Terms of Service

1. Scope and acceptance

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) apply to your access to and use of the GlotTale website, accounts, reading features, creator tools, comments, reading lists, notifications, AI-assisted translation, and related services (collectively, the “Service”).

By creating an account, signing in, browsing, publishing content, or otherwise using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms. If you do not agree, you must not use the Service.

These Terms operate together with the Community Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Copyright / DMCA Policy. Where a specific policy contains more detailed rules for a particular subject, that policy controls for that subject.

2. Accounts and eligibility

You must be old enough under the laws that apply to you to enter into a binding agreement, and in all cases at least 13 years old, to create an account or use account-based features. To access adult or otherwise restricted content, you must also meet the applicable legal age or eligibility requirement in your location.

You must provide accurate, complete, and up-to-date account information. You are responsible for safeguarding your login credentials and for activity under your account. You may not transfer, rent, lend, or share your account without GlotTale’s prior consent.

If you become aware of unauthorized access, account compromise, or another security issue, please contact GlotTale using the contact details below.

3. Nature of the Service

GlotTale is a web fiction platform for readers and creators across languages. A single account may be used to read, write, publish, comment, follow, collect works, maintain reading lists, and discover stories through cross-language features.

The Service currently focuses on free features. If paid features, subscriptions, revenue sharing, or other commercial functions are introduced in the future, the applicable rules will be published or updated before those functions become available.

GlotTale may modify, suspend, or discontinue parts of the Service for product, operational, security, legal, or technical reasons. Where a material change affects user rights or obligations, GlotTale will provide reasonable notice.

4. User content and license

You retain the rights you lawfully hold in works, chapters, descriptions, comments, reading lists, profile information, avatars, and other content that you create, upload, or publish on GlotTale.

To provide the Service, you grant GlotTale a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, copy, display, transmit, format, translate, generate previews of, recommend, index, distribute, and otherwise use your content in a reasonable manner. This license is limited to what is necessary to operate, improve, promote, and provide the Service and related features.

After you delete content or close your account, GlotTale will handle the relevant content in accordance with applicable law, these Terms, technical limitations, and reasonable backup, audit, dispute-resolution, and security needs. Records that have been lawfully referenced, interacted with, commented on, saved, or included in reading lists by other users may not be removed immediately or completely, but GlotTale will seek to reduce continued display of your personal profile information where appropriate.

You represent and warrant that you have the rights or authorization required to publish your content; that your content does not infringe copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, reputation, trade secret, or other rights of others; and that your content does not violate applicable law or these Terms.

5. AI translation and cross-language display

GlotTale may use AI-assisted translation, summarization, retrieval, language detection, and formatting tools on works, descriptions, chapters, comments, reading lists, and other text content submitted by users so that users in different languages can discover and read relevant content.

AI translations may contain errors, omissions, tone shifts, or incomplete cultural context. Unless expressly stated otherwise, an AI translation is not a line-by-line approval by the original author and should not be treated as an officially edited human translation.

By publishing content on GlotTale, you permit GlotTale to machine-translate that content, display translations, and carry out the technical processing reasonably required to improve the reading experience. This permission does not change the rights you hold in your original content.

6. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service to:

• publish, distribute, or assist in distributing unlawful, infringing, fraudulent, threatening, harassing, hateful, discriminatory, abusive, or otherwise improper content;
• publish sexualized, exploitative, grooming, or other harmful content involving minors;
• impersonate another person, misrepresent authorization from another person, or use another person’s identity, marks, works, or information in a misleading manner;
• copy, repost, scrape, sell, redistribute, or otherwise use another person’s content without authorization;
• send spam, flood discussions, manipulate engagement data, mass-register accounts, or abuse the platform through automation;
• bypass, interfere with, or disrupt security, access controls, rate limits, moderation, recommendation, or other technical measures;
• upload malicious code, attack platform infrastructure, or attempt to access other users’ data, systems, or non-public information;
• use the Service in any way that violates law, these Terms, or rules expressly provided by GlotTale.

7. Content ratings and protection of minors

When publishing content, users must accurately apply the categories, tags, warnings, or rating tools provided by the platform. Content involving adult themes, strong violence, sexual content, traumatic themes, or other material that may not be suitable for all readers should be clearly indicated at publication.

GlotTale may restrict minors from accessing certain content. GlotTale may also adjust visibility, add warnings, restrict access, remove content, or take account-level action where content is inaccurately labeled, creates safety risk, or violates platform rules.

Content or conduct involving sexualization, exploitation, grooming, threats, extortion, or other serious harm to minors is strictly prohibited.

8. Copyright and infringement notices

GlotTale respects intellectual property rights. If you believe content on the platform infringes your copyright or other legal rights, please submit a notice under the Copyright / DMCA Policy.

GlotTale may, based on applicable law, platform rules, and the materials provided, remove or restrict allegedly infringing content, suspend access, limit accounts, or take other reasonable measures. Accounts engaged in repeated or bad-faith infringement may be restricted or terminated.

9. Moderation, enforcement, and account action

GlotTale may use human review, automated tools, user reports, and other reasonable methods to detect, assess, and address content or conduct that violates these Terms or platform rules.

Depending on the nature, severity, impact, and history of a violation, GlotTale may take actions including adding warnings, reducing visibility, limiting interactions, removing content, restricting publication, suspending features, freezing or terminating accounts, preserving evidence, and providing necessary information to rights holders or competent authorities.

GlotTale will seek to provide reasonable appeal or review channels where appropriate. However, where safety, legal compliance, rights-holder protection, minor safety, system abuse, or urgent risk is involved, GlotTale may take necessary action first.

10. Third-party services and links

The Service may contain links to or integrations with third-party websites, services, tools, or content. Third-party services are operated by their respective providers and are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. GlotTale does not guarantee the content, availability, security, or practices of third-party services.

11. Service availability and disclaimers

GlotTale will make reasonable efforts to keep the Service stable, secure, and available, but does not guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, delay-free, error-free, free from data loss, or free from security incidents. The platform may suspend or restrict the Service due to maintenance, upgrades, network issues, third-party services, force majeure, legal requirements, or security reasons.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. GlotTale disclaims express and implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, uninterrupted operation, error-free operation, content accuracy, and legality of user content.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, GlotTale will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, punitive, or consequential losses arising from the use of or inability to use the Service, including loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, business interruption, or third-party claims.

Nothing in this section excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

13. Changes to these Terms

GlotTale may update these Terms from time to time. Updated Terms will be posted on the platform and identified by the “last updated” date shown on the page. If an update materially affects your rights or obligations, GlotTale will provide reasonable notice.

Your continued use of the Service after an update means that you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the update, you should stop using the Service.

14. Governing law and dispute resolution

Subject to any mandatory protections under the laws of your location, these Terms and disputes arising from or relating to the Service are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The parties should first attempt to resolve disputes through good-faith discussions. If a dispute cannot be resolved, either party may submit it to a court of competent jurisdiction in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. This jurisdiction arrangement is non-exclusive and does not affect mandatory consumer protection rights under applicable law.

15. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, or need to contact GlotTale about account, content, copyright, privacy, or safety matters, please email: [email protected].