Terms of service

Who this agreement is with

These Terms of Service (the Terms) are a contract between you and [Legal entity name], the company that runs Dium (we, us). Dium is built by TAO.ai. Our registered address is [Registered address].

The Terms cover dium.io, the Dium app, the Dium partner API, and any Flow that a partner mounts inside its own website. By creating an account, joining a Flow, or using the API, you agree to the Terms. If you use Dium for an organisation, you confirm you can bind that organisation, and "you" includes it.

These Terms work together with our Privacy Policy, Community guidelines, Cookie Policy and Email policy. Business customers can also accept our Data Processing Agreement and, where offered, our Service Level Agreement.

Words we use

• Flow: a community on Dium (older name: Ladder). Each Flow has an owner.
• Wave: a thread inside a Flow. Types include questions, discussions, announcements, live sessions and job-style opportunities (executions).
• Page: a branded page inside a Flow for a sponsor, exhibitor, speaker or partner.
• Room: a group of sibling Flows that share members and direct messages.
• Owner and staff: the Flow owner and the organizers, admins and moderators the owner appoints.
• Your content: anything you post or upload, including Waves, replies, live chat, Page content, direct messages, polls and files.
• Partner: an organisation that uses our API or embeds Dium in its own site.

Who can use Dium

You must be at least [13 / 16 / 18: choose minimum age] years old, and old enough to agree to a contract where you live. If a Flow is for a school or program with younger members, the organisation running it must get any consent the law requires before it invites them.

You may not use Dium if we have suspended or banned you before, or if the law where you live forbids it.

Your account and sign-in

Dium does not use passwords. You sign in through Werify (werify.ai), our sign-in service, using an emailed code or a social login. Your profile name and photo come from your Moat profile (moat.page), which is the identity used across TAO.ai products. The terms of Werify and Moat also apply to your use of those services.

A partner (for example an event you registered for) may create your Dium account for you and sign you in with a one-time link. In that case the partner sent us your name and email, and you can still manage your account with us directly.

Keep access to your email account secure. You are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us at [email protected] if you think someone else is using it.

Flow owners and staff

If you create a Flow, you are its owner. You decide who can join (open, approval, invite or code), which profile types exist and what each may do, and whether the Flow is public or private. You and the staff you appoint moderate your Flow within these Terms and our Community guidelines. Our platform rules apply on top of yours, and ours win if they conflict.

Owners are responsible for having a lawful reason to invite people and for any promises they make to their members. If you run a Flow for a business and upload or collect personal data about members, you may be a data controller for that data, and our DPA applies.

Your content stays yours

You keep ownership of your content. We do not claim it.

You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display, format and send your content, only as needed to run Dium for you and the people you share it with: for example to show a reply in a Wave, put a Wave in a member's digest, or index it for search. This licence ends when you delete the content, except for copies other members already received (such as quotes in their replies), copies we must keep by law, and backups that expire on their normal schedule.

Public Waves in public Flows can be read by anyone with the link, and may be indexed by search engines. Choose a private Flow, a limited or invite-only Wave, or a direct message if you do not want that.

You confirm you have the rights to what you post, and that it does not break the law or anyone else's rights.

Direct messages

Direct messages (1:1 and group) are visible to the people in the conversation. They are not end-to-end encrypted. They are stored on our systems so we can deliver them, sync them across devices and show them in the right Flow or Room.

Dium staff do not read direct messages as a routine. We may review a message when someone reports it, when we investigate abuse or a security problem, or when the law requires it. If an account is suspended, its direct messages are hidden. Our Privacy Policy explains who can see what.

Acceptable use

Follow our Community guidelines. In short, you must not:

• Post illegal content, or content that harasses, threatens, or promotes hate against people.
• Share sexual content involving minors, or intimate images of anyone without their consent.
• Share someone's private information, including their direct messages, without permission.
• Spam, run undisclosed ads, or impersonate a person or organisation.
• Upload malware, probe or break our security, or get around rate limits, permissions or bans.
• Scrape Dium or use it to build contact lists, except through the partner API within your agreed scopes.
• Use Dium to send people email or messages they did not ask for.

Sponsors, exhibitors and Pages

If you run a Page for a sponsor, exhibitor, speaker or partner, you are responsible for what it says, including product claims, offers, perks and links. Label paid or promotional content clearly. Follow advertising and consumer law where your visitors live.

Page owners can see visit counts and events on their Page (views, button clicks, messages, downloads). [Confirm: Page owners never receive members' email addresses from Dium unless the member chooses to share them]. Sponsorship does not change a member's trust score or which answers are marked best.

Live sessions, opportunities and file sharing

Live sessions link to a video meeting on a third-party service such as Google Meet or Zoom. When you join the call, that service's terms and privacy policy apply. Hosts are responsible for how they run and record their sessions.

Opportunity Waves (executions) let members apply to job-style openings. Dium only carries the application. We are not the employer or recruiter, and we do not check listings or applicants.

Peer-to-peer file sharing sends a file straight from one member's browser to another's. The file does not pass through or stay on our servers, and we do not scan it. Only accept files from people you trust.

Trust scores and best answers

Dium shows a trust score built from activity: each best answer counts 3 points, each helpful vote 1, each live session hosted 5, and each answer 1. The score is a rough signal, not an endorsement or a verified credential. We may change how it works, and we will update the formula shown here when we do. If you think your score is wrong, write to [email protected].

How moderation works

We describe our moderation here because EU law (the Digital Services Act, Article 14) asks us to, and because you deserve to know.

• Reports. Anyone can report a Wave, reply, direct message, user or Page for spam, harassment, inappropriate content, misinformation or another reason. Flow staff and Dium staff review reports.
• Actions. A reviewer can dismiss a report, warn, hide or delete content, mute a member (remove them from the Flow), or ban them.
• Flags. Flow owners, organizers and admins can flag a member. When a member collects 5 flags, or one flag from an owner or organizer, the account is suspended automatically across Dium. Suspension archives the member's Waves, hides their replies and direct messages, and blocks their Moat profile on other TAO.ai sites. This rule runs automatically. A person reviews it if you appeal.
• Automatic archiving. Question Waves with no activity for 14 days, and help requests with none for 72 hours, move to the archive. Ask-me-anything and office-hours Waves close when their scheduled time ends.
• Notice and appeal. When we or a Flow's staff restrict your content or account, we will tell you what was restricted, why, whether it was automatic, and how to appeal [confirm that restriction notices are sent, and by which channel]. Appeal within 6 months by writing to [email protected]. A person who was not involved in the first decision reviews it, and can restore your account and content.
• Illegal content notices. To report content you believe is illegal, send the link, why you think it is illegal, your name and email, and a statement that your notice is accurate and made in good faith to [email protected]. We confirm receipt and tell you what we decided.

Our single point of contact for authorities and users under the Digital Services Act is [email protected]. Our EU legal representative is [EU legal representative name and address, or state that none is required].

Plans, payments and cancellation

Flows are free while they have fewer than 50 members. Past that, the Flow owner picks a paid plan: Pro 50 ($29), Pro 100 ($49), Pro 250 ($99), Pro 500 ($179) or Pro Max ($299, unlimited members). Prices are per Flow, per month, in US dollars, plus any tax. See Pricing.

Payments are processed by Werify Paywall, our payment provider, on its hosted checkout. Dium never sees or stores your full card number. Werify Paywall's terms apply to the payment.

Renewal: [confirm whether plans renew automatically each month through Werify Paywall, and on which date]. If plans renew, we will say so clearly at checkout, and you can cancel at any time from [cancellation path, for example Flow settings > Plan] in no more steps than it took to subscribe. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid month. Your Flow and content stay in place; if it still has 50 or more members, new members cannot join until it is back under the limit or on a plan [confirm what happens to an over-limit Flow after cancellation].

Refunds: [refund policy, for example no refunds for partial months except where the law requires]. We will give at least 30 days' notice before we raise the price of a plan you are on.

Partner API and embedding

Partners get API keys with scopes (for example issuing sign-in tokens or creating Pages). Keep keys secret, send them only in the X-Api-Key header from your server, and use them only within their scopes. You are responsible for the users you sign in and the data you send us about them, including having the right to share it. We may rate-limit, rotate or revoke keys that are misused or leaked. A separate written agreement may add to these Terms for partners.

Our property, feedback and copyright

Dium's software, design, name and logos belong to us or our licensors. These Terms do not give you any right to them beyond using Dium as intended. If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.

We respect copyright. To report content that infringes your copyright, send a notice under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act to our designated agent: [DMCA agent name, address and email, registered with the US Copyright Office]. Include the work, the link to the content, your contact details, a good-faith statement and your signature. We remove infringing content and close the accounts of repeat infringers.

Ending your use

You can stop using Dium at any time, and you can ask us to delete your account at [email protected]. Flow owners can archive or delete their Flow from its settings.

We may suspend or end your access if you break these Terms, if the law requires it, or if your use puts other people or Dium at risk. Unless the risk is urgent or the law forbids it, we will tell you why and let you appeal, as described in How moderation works. If we end a paid plan without cause, we refund the unused part of the month.

Sections that by their nature should survive (content licence for already-shared copies, payments owed, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnity and disputes) survive the end of this agreement.

Disclaimers

We work hard to keep Dium running and your data safe, but Dium is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we make no promises that it will be uninterrupted, error free, or fit for a particular purpose, and we are not responsible for content that members, sponsors or partners post. Nothing here limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be limited by contract.

Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows, neither side is liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or lost profits, revenue or data, arising from these Terms. Our total liability for all claims in any 12 months is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for Dium in those 12 months or [liability floor, for example US$100].

These limits do not apply to fraud, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or anything else the law does not allow us to limit. [COUNSEL: confirm carve-outs and consumer wording for EU and UK users].

Indemnity

If you use Dium for a business, you will defend and cover us against third-party claims that arise from your content, your Flow or Page, or your breach of these Terms or the law, including reasonable legal costs. We will tell you promptly about the claim and let you control the defence. This section does not apply to consumers.

Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of [governing law, for example the State of Delaware, USA], without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts in [venue] have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either side may seek urgent relief anywhere.

[COUNSEL: decide whether to add arbitration and a class-action waiver for US users]. Arbitration does not apply to consumers in the EU or UK, who may bring claims in the courts where they live, and who keep the protection of the mandatory law of their country.

Before filing a claim, please write to [email protected] so we can try to fix the problem within 30 days.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as Dium changes. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice by email and in the app before they take effect. Minor changes (such as clearer wording or new features that do not reduce your rights) take effect when posted. The date at the top shows the latest version. If you do not agree to a change, stop using Dium and, if you pay, cancel before the change takes effect.

General terms

• These Terms, and the policies they link to, are the whole agreement between us about Dium, unless we sign a separate written agreement.
• If a part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.
• You may not transfer these Terms without our consent. We may transfer them to a company that takes over Dium, and will tell you if we do.
• Neither side is responsible for delays caused by events outside its reasonable control.

Contact

[Legal entity name], [Registered address]. Legal questions: [email protected]. Account help: [email protected]. Security: [email protected].