Platform rules

Terms of Use

Last updated: March 22, 2026

These Terms of Use govern your access to and use of How Are We All?, including anonymous daily responses, archived questions, published summaries, the public live board, short same-day pulse summaries, optional protected features, anonymous invite emails, cookies, anti-spam systems, post-submit theme perspective features, and the limits and responsibilities that apply when using the service.

1. Acceptance of these terms

By using How Are We All?, you agree to these Terms of Use and the related Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the site.

2. What the service is

How Are We All? is a text-based daily reflection service. It publishes one question each day, maintains question archives, publishes summary pages, provides explanatory topic pages, may show post-submit same-day perspective features such as "What people are feeling today," may show a public live board with aggregate same-day patterns and short recent pulse summaries, and may offer optional protected features such as streak saving, summary discussion posting, and anonymous invite emails.

The service is designed to support personal reflection and shared perspective through anonymous daily responses and public summary content.

3. What the service is not

• It is not a social network built around public identity or follower activity.
• It is not a file-sharing, messaging, or account storage platform.
• It is not therapy, crisis care, emergency support, or professional medical, legal, financial, or mental health advice.
• It is not designed for uploading confidential or regulated personal information.

4. Eligibility and lawful use

You may use the service only in compliance with applicable law and these terms. If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use the service.

5. Anonymous daily responses

Daily question responses are intended to be anonymous. The service stores the text of the response and the relevant date grouping, but it does not intentionally attach your name, email address, Google identity, or generated username to the stored anonymous response record.

You are responsible for the text you choose to submit. Do not include confidential, identifying, or highly sensitive personal information in a response.

6. Optional protected features

Reading summary discussions is public, and daily responses can be submitted anonymously. Google sign-in through Azure App Service authentication is optional and is used only for protected features such as saving a streak or posting a summary discussion message.

When optional sign-in is used, it opens through Google and Azure App Service authentication. The site itself should not ask you to type your Google password into a site form.

Protected features may change, be limited, or be removed at any time as the service evolves or abuse controls change.

7. Generated usernames and identity boundaries

When you use a protected sign-in feature, the service generates the same unique site username for your signed-in Google account each time. That displayed username is used for streak saving and summary discussion display only.

The displayed username is not the same as your real Google name or email address, and it is not attached to the stored anonymous daily response itself.

8. Data and systems used to operate the service

• Anonymous daily response text.
• Summary discussion message text.
• Broad derived theme labels created from some anonymous responses for post-submit perspective features.
• Daily aggregate theme statistics and rounded similarity displays used to power same-day perspective features and the public live board.
• Short automated same-day pulse summaries derived from anonymous responses and used to describe recent aggregate patterns on the live board.
• Email addresses submitted for the optional anonymous invite feature.
• Invite deduplication and unsubscribe-suppression records derived from invite email addresses.
• Date information needed for question grouping, summaries, and streak records.
• A stable authentication provider identifier used to generate the same site username for protected features.
• Cookies and local browser storage used for consent, sign-in, anti-spam measures, and one-response-per-day browser protection.
• Network and device information, including IP address and request metadata, used for anti-spam controls and service reliability.
• Service providers used for hosting, authentication, cloud storage, spam prevention, font delivery, and invite email delivery.
• reCAPTCHA, rate limiting, and related abuse prevention systems.

9. Data not attached to anonymous daily responses

• No real name attached by the service.
• No email address attached by the service.
• No Google profile identifier displayed publicly with the response.
• No generated streak or discussion username attached to the stored daily response record.

10. Your content and permission to operate the service

You keep whatever rights you have in the text you submit. By submitting content to the service, you grant How Are We All? a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, process, reproduce, display, moderate, and use that content as needed to operate the service.

That includes, for example, displaying your summary discussion message, using anonymous daily responses in aggregate summaries, assigning broad theme labels for post-submit perspective features, showing public aggregate live-board displays, generating short same-day pulse summaries, and retaining submitted text for moderation, abuse prevention, or platform reliability.

11. Acceptable use

• Do not use the site to harass, threaten, impersonate, or exploit other people.
• Do not post spam, promotional material, repetitive messages, or attempts to collect contact information.
• Do not submit unlawful, defamatory, abusive, deceptive, or malicious content.
• Do not include passwords, payment information, medical record numbers, or other sensitive personal data in responses or discussion messages.
• Do not use the anonymous invite feature to harass, spam, repeatedly contact people who would not reasonably welcome the message, or send invites to people you do not know in good faith.
• Do not attempt to bypass reCAPTCHA, rate limits, authentication, moderation, or other anti-abuse controls.
• Do not interfere with the service, scrape it aggressively, or use automation that degrades the experience for other users.

12. Moderation and enforcement

We may block, limit, remove, refuse, or stop displaying content or access when needed to protect the platform, respond to abuse, enforce these terms, or comply with legal obligations.

That may include removing summary discussion messages, excluding anonymous daily responses from moderation-sensitive workflows, suppressing future invite delivery to particular addresses, or restricting access to streak, invite, or posting features.

13. Cookies, advertising, and browser-side controls

The service uses necessary cookies and similar technologies for security, sign-in, spam prevention, one-response-per-day browser protection, and remembering cookie preferences. If advertising is enabled in the future, advertising cookies will remain optional and subject to consent.

14. Availability and changes

The service is provided on an as-is and as-available basis. We may change features, posting limits, URLs, question schedules, summary publication timing, or protected-feature requirements at any time.

Any similarity percentage, theme mix, live-board ranking, or related perspective feature is approximate and may be rounded, generalized, regrouped, or presented with representative theme slots rather than as an exact statistical readout.

Short live-board pulse summaries are also approximate, interpretive same-day perspective features and should not be treated as verbatim publication of individual responses.

We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability, error-free operation, or continued availability of any specific feature.

15. No professional advice or emergency service

Content on the site, including questions, summaries, and discussion messages, is for general informational and reflective purposes only. It is not medical, mental health, legal, financial, or other professional advice.

If you need immediate support, emergency assistance, or crisis intervention, do not rely on the service. Contact local emergency services, a crisis line, or a qualified professional.

16. Disclaimer and limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service and its operators disclaim warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, How Are We All? and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages arising from or related to your use of the site, your inability to access it, or your reliance on user-submitted content.

17. Contact

• General contact: [email protected]
• Help and support: [email protected]
• Feature requests: [email protected]
• Safety and trust concerns: [email protected]
• Privacy questions: [email protected]

18. Updates to these terms

These terms may change as the platform evolves. Material updates will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date on this page.