement; be careful what you click and download. We are not responsible for the content, availability or practices of any third-party service.

For cause. We may suspend or terminate your account for a serious breach of these Terms or the Law of Venoly — illegal content, child safety violations, harassment, attacks on the platform or other users, fraud, ban evasion, or conduct that puts people at risk. You receive a statement of reasons (Section 17). No refund is due for the unused part of a paid plan when we terminate for cause.

Without cause. We may also end the relationship without a specific breach, for example if we discontinue the platform or a feature. We give at least 30 days' notice where we can and refund prepaid fees for the period after termination pro rata, within 30 days.

Pending investigation. We may suspend an account temporarily while we look into a suspected breach. If we find nothing, we restore it and extend any paid plan by the length of the suspension.

By you. Delete your account any time from Settings → My Account → Danger Zone. The account is deactivated immediately and purged within 30 days; during those 30 days you can ask us to restore it, and if you want it gone sooner, email support@venoly.nl. Hashed device identifiers and ban records, backup copies until they rotate, and records the law requires us to keep survive the purge, as the Privacy Policy explains.

Venoly is provided as it is and as available. We give no uptime guarantee. Two people run this platform on hardware they own; outages happen, and we fix them as fast as we can. Live status is at status.venoly.nl, and we announce planned maintenance in advance where we can.

To the extent Dutch law allows, we make no warranty that the platform will be uninterrupted, error-free or fit for any particular purpose. If you are a consumer, the conformity rights that EU law gives you for digital services (Articles 7:50ab–7:50af BW) apply in full and are not limited by this section.

What we are liable for. Venoly is liable to you for loss caused by our own failure to do what these Terms and the Law of Venoly oblige us to do — for example not refunding you when a refund is due, or losing your data through our fault.

What we are not liable for. To the extent Dutch law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss (lost profit, revenue or goodwill), for the platform being unavailable, or for loss caused by another user, a third-party service, events outside our control, or your own conduct.

Cap. Our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of EUR 100 or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Exceptions. None of this limits our liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited under Dutch consumer law or the GDPR. Nothing here stops you from bringing a claim in court.

If your breach of these Terms, your User Content, or your violation of someone else's rights leads to a claim against Venoly, you will compensate us for the resulting loss and reasonable legal costs, except where Dutch consumer law limits that obligation. In plain terms: if what you do on Venoly gets us sued, you cover it.

These Terms are governed by the law of the Netherlands. If you have a dispute with us, email support@venoly.nl first; most problems are solved by a conversation, and we will engage in good faith.

If that fails, the competent court is the court for the district in which Venoly is established — currently the Rechtbank Noord-Nederland. If you are a consumer living in the EU, you may instead sue in the courts of your own country, and we may only sue you there. EU consumers may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We do not require mediation before court and do not impose class-action waivers.

This section explains the policies, procedures and tools we use to moderate content, including where decisions are made automatically and where a person reviews them. We publish it because Article 14 of the EU Digital Services Act requires it, and because you deserve to know how the system that governs your account actually works.

Automated tools that run on activity:

• Policy rules. We run a deterministic rule engine over relevant requests — things like posting rate, repeated identical messages, suspicious sign-in patterns and upload characteristics. Rules either allow the action, slow it down, flag it for review, or block it. The engine follows written rules; it does not learn or infer.
• Upload scanning. Files you upload are scanned for malware, and images are checked against a list of hashes of content already identified as illegal. A match is quarantined and escalated to a person.
• Abuse throttling. Network addresses generating floods or high error volumes may be temporarily rate-limited or blocked. These blocks are always time-limited, expire automatically, and never suspend or delete an account.

Where a human decides. Warnings, mutes, timeouts, content removal, suspension and account termination are decided by a founder personally. Venoly has no separate moderation staff today; when that changes, this section will say so. Automated tools can restrict a single action, slow you down, or place an item in a queue — they do not, on their own, remove your content or end your account.

We apply these restrictions in a diligent, objective and proportionate way, with regard to your rights — including freedom of expression and access to information — and to the rights of everyone else using Venoly. Our full content rules live in the Acceptable Use Policy and the Code of Conduct. How automated systems are used is described in more detail in our Automated Decision-Making Disclosures.

Anyone — whether or not they have a Venoly account — can tell us about content they believe is illegal, using the form at venoly.nl/legal/report-content or by emailing legal@venoly.nl. You can also use the in-app report button on any message, user or server.

To help us act quickly, a report should include:

• an explanation of why you believe the content is illegal;
• where it is — a link, message ID, username or server name precise enough for us to find it;
• your name and email address, so we can confirm receipt and tell you the outcome; and
• a statement that you believe your report is accurate and complete, made in good faith.

You do not need to give your name when reporting content involving child sexual abuse or exploitation. Report those anonymously if you prefer — we would always rather know.

What happens next. If you gave us contact details, we confirm receipt without undue delay. We review reports in a timely, non-arbitrary and objective manner, and we tell you what we decided and why. If automated tools were used in handling your report, we will say so. Knowingly filing false reports is itself a breach of these Terms.

If we remove your content, restrict its visibility, suspend or terminate your account, or suspend a payment, we will give you a clear statement of reasons — unless the law forbids us from telling you (for example, where notifying you would prejudice a criminal investigation).

That statement will tell you:

• what we did, and how long it lasts;
• the facts we relied on, and whether the matter came to us via a report or was detected by us;
• whether automated tools were used in detecting or deciding the issue;
• which rule — a specific clause of these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, or a provision of law — the content or conduct breached, with an explanation of why; and
• how to challenge the decision.

Appeals. You can appeal a suspension, a termination, a posting limit or a warning from the Venoly team within 6 months of the decision, free of charge. When you can sign in, go to Settings → Account standing. When your account is suspended or terminated, the sign-in screen offers "Appeal this decision"; you can also go to venoly.nl/appeal and use the email address on your account, and we send you a code. If neither works, email appeals@venoly.nl. Any other decision we take, such as removing your content, is appealed by email to the same address within the same 6 months. You can appeal each decision once. You can withdraw an appeal until someone starts reviewing it, and file it again; a denied appeal is final. A person reviews every appeal, and where possible it is someone other than the person who made the decision. Venoly is a very small team, so that is not always possible; when it is not, the appeal record says so. We aim to decide within 14 days and tell you the outcome and the reasons by email, and in the app when you can sign in. If we got it wrong, we lift the decision: a suspension, limit or warning is removed, and a terminated account is restored (server memberships removed before 24 October 2026 cannot be put back). A ban or warning inside a server is appealed to that server's moderators, who can switch appeals off for their server. Using appeals does not affect your right to go to a court, or to complain to the Dutch regulator (the ACM, as Digital Services Coordinator for the Netherlands) or your own national authority.

Venoly is a micro-enterprise, so some Digital Services Act provisions that apply to larger platforms — such as the mandatory internal complaint-handling system and certified out-of-court dispute settlement — do not currently apply to us. We offer the appeals route above voluntarily, and we will adopt the full process if and when we grow past that threshold.

Venoly includes optional AI features: AI characters that can appear as members of a server and take part in conversations, a support assistant, and conversation catch-up summaries.

You will always be told when you are talking to an AI. AI characters carry a persistent, visible AI label, are visually distinguished from human members, and you are told before you first interact with one. We will never present an AI as a person. This is both our policy and our obligation under Article 50 of the EU AI Act, which has applied since 2 August 2026. AI characters are active on the platform.

• AI output can be wrong. Responses are generated automatically and may be inaccurate, outdated or misleading. Do not rely on them for legal, medical, financial or safety decisions. You remain responsible for anything you do based on AI output.
• What the AI sees. An AI character that replies is given its persona and the last 15 messages of the channel it replies in, from everyone in it; the support assistant and catch-up summaries are given the text they need. All three use Groq, a hosted provider in the United States. Which data goes where, and for how long, is set out in the Privacy Policy.
• No AI-only account decisions. We do not suspend, terminate or penalise an account solely on the output of an AI system. A person decides. See section 17.
• Where they take part. An AI character takes part only in a server it is a member of, and only in channels it can see and post in. The built-in characters are members of the official Venoly server; a server can add a persona from the marketplace. A character replies when someone mentions it and, now and then, on its own. Characters are on by default; the server's owner, or anyone with Manage Server, can switch them off in Server Settings, and Venoly can switch them off for a server. Wherever they are, they are labelled as AI.

Do not use AI features to generate illegal content, to impersonate a real person, or to produce material that would breach the Acceptable Use Policy. The rules that apply to content you write apply equally to content you generate.

Where things stand today. Venoly offers paid plans, but there is currently no in-app checkout: every paid plan so far has been arranged personally with the founders. The rules below apply to those arrangements now and to in-app purchases when checkout launches.

If you are a consumer in the European Union, you have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract — such as a Venoly plan — without giving a reason and without penalty.

Immediate access. Because a plan gives you access straight away, we ask you to (a) expressly request that we begin immediately, and (b) acknowledge that by doing so you lose your 14-day withdrawal right once we have fully performed. Both are required by law before that right can be waived, we ask for them separately, and we record your acknowledgement. If you do not give both, your 14-day right is unaffected.

Cancelling. A plan you cancel stays active until the end of the period you paid for and does not renew. There is no cancellation fee. Because plans are currently arranged personally, cancel by emailing support@venoly.nl; when in-app billing launches you will be able to cancel from Settings with one click, and it will be no harder to cancel than to subscribe.

To withdraw within the 14 days, email support@venoly.nl — any clear statement is enough. We refund within 14 days by the means you paid. Refund handling is described in our Refund Policy. Nothing here limits your statutory rights.

When we change these Terms we update the date at the top. For a change that reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we give at least 30 days' notice through an in-app notice and either an email or a banner on the website, before it takes effect. You may delete your account before then, with a pro-rata refund of any prepaid fees. Corrections, clarifications and changes required by law take effect on publication. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.

Every previous version is kept in our source-control history and is available on request.

• General support: support@venoly.nl
• Legal inquiries: legal@venoly.nl — see also our Legal Contact page
• Privacy & data requests: privacy@venoly.nl
• Appeals against moderation: venoly.nl/appeal, or appeals@venoly.nl
• Report illegal content (DSA Art. 16): /legal/report-content
• Security & responsible disclosure: security@venoly.nl

These addresses reach the two founders directly. We aim to reply within five business days, and sooner for security and account-compromise issues — put "URGENT" in the subject line for those.