Terms of Service

SQUIDS is a global social platform — where ideas surface. It runs at squids.co.za and everything connected to it. These Terms are the legal agreement between SQUIDS — our team, our company, everyone behind the platform — and you, the person using it.

Using SQUIDS means you've read these Terms and agreed to be bound by them. If you don't agree, please stop using the platform. We genuinely mean that in the most respectful way possible: we'd rather you know what you're agreeing to than discover it later.

We're a South African platform with servers in Sweden and users around the world, so we operate under several legal frameworks. South African law comes first — if there's ever a conflict, POPIA and South African legislation take priority.

South Africa (primary)

The Constitution of South Africa, 1996 (Section 14) — the right to privacy as a fundamental right. The POPIA (Act 4 of 2013) — our main data protection obligation. The Consumer Protection Act, 2008 — governs how we communicate with you. The ECTA (Act 25 of 2002) — covers electronic contracting and online operations. The Cybercrimes Act, 2020 — criminal offences related to unlawful access and data breaches. The PEPUDA — hate speech and discrimination.

Sweden and the EU (our servers)

Our databases run in Sweden, inside the EU. That means the EU GDPR (Regulation 2016/679), the Swedish Data Protection Act (2018:218), and the Swedish Electronic Communications Act (2022:482) apply to how data is processed on our infrastructure. The supervisory authority there is IMY — Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten.

United Kingdom

The UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018, Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, and PECR apply to UK users.

Australia

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the 13 Australian Privacy Principles, and the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 apply to Australian users.

United States

COPPA applies to under-13s. Our minimum age of 16 means COPPA's requirements are satisfied automatically.

You consent to South African courts as the primary venue for any disputes. Where your local law provides mandatory rights, those rights are preserved.

• SQUIDS / we / us / our — the platform and everyone behind it: the team, company, operators, affiliates, and successors.
• You / User — anyone using the Platform, registered or not.
• Platform — squids.co.za and everything connected to it.
• Content — anything you post, share, or upload: text, images, links, comments, replies, questions.
• Community — a group or topic space within SQUIDS organised around a shared subject.
• Personal Information — as defined by POPIA: information relating to an identifiable, living person.
• Moderation Action — any action we take in response to a policy violation, including warnings, mutes, suspensions, permanent bans, or community disbandment.

You must be at least 16 years old to use SQUIDS. This isn't a soft guideline with workarounds — it's a firm limit with no exceptions. Parental consent doesn't change it. Guardian supervision doesn't change it. No process or special permission exists for under-16s to access this platform.

Why 16 and not 13? Because SQUIDS contains open adult discourse, and we want to be genuinely responsible about who's here. Our limit exceeds the thresholds of COPPA (US, 13), UK GDPR (13), and most EU member states' national implementations of Article 8 GDPR.

If we have reasonable grounds to believe you're under 16, we'll suspend your account immediately without notice. If a parent or guardian discovers their child under 16 has registered, please email legal@squids.co.za — we'll act straight away.

When you register, give us accurate information. Your username and display name must be genuinely yours — don't impersonate anyone else. You're responsible for everything that happens under your account, so keep your password safe. If you ever suspect unauthorised access, contact us at support@squids.co.za immediately.

One account per person. If a previous account of yours was banned, creating a new one to get around that ban is itself a violation of these Terms and will result in both accounts being removed. We're not going to play whack-a-mole — we'll just ban both and note the pattern.

SQUIDS is a text-based social platform built for questions, opinions, debates, and ideas. It's where ideas surface — openly, publicly, globally. You can post, comment, follow topics and people, upvote, join communities, and interact with other users' content. Everything happens through public or semi-public posts — there are no private messages or inboxing features between users. All interactions are visible within the platform.

We can change, add, limit, or discontinue any feature at any time without giving notice. New features may come with supplementary terms. If you keep using SQUIDS after a change, you're accepting whatever the platform has become.

The SQUIDS user interface — menus, buttons, settings, notifications, all system text — is in English only. We don't currently offer translations, and there's no planned timeline for adding them. You can post in any language you like, including South African languages like isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho, and others. We genuinely welcome that. What we can't do yet is make the interface itself adapt to your language.

If you write in a language that's normally displayed right-to-left — Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi, and others — be aware that SQUIDS doesn't support RTL rendering at the interface level. Your text will display left-to-right. We're not hiding that; we just want you to know before you post.

You own what you create. When you post something on SQUIDS, you keep ownership of it. But for us to actually show it on the platform — host it, index it, display it to other users — you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to do exactly that. That licence lasts as long as your content is on SQUIDS and for a reasonable period after it's removed where technically necessary.

You're fully responsible for what you post. By publishing something you're telling us it's yours to publish, it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights, and it doesn't break any law. We don't pre-screen content before it goes live, but we can remove anything that violates these Terms or our Community Guidelines at any time. We don't endorse, verify, or take responsibility for what users post. Reading user content and acting on it is entirely at your own risk.

SQUIDS doesn't have an AI chatbot. There's no AI assistant built into the platform for users to interact with. We don't endorse AI-generated media, and we don't run AI features for your benefit.

That said, people use AI tools to write things, and we can't fully control that. What we can do — and what we reserve the absolute right to do — is remove any post we determine to be substantially AI-generated, at any time, without warning, without a prior notice, and without owing you any explanation or compensation. You accept this right unconditionally. If your post gets removed and it was AI-generated, that's why. If it wasn't, you can appeal through our normal process.

Disclose AI involvement where it could reasonably mislead readers about a post's origin. Using AI to mass-produce spam, impersonate real people, or create synthetic disinformation that's designed to deceive will get you permanently banned. We don't take that lightly — but we also don't make exceptions for it.

SQUIDS genuinely believes in free speech. Controversial opinions, unpopular views, uncomfortable topics — none of that is a reason to remove content. But free speech isn't unlimited, and these are the things we won't host under any circumstances:

• Content that is illegal under South African law or the laws of your country of residence.
• Hate speech that dehumanises people based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or national origin — as prohibited under PEPUDA.
• Threats of physical harm or violence against any person.
• Harassment, bullying, doxxing, or coordinated targeting of individuals.
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in any form — photographic, illustrated, or AI-generated. This is reported to SAPS, the FPB, and international authorities immediately and without exception.
• Content soliciting illegal acts — drugs, weapons, hitmen, or any other unlawful service. We will report these to law enforcement.
• Malware, viruses, spyware, or any other harmful code.
• Impersonation of any other user, public figure, or member of the SQUIDS team.
• Using ad-blocking tools, extensions, or any method to suppress or bypass advertising on SQUIDS.
• Reverse-engineering, decompiling, extracting, or sharing SQUIDS source code or application assets.
• Scraping platform data using bots or automated tools without our written permission.

Posts that look like potential scams won't automatically be removed on free speech grounds — we embrace open content even when it's suspicious-looking. But direct illegal solicitation is a different matter and will be acted on.

We can take moderation action — at any time, with or without prior notice — for any violation of these Terms or our Community Guidelines. That includes removing content, muting accounts, issuing warnings, suspending accounts temporarily, or banning accounts permanently. Attempted violations carry the same weight as completed ones: if we catch you trying to hack the platform or bypass a ban, the consequence is the same as if you'd succeeded.

We also reserve the right to permanently disband any Community on SQUIDS — regardless of how big or old it is — if that community is found to be consistently violating our policies or being used to organise prohibited conduct. Disbandment can happen without advance notice and without a vote from community members.

Banned users can appeal within 14 days by emailing support@squids.co.za with the subject "Appeal — [Your Username]". Appeals for bans issued under legal compliance requirements or court orders are not available. Where we're legally required to report conduct to authorities — SAPS, the FPB, or international law enforcement — we will, and we won't wait for an appeal to conclude before doing so.

The SQUIDS name, logo, visual identity, interface design, software, and all underlying technology are our property — or our licensors'. They're protected by intellectual property law in South Africa and internationally. You can't copy, reproduce, or commercialise any part of the platform without written permission from us. You can't reverse-engineer the code. You can't use SQUIDS trademarks without permission. If you strip our code and share it, you'll be banned and we may pursue legal action.

SQUIDS is an ad-supported platform. Ads are how we keep this free. As the platform grows, you'll see advertising within it — served by us directly or through third-party advertising partners. By using SQUIDS, you accept that ads are part of the experience.

Using an ad-blocker on SQUIDS is a violation of these Terms. We rely on advertising revenue to operate, and bypassing it is effectively taking the platform without contributing to what makes it possible. Detection of ad-blocking may result in restricted access or account suspension. We're not trying to be heavy-handed about this — just honest that it matters.

We're not responsible for advertiser claims. What advertisers say is on them. Don't make financial decisions based on ads you see on SQUIDS without doing your own due diligence.

SQUIDS uses third-party infrastructure to run. Our databases and authentication are hosted through Supabase in Sweden. Our traffic and security go through Cloudflare. Both are GDPR-compliant and process your data only under our instructions — they're data processors, not independent controllers of your information. More detail on both is in our Privacy Policy (Section 11).

Beyond infrastructure, SQUIDS may link to or integrate with other external services. We're not responsible for those services, their content, their availability, or their privacy practices. Interactions with any third party are between you and them.

SQUIDS does not have a private inbox. There is no direct messaging between users. Every interaction on the platform is through public or community-facing posts and comments. We say this upfront because it matters: if someone claims to have messaged you "through SQUIDS" in some private channel, that channel isn't part of our platform and we have no visibility into it.

If you've been scammed by another user through any means — on-platform or off — we can't investigate or mediate it, and we won't refund anything. What you should do is report financial fraud to your bank and local police. We'll cooperate fully with law enforcement when they contact us with a valid legal request. But we can't be a substitute for the institutions that actually handle fraud.

We do embrace free speech, and that means we don't remove posts just because they look suspicious or scam-adjacent. The bar for removal is direct illegal solicitation under South African law — not "this looks dodgy." Exercise judgment when you see something that seems too good to be true. It probably is.

SQUIDS is provided as-is. We don't guarantee it'll be available all the time, free of bugs, or that any particular feature will stay forever. We don't guarantee the accuracy of anything posted by other users. We're not liable for what people post, for scams perpetrated by other users, for AI-generated content that turns out to be wrong, or for decisions you make based on things you read on the platform.

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, we're not liable for any indirect, consequential, or incidental damages — lost profits, data loss, reputational harm, or anything of that kind — arising from your use of SQUIDS.

If your actions on SQUIDS cause us legal trouble — someone sues us because of something you posted, your account violated the law, or you infringed someone's rights — you agree to cover our reasonable legal costs and any resulting damages. This applies to your content, your conduct, and any way you used (or misused) the platform. It survives account closure.

Your privacy is covered in detail in our Privacy Policy. The short version: we're POPIA-compliant, our servers are in Sweden inside the EU, we use Supabase and Cloudflare as infrastructure providers, we don't sell your data, and you have real rights over what we hold on you. Read the full policy — it's worth it.

Trying to hack SQUIDS — or successfully hacking it — is a criminal offence under the Cybercrimes Act, 2020. So is distributing malware, intercepting communications, or attempting to gain unauthorised access to any account that isn't yours. We will report this to the SAPS Cybercrime Unit. If you find a security vulnerability, report it responsibly to legal@squids.co.za — don't exploit it.

You can delete your account anytime in Settings. We can terminate it anytime for policy violations, legal reasons, or operational decisions at our discretion. Either way, access stops immediately on closure. If we terminate your account, clauses that survive termination by their nature — liability limits, indemnification, intellectual property — remain in force. Creating a new account after termination is a violation of these Terms.

When you close your account, most of your personal data is deleted or anonymised within 90 days. Some data may be retained longer where required by South African or EU law — for example, records relevant to an active legal matter. Anonymised analytics data that can't be tied back to you may be kept indefinitely. Full details in our Privacy Policy, Section 16.

For everything legal — formal notices, POPIA data requests, IP matters, takedown requests — contact our Legal Department. For general support, use the support address. We respond to legal enquiries within a reasonable time.

These Terms, read together with the Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, and Cookie Policy, form the complete agreement between you and SQUIDS. If any clause is found unenforceable, the rest stay intact. Governing law: Republic of South Africa.