Political Deliberation US
Privacy notice
Effective 20 October 2026 · Version 2026-10-20
This notice covers politicaldeliberation.com, also called d’Hive US. The operator and controller of personal information is X-Up Limited. Contact us at mdmxup@gmail.com about privacy, account closure or content concerns. d’Hive is a project within HubTropolis.
What is public
This is a public political discussion service. Your username, display name, biography and published contributions can be read without an account, shared, accessed through our public API and indexed or copied by search engines and other people. Your real name is displayed only if you choose to reveal it. Use a pseudonym if you do not want your contributions associated with your name.
Your email address, password hash, individual vote records and the details you send in a moderation report are not displayed as public account information. Administrators can access records needed to operate and moderate the service. Vote totals, some moderation outcomes and public deliberation history are visible. A pseudonym does not guarantee anonymity: the content of a post may identify you.
Information we collect
- Account and profile: email, username, a securely hashed password when you use password sign-in, verification status, account dates and profile information you provide.
- Participation: proposals, arguments, evidence, comments, forecasts, metrics, votes and changes to votes, timestamps, moderation reports, account permissions and records of your terms and consent choices.
- Social sign-in: when you choose an enabled provider, its account identifier and the identity information it returns, such as email, name and profile details. Google sign-in requests basic profile and email information, not access to Gmail or your contacts. We do not receive your Google password.
- Technical and support information: session and security cookies, request and error logs, browser/request information and messages you send us. Hosting providers may process IP addresses and connection information.
- Public sources: names and public statements of political actors, source links and dates used in attributed issue summaries. These do not mean those people have registered or endorsed the site.
Why we use it
We use information to create and secure accounts, verify email addresses, recover access, publish contributions, count votes, maintain an intelligible discussion history, deal with reports and requests, and investigate abuse and technical problems. Required registration fields are needed to provide an account; you can browse public pages without registering.
Where UK or European data protection law applies, we rely on performance of our agreement with you for ordinary account services; legitimate interests in service security, moderation and maintaining reliable records; and legal obligations where applicable. We ask for explicit consent before you participate in ways that may reveal political opinions. We may also use political statements that their subjects have deliberately made public to describe public policy positions. Public disclosure is not a general permission to reuse somebody’s private sensitive information.
We do not sell account information, use it for targeted advertising or build advertising profiles of your political views. The site does not use advertising cookies or third-party audience analytics. Vote totals are calculated automatically, but we do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you solely by automated processing. AI-generated seed summaries are labelled; ordinary account registration does not send your posts to an AI service.
Political opinions and your choices
Contributions, profile text and votes may reveal political opinions, which receive additional legal protection. The participation form explains this and records your explicit choice separately from agreeing to the terms. You can browse without giving that consent.
You can withdraw consent in Participation preferences. This immediately pauses new contributions, votes and profile edits until you choose to consent again. Withdrawal does not undo processing already lawfully carried out or automatically delete previous posts. Contact us to request removal, anonymisation or restriction of existing information; we will assess what must be removed and whether any limited record must be retained for legal obligations or claims. You may withdraw individual active votes using the site controls. Their audit history is retained pending any applicable privacy request.
Cookies and social providers
We use cookies needed for sign-in sessions, protection against forged requests and account-related preferences. The session cookie normally lasts up to two weeks, and the security cookie may last up to a year; account settings and browser choices can affect this. You can clear or block cookies in your browser, but signing in may stop working. Social sign-in providers operate their own pages and cookies under their privacy notices.
Who receives information and where it is processed
Render hosts this US website and its database in Virginia, United States. Brevo delivers account confirmation, security and password-reset emails and processes recipient details, message contents and delivery records. An enabled social provider processes the sign-in you request. Our contact mailbox is hosted by Google; messages sent to the contact address are processed there. Authorised administrators and service providers have access as needed for their functions.
Information may therefore be processed outside your country, including in the United States and Europe. Provider data-processing terms describe their international transfer arrangements, including contractual safeguards where applicable: Render’s data-processing addendum and Brevo’s terms and data-processing provisions. Contact us for information about the safeguards relevant to your data. Different countries may provide different legal protections.
We may disclose limited information where legally required or reasonably necessary to deal with legal claims, protect people or investigate serious misuse. Public contributions are available to the public; we cannot control independent copies, external websites or search-engine caches.
How long we keep information
We retain account information while the account is active and as needed to resolve closure requests. Public contributions and deliberation history may remain after an account closes so discussions retain their meaning, subject to privacy and removal rights. We assess whether attribution should be removed or content deleted rather than treating account closure as permission to retain personal information indefinitely.
Security logs, reports, delivery records, backups and audit records are retained only as long as needed for their operational, security or legal purposes. Relevant criteria include the age and seriousness of an incident, unresolved complaints, legal retention duties and the provider’s backup cycle. The beta does not yet have a single automatic deletion schedule for all records. Backup copies may persist until rotated out; restricted backup data is not used for ordinary participation.
Your rights and requests
Depending on applicable law, you can request access, correction, deletion, restriction or a portable copy of your information. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests. You can withdraw consent as described above without affecting its prior lawful use. Rights may have lawful exceptions, but the public nature or technical design of the site does not itself remove them.
Email mdmxup@gmail.com with your username and request. Do not send passwords or identity documents unless we ask for a proportionate identity check through an appropriate method. We will respond within the period required by applicable law. You may complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office or the data protection authority where you live, where applicable.
Age, security and changes
Account registration and participation are for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly invite children to register. Please contact us if you believe a child has provided account information.
We use encrypted web connections, hashed passwords and access controls, but no online service is completely secure. Avoid posting private contact details, identity documents or sensitive information about other people.
We will update the date and version when this notice changes. Material changes to purposes or consent choices will be brought to affected users’ attention; a revised notice does not retrospectively authorise new uses of your data.