Acceptable Use Policy

Quick summary

Be a good citizen. Don't abuse the service, don't present AI output as original journalism, don't harm others. Full details below.

What's permitted

Bytes is for personal, non-commercial news consumption. You can:

• Read your curated feed on any device you own
• Save bookmarks for your own future reference
• Share article links with friends (the source URL, not the summary)
• Reference Bytes in academic or journalistic writing with attribution

AI-specific rules

Because much of our content is AI-generated, special rules apply:

• Don't present AI summaries as your own journalism. Republishing Bytes summaries to your blog, newsletter, or social account as original reporting is plagiarism and violates these terms.
• Attribute the original source, not Bytes. If you cite a news story you found via Bytes, link to and credit the original publisher.
• Don't use AI summaries as ground truth. Summaries can contain errors. Always verify with the source before making decisions.
• Don't train competing AI models on Bytes output. The curated database is proprietary and may not be used as training data.

Prohibited uses

You may not:

• Scrape or download at scale. Automated tools, scrapers, crawlers, or bulk downloading are prohibited without written permission.
• Bypass rate limits. Our rate limits protect the service for everyone. Circumventing them (e.g., via multiple accounts, VPN rotation) is grounds for immediate termination.
• Reverse-engineer.Don't decompile, disassemble, or attempt to extract source code, AI prompts, or proprietary algorithms.
• Harass or harm others.Don't use display names or any user-visible fields to harass, threaten, or defame.
• Attempt to break security.Don't probe for vulnerabilities, exploit bugs, or access data you're not authorized to. Responsible disclosure is welcome via our contact page.
• Impersonate others.Don't use a display name or email that impersonates real people or organizations.
• Spam.Don't create multiple accounts for coordinated activity or submit spam via the contact form.

Rate limits

The Service enforces the following limits. These are technical enforcement of the “no abuse” principle:

• Feed syncs — 6 manual syncs per user per hour
• Feed fetches — 30 requests per minute per user
• Engagement (likes) — 60 per minute per user
• Bookmark operations — 30 per minute per user
• Preference updates — 10 per minute per user
• Contact form — 3 submissions per hour per IP

Exceeding these limits returns a 429 HTTP response with rate-limit headers. Deliberate and repeated violations may result in account termination.

Reporting abuse or errors

If you see something wrong, please tell us:

• Incorrect or harmful AI summary — use the contact formwith subject “Bug Report.” Include the article ID and what's wrong.
• Another user behaving badly — currently Bytes has no user-to-user features, but if this changes, reports go to the same contact form.
• Security vulnerabilities— contact form with subject “Bug Report” and “security” in the message. We treat these urgently.

Enforcement

We may, at our discretion and without refund: warn you, suspend your account temporarily, terminate your account permanently, or refer serious violations to law enforcement. We try to be fair — genuine mistakes get a warning; deliberate abuse does not.

Questions?

Unsure whether something is okay? Ask first via the contact page. Better to check than get suspended.