Terms of Service
The deal, in plain language.
Effective 16 August 2026. These terms are an agreement between you and Backread (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in the Republic of South Africa (“Backread”, “we”). By creating an account or using Backread you accept them. Our Privacy Policy explains what data we hold; it forms part of these terms.
1. What Backread is
Backread is a personal library for things you save — X bookmarks and likes, YouTube videos, articles and links — filed, summarised, and searchable. Some features read from your connected accounts; a small number write to them, and only when you deliberately run them (see §4–5).
2. Who may use it
You must be at least 13 years old (the minimum age of the platforms Backread connects to) and able to enter a contract. If you connect an X, Google, or Apple account, it must be yours.
3. Beta
Backread is in an invite-only beta. During the beta, features marked as included are free for invited testers. When paid plans begin, we will tell you before you are charged anything — beta testers will never be silently converted to a paid plan. Beta features may change or be withdrawn as we build.
4. Your connected accounts
When you connect X, you grant Backread permission to read your bookmarks, likes, follows, and lists, and to remove bookmarks on X — the removal permission is used only when you run Cleanup or archive a save yourself. Backread never posts, replies, likes, follows, or DMs as you. You can revoke access at any time in your X settings; Backread keeps working on what it already saved. The same principle applies to any other account you connect: read what you point us at, write nothing.
5. Cleanup
- Cleanup removes bookmarks from your X account after Backread has archived them. It only ever runs when you start it, after a preview and an explicit confirmation.
- X paces bulk removal; large piles clear in waves, not instantly.
- Undo is available for 24 hours and is also paced by X. Undo is best-effort: we cannot guarantee X will accept every restore.
- Bookmarks Backread has not synced are left alone.
You accept that running Cleanup changes your X account, and that a paced, best-effort undo is the safety net — not a guarantee of perfect restoration.
6. Saves and other people’s content
The posts, videos, and articles you save were made by other people and remain theirs. Backread stores copies for your personal archival use. When you choose to publish anything (a collection, a share, a snapshot), you are responsible for having the right to republish that content, and for taking it down if the author objects. We respond to legitimate takedown requests sent to the contact in §16.
7. Public pages
Three surfaces are public only when you choose: shared collections, shared posts, and Verified Snapshot pages. Publishing a collection reveals the saves in it, including summaries and tags — a public category is a window into your taste. You can unpublish at any time; unpublishing removes the page but not copies others may have made while it was public.
8. Verified Snapshots
A Verified Snapshot proves that a capture existed by a certain date, exactly as recorded — signed with Backread’s published key and anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain. It attests capture, not truth: it never proves the underlying post was accurate. The Bitcoin fingerprint is permanent and cannot be removed; the readable page exists while you keep it published, and is deleted with your account. Download the proof file if you need it to outlive the page. Do not present snapshots as something they are not; misusing them to harass or defame is a breach of §12.
9. AI processing
Backread files, summarises, and embeds your saves using AI providers (today: xAI and OpenAI) acting as processors. The content of your saves is sent to them for that purpose. We do not train AI models on your archive and do not sell your data. Details in the Privacy Policy.
10. MCP and API access
You can mint keys that let your own AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, other agents) read your archive over MCP. Anything acting with your key acts as you: keep keys private, revoke them if in doubt, and you are responsible for what your agents do with your data once it leaves Backread.
11. Paying for Backread
Paid plans are billed by Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record. Prices are shown before you pay; we will give notice before any price change affects a renewal. Cancelling stops future charges and keeps paid features until the period ends. Refunds follow the consumer protections that apply to you by law; beyond those, refunds are at our discretion.
12. Acceptable use
Don’t use Backread to break the law, to harass or defame, to violate X’s or any connected platform’s terms, to probe or overload the service, to resell access, or to hold yourself out as Backread. We may suspend accounts that do.
13. The legal hedges
Backread is provided “as is”. We work hard to keep it accurate and available, but we do not warrant that summaries are correct, that sync is complete, that undo will restore everything, or that the service will be uninterrupted. To the maximum extent the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms excludes rights that the South African Consumer Protection Act or other mandatory law gives you that cannot lawfully be excluded.
14. Ending things
You can delete your account in Settings; deletion behaves as described in Privacy §9 (archive and snapshot pages deleted; the contentless Bitcoin fingerprint cannot be). We may suspend or terminate accounts for breach of §12, with notice where practicable.
15. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the courts of the Republic of South Africa have jurisdiction over disputes arising from them.
16. Changes and contact
We may update these terms; material changes will be announced in-app or by email before they take effect. Questions and notices: privacy@backread.app. Security reports: security@backread.app.