Terms of Service

1. Introduction and Acceptance

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of Essentiafoundation.app, the web application available at essentiafoundation.app (“the Service”), operated by:

Stichting Essentia Foundation
Langbroekerdijk 8-a, 3972 ND Driebergen-Rijsenburg
KvK 77870999
Netherlands

(“we”, “us”, or “our”)

How you accept these Terms

When you create an account, you are asked to check a box confirming that you have read and agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. By checking that box, you enter into a binding agreement with us. We record the date, time, version number, and the IP address from which you accepted.

By continuing to use the Service after we have notified you of changes to these Terms, you accept the updated version.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account and do not use the Service.

Age requirement

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If you are between 13 and 15, you may only use the Service with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to be bound by these Terms on your behalf. If you are under 13, you may not use the Service.

We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. See our Privacy Policy for our children's privacy policy.

2. What Essentiafoundation.app Is

Essentiafoundation.app is a curated podcast and video discovery platform with AI-powered search. It allows you to:

• Browse and watch a curated library of podcasts, video interviews, and essays
• Search for content using natural language queries (powered by AI semantic search)
• Save content to personal collections and add notes
• Bookmark content for later
• Participate in community discussions by leaving comments on content
• Track your viewing progress and resume where you left off

What Essentiafoundation.app is not

• Not a social network — Essentiafoundation.app is not designed for general social interaction. Community features (comments, voting) are focused on the content.
• Not a user-uploaded video platform — you cannot upload your own video or audio content. All media in the library is curated and managed by the platform.
• Not a payment processor — all payment processing is handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card details. See Section 7 for details on donations and subscriptions.

Availability

The Service is accessible globally. We make no representation that the Service is appropriate or available for use in any specific location.

3. Your Account

3.1 Creating an account

To access most features, you need to create an account. When you register, you must:

• Provide a valid, working email address that you own
• Choose a unique username that does not impersonate another person
• Create a secure password
• Be at least 16 years old (or meet the age conditions in Section 1)
• Agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy

You must provide accurate information. You may only create one account per person. Creating accounts for others, or creating accounts for purposes other than genuine personal use, is not permitted.

3.2 Keeping your account secure

You are responsible for:

• Keeping your password secure and confidential
• All activity that takes place under your account
• Notifying us immediately at support@essentiafoundation.org if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission

We recommend using a strong, unique password and not sharing your login credentials with anyone. We will never ask for your password by email.

3.3 Suspending or terminating your account

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete Account. See Section 8 and our Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you:

• Violate these Terms or our content standards
• Use the Service for illegal activity
• Engage in harassment, abuse, or threats toward other users or our team
• Attempt to circumvent access controls, security measures, or rate limits
• Provide false registration information
• Create multiple accounts to evade a suspension

For serious violations (illegal activity, security attacks, severe harassment), we may act immediately without prior notice. For less serious violations, we will generally give you a warning or a reasonable opportunity to correct the behaviour before terminating your account.

4. Acceptable Use

4.1 What you may do

• Use the Service to discover, watch, organise, and discuss content in the library
• Create a personal account for your own non-commercial use
• Share links to content on Essentiafoundation.app with others
• Use the AI-powered search and recommendations to find content you enjoy

4.2 What you may not do

The following are prohibited:

Account and identity

• Create fake accounts or impersonate any person or entity
• Create multiple accounts if you have been suspended
• Allow others to use your account, or use someone else's account without permission

Access and security

• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service, including other users' accounts or administrator functions
• Test, probe, or scan the Service for security vulnerabilities without our prior written permission
• Use automated tools (bots, scrapers, crawlers, spiders) to access, extract, or index content from the Service
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any part of the Service
• Distribute malware or any code intended to interfere with the Service

Content and conduct

• Post comments or content that is abusive, harassing, threatening, defamatory, or hateful toward any person or group
• Post content that infringes a third party's intellectual property rights
• Post content that is illegal, or that promotes illegal activities
• Spam, flood, or otherwise disrupt the community features

Commercial use

• Resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service or any content in it without our prior written agreement
• Use the Service or content in it for training AI or machine learning models without our prior written agreement
• Circumvent any paywall, subscription requirement, or access control that we implement

4.3 Consequences

Prohibited conduct may result in removal of the offending content, temporary suspension, or permanent termination of your account, at our discretion. We may also report illegal activity to relevant authorities.

5. Your Content

5.1 What is “your content”

When you use the Service, you may create and share content: comments on videos and podcasts, collection names and descriptions, personal notes, feedback submissions, and your profile username and avatar.

5.2 You own your content

You retain full ownership of content you create. These Terms do not transfer any ownership to us.

5.3 The licence you give us

By posting content on the Service, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, and distribute that content within the Service and for the purpose of providing the Service to you and other users. This licence is limited to operation of the Service — we will not use your content outside the Service for commercial purposes without your permission.

Your personal notes are private — they are only visible to you and are not displayed to other users. The licence above does not grant us any right to display your private notes to others.

5.4 Content standards

Content you post must:

• Comply with applicable law
• Not infringe anyone else's copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property
• Not be defamatory, harassing, or abusive
• Not contain spam or commercial solicitation
• Not contain malware or harmful code

We reserve the right to remove content that does not meet these standards, without notice.

5.5 Moderation

We reserve the right (but not the obligation) to review, moderate, and remove any user content that we believe violates these Terms or our content standards. Moderation decisions are made in good faith. If you believe content has been incorrectly removed, you may contact us at support@essentiafoundation.org.

5.6 What happens when your account is deleted

When you permanently delete your account:

• Your profile, collections, personal notes, bookmarks, and voting history are deleted
• Comments you have posted remain, but your username is replaced with “Deleted User” — the comment text is retained as part of the community record
• Feedback you have submitted remains, but attributed to “Deleted User”

This approach maintains the integrity of community discussions while removing your personal identity from the record. See our Privacy Policy — Data Retention section for full details.

If you would like a copy of all your data before deleting your account, use the Download Your Data feature in Settings before requesting deletion.

6. Intellectual Property

6.1 Platform content

All content and materials that Essentiafoundation.app itself creates or owns — including the design, layout, code, interface, curated metadata, editorial descriptions, essays written by Essentiafoundation.app, and the platform's own branding — are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other applicable laws.

You may not copy, redistribute, publish, or create derivative works from our platform content without our prior written permission.

6.2 Third-party content

The video, podcast, and audio content available in the Essentiafoundation.app library is owned by the respective content creators and is made available under licence arrangements with those creators. Essentiafoundation.app provides access to that content — watching it on Essentiafoundation.app does not give you any ownership rights over it.

6.3 AI-assisted features

Essentiafoundation.app uses artificial intelligence to power certain features:

• Semantic search: Your search query is processed by Mistral AI (France, EU) to find semantically relevant content in the library. Your query is sent transiently — it is not stored after results are returned.
• Discussion thread categorisation: When you post a comment, Mistral AI analyses the text to suggest a thread type and title. This is a convenience feature — you can ignore or change the suggestion. The comment text is processed transiently and is not retained by Mistral AI.
• Content recommendations: Related content is surfaced based on the content you are currently viewing, using vector similarity search on our own database. No personal data is involved.

In all cases, AI is used solely for content discovery. The AI does not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects on you (GDPR Art. 22). Your email address, username, and account details are never sent to external AI providers alongside your content.

For full details on how AI features handle your personal data, see Privacy Policy — Section 3.4.

7. Subscriptions and Payments

One-time donations

You can make an anonymous one-time donation to Essentia Foundation at any time from the /donate page. Donations do not grant any platform access or membership. Payment is processed by Stripe — you are redirected to Stripe's hosted checkout page where you enter your card details directly with Stripe. We never see or store your card details. Donations are non-refundable except where required by applicable law.

Subscriptions

Essentiafoundation.app offers a paid subscription tier that grants access to the full content library and member features. Subscription billing is handled by Stripe.

• The subscription price is €6.99 per month
• Subscription billing will be handled by Stripe — we will not store your card details
• You may cancel your subscription at any time from your account Settings
• Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you retain access until then
• We will give at least 30 days' notice before any changes to the subscription price or billing terms

For payment-related queries, contact support@essentiafoundation.org. For full details on how payment data is handled, see Privacy Policy — Section 5 (Stripe).

YouTube membership access

Holders of a YouTube channel membership tier that is explicitly designated as including access to Essentiafoundation.app may create a free account with full platform access at no additional charge. Only membership tiers that specifically list app access as a benefit qualify — general YouTube channel memberships that do not include this benefit do not grant platform access.

• Your platform access is tied to maintaining an active qualifying YouTube membership tier. If your membership lapses, is cancelled, or is downgraded to a tier that does not include app access, your platform access will be suspended accordingly.
• YouTube membership access carries no payment obligation to us — your YouTube membership is a separate arrangement between you and YouTube/Google.
• We reserve the right to suspend access where a qualifying membership is no longer active.

Foundation-granted free access

The Essentia Foundation may, at its sole discretion, grant free access to the platform to individuals (for example, researchers, collaborators, or applicants accepted through an open application process).

• Free access is granted personally and is non-transferable.
• Free access may be revoked at any time at the foundation's discretion, with reasonable notice where practical.
• Free access carries the same obligations under these Terms as paid or YouTube membership access — including acceptable use, content standards, and all other provisions.

8. Privacy and Your Data

Your privacy matters to us. Our Privacy Policy explains in full:

• What personal data we collect about you and why
• How we use and store your data
• Which third-party services process your data
• How long we keep your data
• Your rights under GDPR and how to exercise them

Summary of your data rights

Under GDPR (and UK GDPR), you have the right to:

• Access the data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Delete your account and personal data
• Download your data in a portable format
• Object to certain types of processing
• Withdraw consent at any time (e.g., newsletter subscription)

All of these rights can be exercised through your account Settings, or by emailing support@essentiafoundation.org. See the Privacy Policy — Your Rights section for full details.

9. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

9.1 The Service is provided “as is”

We provide the Service in good faith and work hard to maintain it. However, we make no warranty that:

• The Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular time
• Content in the library will always be available (content may be removed if licensing arrangements change)
• Search results and AI-powered recommendations will be perfectly accurate or complete
• The Service will meet every specific purpose you have in mind

We will give reasonable notice of planned downtime where possible.

9.2 Limitation of our liability

Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for:

• Death or personal injury caused by our negligence
• Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation
• Any liability that cannot be excluded by law, including your statutory rights as a consumer

Subject to the above, and to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law:

• We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential losses arising from your use of the Service (for example, loss of data due to a service interruption)
• Our total liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or (b) €100

For EU and UK users: Consumer protection laws in your country may give you additional rights that we cannot exclude. Nothing in these Terms affects those rights.

9.3 Your responsibility

You are responsible for your use of the Service and for any content you post. We do not seek broad indemnification from consumers. If you are using the Service for personal, non-commercial purposes, we will only seek to recover losses where your conduct was wilful or grossly negligent.

10. Dispute Resolution

10.1 Try to resolve it with us first

If you have a complaint or dispute about the Service, please contact us first at support@essentiafoundation.org. Most issues can be resolved quickly without formal proceedings, and we commit to responding to complaints within 30 days.

10.2 Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Netherlands.

Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Netherlands (rechtbank).

For EU residents: Regardless of the governing law, if you are a consumer resident in an EU member state, you always retain the protection of the mandatory consumer protection laws of your country of residence. EU consumers also have the right to use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform for resolving disputes relating to online services.

For UK residents: UK consumers retain the protections of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and other applicable UK consumer protection law.

10.3 No arbitration; no class action waivers

We do not require you to resolve disputes through binding arbitration, and we do not ask you to waive your right to participate in class actions. These types of clauses are not appropriate for a consumer-facing service operating under EU and UK law, and we believe access to courts is a fundamental right.

11. Changes to These Terms

We will update these Terms from time to time. When we do:

• Minor updates (fixing typos, clarifying existing policies without changing your rights): We will update the version number and date. We will not separately notify you.
• Material updates (adding new restrictions, changing your rights, changing the pricing model, or introducing subscription terms): We will (1) notify you by email at least 30 days before the changes take effect, (2) display a prominent notice in the Service, and (3) ask you to confirm your acceptance of the updated Terms when you next log in.

A “material change” includes: introducing payment requirements, significantly restricting your rights, adding data collection we have not disclosed before, and changes to dispute resolution or governing law.

If you do not accept a material change, you may delete your account before the effective date. Continued use of the Service after a material change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

12. General

Entire agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and us regarding your use of the Service. They replace all prior discussions, agreements, or representations.

Severability

If any clause of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid under applicable law, that clause will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or removed if modification is not possible. The rest of these Terms remain in full force.

No waiver

If we do not enforce a right or provision under these Terms on one occasion, that does not mean we are waiving that right permanently. We may enforce it on future occasions.

Assignment

We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to a successor entity (for example, if the platform is acquired), provided the successor agrees to be bound by these Terms and your rights are not reduced. We will notify you if this happens. You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else without our prior written consent.

Force majeure

We will not be liable for failure or delay in performing our obligations under these Terms if the failure is caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control — including natural disasters, internet infrastructure failures, government actions, or third-party service outages.

13. Contact

For any questions, complaints, or legal notices relating to these Terms:

• Email: support@essentiafoundation.org
• Response time: We aim to respond within 30 days.
• Postal address: Stichting Essentia Foundation, Langbroekerdijk 8-a, 3972 ND Driebergen-Rijsenburg, Netherlands

For privacy matters specifically, use support@essentiafoundation.org.