Branchwriter

Draft — not legal advice

This document is an AI-prepared draft awaiting review by a qualified lawyer. Do not rely on it as a final statement of your rights or our obligations until the “DRAFT” line is removed from the source markdown.

Acceptable Use Policy

DRAFT — not legal advice. This document is an AI-prepared draft. It must be reviewed before public use. The rules here are intentionally short and human-readable; treat them as a living document.

Effective date: 23rd May 2026 Last updated: 23rd May 2026

This Policy applies wherever you use Branchwriter — the website, voting widgets, our Discord community, and any channels we operate. It supplements the Terms of Service.

1. What we want

Branchwriter is a reading community around a serialised stories. We want a calm, welcoming, spoiler-aware place where readers from very different backgrounds can talk about chapters and shape the next one. Two principles, in order:

  1. Be kind. Treat other readers and the author the way you would want to be treated. Disagree about the story, not about each other.
  2. Don't break the story. No spoilers outside spoiler channels; no botting; no scraping; no leaking paid content to people who haven't bought it.

Everything below is a specific instance of those two.

2. What you must not do

2.1 To other people

  • Harassment, hate speech, threats of violence, doxxing, or targeting anyone for who they are.
  • Sexual content involving minors, in any form, anywhere.
  • Sustained personal attacks. Sharp criticism of the story is welcome; sharp attacks on people are not.

2.2 To the Service

  • Automating votes, registrations, or any action that is meant to be performed by a human. Each account is one human voice.
  • Sharing your account with another person so they read for free on your subscription, or running multiple free accounts to vote more than once per chapter.
  • Scraping, mirroring, or systematic crawling beyond what robots.txt permits. Light crawling of public pages by general-purpose search engines is welcome. Crawling for AI training is not — see /legal/copyright §4.
  • Reverse-engineering, probing, or attempting to bypass paywalls, voting windows, or admin features.
  • Reporting false copyright claims to take down material you simply disagree with.

2.3 To the content

  • Reposting full chapters or substantial portions on other sites or platforms.
  • Selling, redistributing, or making available chapter content to people who have not paid for it.
  • Removing AI-assistance disclosures when sharing a quote.

2.4 In the Discord community

  • The same rules apply, plus:
    • Spoilers outside the dedicated spoiler channels are a fast-track to a temporary or permanent mute.
    • Self-promotion is OK in dedicated channels at moderator discretion. Drive-by link drops are not.
    • Bot accounts without prior approval will be removed.

3. The Vanguard

The Vanguard is a recognition programme for yearly subscribers (see /vanguard). Coordinated attempts to game the draw make you and your subscription ineligible and may lead to account termination without refund of the Vanguard-related portion of the year.

4. How we enforce

We try to enforce proportionately and transparently.

SeverityTypical response
Mild (spoiler in the wrong channel, a sharp post)DM warning from a moderator
Repeated or moderate (sustained nastiness, mild scraping, off-policy promotion)Temporary mute or content removal
Serious (harassment, content theft, payment fraud, harm to minors)Account suspension or termination without refund
IllegalAccount termination and, where required, report to authorities

For paid accounts we will, where the situation allows, give one warning before terminating, except for clearly illegal conduct or serious safety risks.

Please note that repeating offenses will be treated with increasing severity even though they would fall into lower categories on their own.

5. How to report a problem

  • A reader behaving badly: mention @moderator in Discord, or email {{ABUSE_EMAIL}}.
  • A bug or a content problem on the site: email {{CONTACT_EMAIL}}.
  • A copyright infringement claim: see /legal/copyright §5.
  • A data-protection concern: see /legal/privacy §7.

We aim to acknowledge reports within 2 business days.

6. Appeals

If your account is suspended or terminated and you believe we got it wrong, reply to the email we sent or write to {{CONTACT_EMAIL}} within 30 days. We will reconsider in good faith and reply within 14 days. This does not affect any statutory rights you may have.

7. Changes

We will update this Policy as needed. We will not give long advance notice for changes that tighten safety rules. We will give notice for changes that tighten your rights as a paying customer.

8. Contact

For abuse or moderation matters: {{ABUSE_EMAIL}}. General contact: {{CONTACT_EMAIL}}.