Thinkbase - Privacy Policy

Effective Date: May 5, 2026

Last Updated: May 5, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how GROUNDING LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("Company," "we," "us," "our"), collects, uses, shares, and protects your information when you use the Thinkbase mobile application ("App," "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy should be read alongside our Terms of Service, which govern your use of the Service.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Information You Provide Directly

Account Information:

Email address (provided directly or via Sign in with Apple or Google Sign-In)
Name (if provided by your Apple or Google account during sign-in)
Username (chosen during onboarding)
Display name and bio
Profile photo
Date of birth (required for age verification)

User Content:

Votes you cast on debate answer options
Predictions you place (including point amounts committed)
Arguments you post in debates
Replies to other users' arguments
Debate questions you submit for review

Preferences and Settings:

Account privacy setting (public or private)
Push notification preferences (8 configurable categories)
Prediction history visibility setting
Leaderboard visibility setting
Interest categories selected during onboarding

Location Data (When You Choose to Share):

Location coordinates (used for nearby content and personalization)
Location search queries
Reverse-geocoded location name stored on your profile

Reports and Safety Actions:

Content reports you submit (including category, reason, and description)
Users you choose to block

1.2 Information Collected Automatically

Session Data:

Session start and end times, session duration

Content Engagement:

We collect engagement signals to personalize your experience and improve the Service:

Debate interactions — Which debates appeared on your screen, how long you viewed them (dwell time over 3 seconds), and votes or opinions you placed
Argument engagement — Arguments you upvoted, arguments that persuaded you to change your vote, replies you expanded
Discovery behavior — Search queries, search result taps, category browsing, scroll patterns, fast scroll velocity
Opinion behavior — Opinions placed, opinions abandoned (and at which step), point amounts committed
Social signals — Profiles viewed, authors tapped, leaderboard interactions, debates shared

Device Information:

Device platform (iOS or Android)
Device timezone (IANA format)
Push notification token (a unique identifier for delivering notifications to your device)

Precise Location (With Your Permission):

Your location when you grant foreground or background location permission, used to personalize your experience (e.g., surfacing relevant local debates). This is collected only when you have granted location permission through your device's operating system.

Diagnostics:

App performance timing data
Crash reports, error stack traces

1.3 Information We Do Not Collect

Advertising identifiers — We do not use IDFA, GAID, or any advertising IDs
Clipboard contents — We never read your clipboard
Health, financial, or biometric data
Cross-app browsing activity — We do not track your activity outside the App
Device fingerprints — We do not fingerprint your device
Cookies — The App does not use cookies

2. How We Use Your Information

2.1 Providing the Service

Creating and managing your account
Displaying your profile, opinions, and arguments to other users (subject to your privacy settings)
Processing votes, opinions, and point transactions
Delivering debate results and opinion settlements

2.2 Personalizing Your Experience

Generating personalized debate recommendations based on your voting and opinion history (see Section 4 for details)
Building a preference profile based on your engagement patterns and selected interest categories
Ranking arguments by relevance using semantic similarity

2.3 AI Content Analysis

Generating mathematical representations (embeddings) of debates and arguments for semantic search and recommendation
Detecting duplicate debate submissions using vector similarity and AI confirmation
Analyzing user-submitted debate questions for clarity, toxicity, and subjectivity
Assigning relevant emoji icons to debate answer options
Generating belief statements from your voting patterns to build your preference vector

2.4 Content Generation

Aggregating and analyzing publicly available discussion threads from third-party sources (such as Reddit) to identify debatable topics
Generating structured debate questions from identified topics using artificial intelligence
These AI-generated debates are created algorithmically and are reviewed before publication

2.5 Push Notifications

Delivering notifications you have opted into, including debate closing alerts, opinion results, argument replies, upvotes, and weekly digests
Using priority-based delivery tiers: immediate (P0), batched within 15 minutes (P1), and timezone-aware windowed delivery (P2)
Coalescing related notifications to reduce noise
You can disable notifications at any time through your device settings or the App

2.6 Safety and Integrity

Processing user reports and enforcing content standards
Maintaining block relationships so blocked users cannot interact
Enforcing age requirements (minimum age 13)
Rate limiting to prevent abuse
Detecting coordinated opinion manipulation

2.7 Service Improvement

Analyzing aggregated, de-identified usage patterns to improve the user experience
Computing trending scores and engagement metrics for debate ranking
Refreshing leaderboard calculations
Monitoring app performance and diagnosing crashes and errors

3. Information Visible to Other Users

The following information is visible to other users of the Service, subject to your privacy settings:

Always Visible:

Your username and display name
Your profile photo

Visible on Public Accounts (or controlled by privacy settings):

Your bio
Your credibility score, accuracy percentage, and opinion streak
Your arguments and replies in debates
Your votes on debate options
Your position on leaderboards (if "show on leaderboard" is enabled)
Your opinion history (if "show opinion history" is enabled)

Never Visible to Other Users:

Your email address
Your date of birth
Your engagement behavior and preference embedding
Your point balance (visible only to you)
Your reports and block list
Your analytics data
Your notification preferences

4. AI Processing and Automated Decision-Making

4.1 Recommendation System

The Service uses an AI-powered recommendation system to suggest debates you may find interesting. This constitutes automated decision-making as defined under certain privacy laws. Your recommendations are generated based on:

Preference embedding — A mathematical vector representation of your interests, built from your votes, opinions, arguments, and selected categories
Semantic similarity — How closely a debate's content matches your preference profile (using Voyage AI embeddings)
Engagement quality — Total votes, opinions, and engagement score of the debate
Recency — More recent debates are prioritized, with a 48-hour half-life decay
Urgency — Debates closing soon receive a boost
Exploration — A portion of recommendations includes content outside your usual preferences to promote discovery

4.2 Argument Ranking

Arguments within debates are ranked by relevance using vector similarity between the argument's embedding and the debate context. Arguments that have triggered vote changes ("persuasion signals") may be ranked higher. This ranking is automated and may not always surface the most relevant arguments.

4.3 Semantic Search

When you search for debates, the Service may use vector-based semantic search to find debates whose meaning is similar to your query, even if the exact words don't match. Your search queries are converted to embeddings for comparison.

4.4 Preference Learning

The Service builds a mathematical representation ("preference embedding") of your content preferences based on your engagement behavior, including: votes cast, opinions placed, arguments posted, categories browsed, and debates viewed.

This representation is stored in your profile and is used exclusively to personalize your experience on the Service. It is recomputed periodically (approximately every 8 hours). We do not use this data for purposes unrelated to the Service.

4.5 Content Pipeline

The Service uses AI to identify potential debate topics from publicly available online discussions, analyze them for debate suitability, generate structured debate questions, and review user-submitted questions for quality. These processes use OpenAI language models and are automated.

4.6 Duplicate Detection

When new debates are submitted, the Service uses two-stage duplicate detection: first comparing vector similarity of embeddings, then using an AI language model to confirm whether two debates are substantively identical. This prevents redundant content.

4.7 How to Influence Your Recommendations

Vote and predict on debates you find interesting
Browse categories that match your interests
Post arguments on topics you care about
Delete your account to fully reset your preference profile

4.8 Limitations

All AI-generated outputs — including recommendations, argument rankings, semantic search results, duplicate detection, and content quality assessments — are automated and may contain errors or inaccuracies. We make no warranty regarding the accuracy or reliability of AI-generated outputs.

5. How We Share Your Information

5.1 Service Providers

We share data with the following third-party service providers, solely for operating the Service:

| Provider | Data Shared | Purpose |

|---|---|---|

| OpenAI | Debate text, argument text, user-submitted questions. No user identity attached. | Content analysis, debate generation, quality review, duplicate confirmation |

| Voyage AI | Debate text, argument text, user preference data (without user identity) | Generating mathematical vector representations (embeddings) for semantic search, recommendations, and duplicate detection |

| Cloudflare (R2) | Uploaded media files (profile photos) | Cloud media storage and delivery via presigned URLs |

| Expo | Device push tokens and notification content | Push notification delivery |

| Supabase | Application data (as our database and authentication infrastructure provider) | Database hosting, authentication, real-time subscriptions |

| PostHog | User ID, screen views, and feature usage events | Product analytics to understand how features are used and improve the Service |

| Sentry | User ID, crash reports, and error stack traces | Crash reporting and performance monitoring to identify and fix bugs |

| Resend | Email address | Transactional email delivery (e.g., waitlist confirmations, invite codes, account notifications) |

We maintain data processing agreements with our service providers where required by applicable law.

5.2 What We Do Not Do

We do not sell your personal information. We have never sold personal information and have no plans to do so.
We do not share your data with advertising networks or data brokers.
We do not share your data for purposes unrelated to operating the Service.

5.3 Legal Disclosures

We may disclose your information if we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to:

Comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request;
Enforce our Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations;
Detect, prevent, or address fraud, security issues, or technical problems;
Protect the rights, property, or safety of GROUNDING LLC, our users, or the public.

If we are compelled to disclose your data by legal process, we will attempt to provide you with prior notice unless prohibited by law or court order.

5.4 Business Transfers

If GROUNDING LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any change in ownership or use of your personal information.

6. Data Retention

| Data Category | Retention Period |

|---|---|

| Analytics events (engagement signals, session data) | Automatically deleted after 90 days |

| Read notifications | Automatically deleted after 30 days |

| Orphaned system records (e.g., push tokens for deleted accounts) | Cleaned up daily |

| Active content (debates, arguments, votes, opinions) | Until you delete your account |

| Preference embedding | Recomputed every 8 hours; retained for the lifetime of your account |

| Debate and argument embeddings | Retained for the lifetime of the associated content |

| Crash reports | Retained for 90 days by Sentry |

| Reports | Retained for moderation purposes; deleted upon account deletion |

| Block relationships | Retained while the block is active; deleted upon account deletion |

| Date of birth | Retained for the lifetime of your account (age verification) |

| Opinion outcomes | Retained for the lifetime of your account (credibility calculations) |

7. Account Deletion

You may request deletion of your account at any time through Settings > Account Privacy in the App. Upon receiving your deletion request, we will schedule your account for purge. After a 30-day grace period (during which you may restore your account), we will within 45 days:

Delete your profile information (username, display name, bio, avatar, date of birth, preferences)
Delete all arguments and replies you authored
Delete all vote and opinion records
Delete all engagement records (upvotes, impressions)
Delete all block relationships and reports
Delete all analytics events, push tokens, and notification records
Delete all media files you uploaded from cloud storage
Invalidate your authentication credentials and all active sessions
Request deletion of your data from third-party service providers (PostHog, Sentry)

Residual copies may persist in encrypted backups for up to 30 days before being purged. Data that has been anonymized or aggregated such that it can no longer be associated with you is not subject to deletion.

8. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data:

Encryption in transit — All data transmitted between your device and our servers uses TLS encryption
Secure credential storage — Authentication credentials are stored on your device using iOS Keychain or Android Keystore
Database security — Row-level security policies ensure users can only access authorized data
Authentication — JWT-based authentication with automatic session expiration
Rate limiting — All API endpoints are rate-limited to prevent abuse
Access control — Uploaded media is stored with access controls that prevent unauthorized retrieval

No method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and applicable authorities as required by law.

9. Children's Privacy

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Our registration process includes an age gate that blocks account creation for users under 13, enforced on both the device and our servers.

If we discover that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will promptly delete the account and all associated data. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, please contact us immediately (see Section 14).

Users between 13 and 17 must have parental or guardian consent. Parents or guardians may contact us to request review or deletion of a minor's account.

10. International Data Transfers

The Service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your data will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.

We rely on data processing agreements and infrastructure-level safeguards provided by our service providers for international data transfers where required by applicable law.

11. Your Privacy Rights

11.1 All Users

Regardless of your location, you may:

Access the personal information we hold about you
Delete your account and all associated data (see Section 7)
Correct inaccurate profile information through your settings
Opt out of push notifications through your device settings or the App
Control visibility of your opinion history and leaderboard presence
Block other users to prevent mutual interaction

11.2 California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights:

Right to Know — Request disclosure of the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, the sources, the business purposes, and the third parties with whom we share it
Right to Delete — Request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions
Right to Correct — Request correction of inaccurate personal information
Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing — We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. No opt-out is necessary.
Right to Non-Discrimination — We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights

To exercise these rights, contact us (see Section 14). We will verify your identity and respond within 45 days.

11.3 European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland (GDPR)

If you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland:

Legal Bases for Processing:

Contract — Processing necessary to provide the Service, including account management, vote and opinion processing, argument delivery, AI recommendations, and feed personalization. These are core features of the Service that you request when creating an account.
Legitimate Interest — Processing for abuse prevention, service improvement, crash reporting, and aggregated analytics, balanced against your rights. You may object to processing on this basis at any time.
Consent — Processing of location data for personalization, which you may revoke at any time by disabling location access in your device settings.

Your Rights:

Access, Rectification, Erasure, and Restriction — Request access to, correction of, deletion of, or restriction of processing of your personal data
Data Portability — Request a copy of your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
Object — Object to processing based on legitimate interest
Withdraw Consent — Withdraw consent for location-based processing at any time
Lodge a Complaint — File a complaint with a supervisory authority in your jurisdiction

To exercise these rights, contact us (see Section 14).

12. Third-Party Links

User Content may contain links to external websites or services not operated by us. We have no control over the content, privacy policies, or practices of third-party services. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before providing them with information.

13. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide notice through the App or by email at least thirty (30) days before the changes take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

The "Last Updated" date at the top indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, want to exercise your privacy rights, or have concerns about how your data is handled:

GROUNDING LLC

17350 State Hwy 249, Ste 220 #31862

Houston, TX 77064

United States

Email: daniel@decisivemachines.com