TideLine Terms of Use
1. About these Terms
These Terms apply when you use the TideLine app or tidelinenow.com (“TideLine”). TideLine is a local event discovery service. Questions: support@tidelinenow.com.
Our Privacy Policy explains how TideLine handles your information. It's a separate document.
2. Browsing and accounts
You can browse events, the map and event details without an account. An account lets you save events, give a thumbs up, mark an event Not Happening, send Tidepools and contribute Community Beacons.
You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email, or with Google. Keep access to that email or Google account secure, and don't use someone else's TideLine account.
TideLine is not designed or directed to children.
3. Accepting these Terms
Before you post a Beacon photo, send a Spotted photo, or show or change a Posted by name, TideLine asks you to accept these Terms in the app. We record which version you accepted and when. If we change these Terms in a way that matters, we'll ask you to accept the new version before you contribute again.
4. Community Beacons and Spotted photos (member contributions)
- A Beacon is a photo of an event flyer or sign that you send to TideLine, with the event name, date, place and times you confirm. A Spotted photo is a photo you send of an event that's already listed as a Community Beacon.
- You're responsible for what you send: the photo, the event name you confirm and your Posted by name.
- Only submit photos and other content that you have the rights or permissions necessary to submit and authorize TideLine to use under these Terms.
- Beacon is for telling people about real events that are open to the public. Don't use it for anything else.
- When you confirm a Beacon, it can become public right away as a Community Beacon, with its event name, flyer photo and any Posted by name. TideLine doesn't review each Beacon before it's public, doesn't verify the event's details, and doesn't confirm that a Community Beacon event is happening as described. TideLine may hold or decline a Beacon — for example, when the event is already listed or its place can't be matched — and doesn't have to publish every Beacon. Once a Beacon is public, TideLine may review it, act on reports about it, and hide or remove it under these Terms.
- Community Beacons are labeled as shared by the community. TideLine's other listings are based on source information TideLine collects and reviews.
- Spotted photos aren't shown to other members. TideLine uses them as private evidence and shows only how many members spotted the event.
- If you turn on Posted by, the name you choose appears on all your Community Beacons, including earlier ones, until you turn it off. A new or changed name appears right away, and TideLine may hide a name that breaks these Terms. Use your own name or a nickname — don't pretend to be someone else or an organization you don't represent.
5. Community Beacon rules
These rules apply to Beacon photos, event names, Posted by names and Spotted photos. Don't post:
- Sexual content — nudity, or sexually explicit, sexually suggestive or sexually exploitative material.
- Anything that sexualizes or endangers children, including child sexual abuse material. We have zero tolerance for this.
- Harassment, bullying or threats, including content that singles out a person to demean them.
- Hate — content that attacks or demeans people because of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or another protected characteristic.
- Violence, dangerous or illegal activity — content that promotes or facilitates violence, self-harm or illegal activity.
- Private or sensitive information — other people's private phone numbers, home addresses, ID documents, or financial or health information, or photos focused on identifiable people who haven't agreed to be shown.
- Impersonation or deception — pretending to be another person or organization, a misleading Posted by name, or an event you know is fake or misrepresented.
- Spam — advertising that isn't an event, repeated or bulk posts, or promotion unrelated to the event.
- Content that infringes someone else's rights, such as a photo you aren't allowed to share.
Also, don't misuse TideLine: don't use Report, Not Happening, Spotted or thumbs up to harass, mislead or manipulate; don't try to get into other people's accounts or TideLine's systems; and don't interfere with how TideLine works.
6. Your content and the permission you give TideLine
You keep whatever rights you have in the photos and details you send. TideLine doesn't claim ownership of them.
So that Community Beacon can work, you give TideLine a non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, copy and process what you send — including having our service providers read the flyer for us — to rotate, resize and re-encode a copy of your photo with camera information removed, and to show your published Community Beacon's photo, event details and (if you turned it on) your Posted by name in the TideLine app, on tidelinenow.com, and in Tidepools that members share. This permission is only for running TideLine's event listings.
The permission for your photos ends when they're deleted, including when your account is deleted, as described in the Privacy Policy (copies may remain for a limited time in our service providers' backups). If one of your Beacons was published, TideLine may keep listing the event's name, date and place, and that it came from a Community Beacon, without your name or photo; your permission continues for that limited purpose.
7. Reporting, hiding and moderation
- Report. You can report a Community Beacon, or the member who posted it, to TideLine by email at support@tidelinenow.com. Where the app offers Report on a Community Beacon's event page, you can report there too; you'll need to be signed in to use it.
- Not Happening tells other members you think an event isn't on as listed. It isn't a report to TideLine. To tell TideLine that content breaks these Terms, report it.
- What happens next. TideLine reviews reports. Reports about child safety or someone in imminent danger are handled first. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency services. We may not be able to tell you the outcome of a report.
- Hide Beacons from this member. Where the app offers it, a signed-in member can choose Hide Beacons from this member on a Community Beacon. While you're signed in to your account, you won't see that member's Community Beacons — the ones already posted and any future ones. TideLine doesn't tell you who the member is (beyond any Posted by name they chose) and doesn't tell them. You can undo it. Hiding a member doesn't hide events TideLine lists from other sources.
- What TideLine may do. To enforce these Terms or keep people safe, TideLine may hide or remove a photo, a Posted by name, a Spotted photo or a Community Beacon event, and may stop an account from posting Beacons or Spotted photos or using a Posted by name. We act on the specific content that breaks the rules where we can, and we don't remove event information TideLine has from other sources because of a member's Beacon. For serious violations — like the child-safety, sexual-exploitation or threat rules — we may stop an account from posting straight away; repeated violations may also lead to that. TideLine may also correct a clear factual error or typo in a published Community Beacon's event details; we don't rewrite what members express.
- Child exploitation. If we find suspected child sexual exploitation material, TideLine will prevent public access to it and handle it as applicable law requires.
8. Event information and other websites
Event details can change or be wrong. Times, prices, tickets and whether an event goes ahead are up to its organizer or venue — confirm anything important with them.
Ticket links, source pages, Nearby suggestions, maps and calendar links open other websites and services. They have their own terms and privacy practices, and TideLine doesn't control them. TideLine doesn't sell tickets.
9. Changes to TideLine
TideLine is a small, growing service. We may add, change or remove features and listings, and we can't promise TideLine will always be available.
10. Deleting your account
You can ask us to delete your account at tidelinenow.com/delete-account. We complete deletion within 30 days after the request has been verified. What's deleted, and what may remain, is described there and in the Privacy Policy. You can stop using TideLine at any time.
11. Changes to these Terms
We'll post any update here with a new effective date. If a change is material, we'll ask you to accept the new version in the app before you post a Beacon, send a Spotted photo or use Posted by again.