Terms of Service

1The agreement

These terms are between you and CandyWrite, the operator of this site. By reading it, creating an account, publishing, or commenting, you accept them. If you do not, please do not use the service.

They work alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains how your data is handled.

2Your account

You need an account to publish, comment, or like. When you create one:

• Give accurate details, and keep your email address current — it is how you recover access.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Do not share your credentials, and tell us at hello@candywrite.com if you think someone else has them.
• One person or organisation per account. Do not impersonate anyone, and do not pick a username that suggests you are someone you are not.
• You must be at least 13 years old.

3Your writing stays yours

You keep full copyright in everything you publish here. We claim no ownership of your posts, comments, or images, and we will not sell your work or license it to anyone else.

To actually run a publishing platform we need your permission to do the obvious things: store your work, show it to readers, include an excerpt or preview in our newsletter, in social link previews, and in listings on the site. You give CandyWrite a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to do exactly that, for as long as the content is published here.

That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except where a copy has already gone out in an email we cannot recall, or sits in a search engine’s cache we do not control.

By publishing, you confirm the work is yours to publish, and that it does not infringe anyone else’s rights.

4What you may not publish

Keep it lawful and keep it human. Do not post content that:

• Breaks the law, or encourages someone else to.
• Infringes copyright, trademarks, or any other right — including passing off someone else’s writing or images as your own.
• Harasses, threatens, or targets a person or group, including on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or disability.
• Is sexual content involving minors, or depicts real violence for shock.
• Publishes private information about someone without their consent.
• Is spam, bulk marketing, SEO filler, or repetitive link-dropping.
• Contains malware, or links to it.
• Impersonates a real person, company, or publication.

And do not misuse the platform itself:

• No scraping, crawling, or automated bulk collection beyond what our robots.txt permits.
• No probing, load-testing, or attempting to reach parts of the system you are not authorised to reach.
• No inflating view, like, or advertising counts, whether by script or by coordination.
• No uploading anything but images, and nothing over the 5 MB limit.

5Moderation

We would rather explain than punish, and in most cases a note comes first. But where content breaks these terms, we may remove it, block an account from commenting, suspend the account, or delete it — and where something looks seriously wrong, we may act before asking.

If you think a decision was mistaken, reply to us at hello@candywrite.com. A real person will look again.

To report content, use the same address and include a link. If you are a rights holder reporting infringement, tell us what the work is, what infringes it, and confirm you are authorised to act.

6Comments

Comments belong to whoever wrote them, and the same rules apply as to posts. Authors are not responsible for what commenters say, and neither are we — but we will remove comments that break these terms. You can delete your own comments at any time.

7Advertising and sponsored content

Some pages carry advertising. Every slot is booked directly with us — there is no ad network involved, and nothing about you is used to decide which ad you see. Advertising is always visibly labelled as such.

An ad appearing here is not an endorsement. We do not vet an advertiser’s products or claims, and anything you buy from them is a matter between you and them.

Writers must disclose paid or sponsored arrangements inside the post itself. Undisclosed paid content is grounds for removal.

8The newsletter

The newsletter is opt-in, and the subscribe form will not submit without the consent box ticked. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in. We may include excerpts of published posts, which is part of the licence described above.

9Links to other sites

Posts, profiles, and ads link out to sites we do not run. We are not responsible for their content, their accuracy, or their handling of your data. Once you follow a link, their terms apply, not ours.

10Availability and changes

CandyWrite is free to read and free to write on. We work to keep it up and fast, but we do not promise uninterrupted service, and we may add, change, or remove features as the product develops.

If we ever have to shut the service down, we will give reasonable notice and a way to export your work first.

Keep your own copies of anything important. The platform is not a backup service.

11Ending the agreement

You can close your account whenever you like, from your profile settings. Deletion is immediate and irreversible: your profile, posts, comments, and likes go with it. Export what you want to keep before you do it.

We may suspend or close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms, or where keeping it would expose us or other users to legal risk.

The sections on your content licence, disclaimers, and liability survive the end of this agreement.

12Disclaimers

The service is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose.

Essays published here are the views of their authors, not of CandyWrite. Nothing on the site is professional, legal, financial, or medical advice, and we do not verify factual claims in posts before they appear.

13Liability

To the extent the law allows, CandyWrite is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost data, or lost goodwill arising from your use of the service.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, in which case those exclusions do not apply to you.

14Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service changes. The date at the top always shows the current version, and material changes will be announced on the site or by email rather than left for you to spot. Continuing to use CandyWrite after a change means you accept the updated terms.

15Contact

Questions about these terms, reports, and legal notices go to hello@candywrite.com. Anything about your personal data goes to support@candywrite.com.