Legal

Terms of service

These Terms are in effect. They have not yet been reviewed by an attorney. We plan to have them reviewed, and we will notify users in advance of any material change that follows.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of CivicView (the "Service") at civicview.app and the associated Android app (Google Play) and Windows app (Microsoft Store). By creating an account, signing in, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use CivicView (16 in the EU and UK). The Service is designed for U.S. residents and focuses on U.S. elected officials; access from other countries is permitted but the service is not tailored for them.

Citizen accounts requiring address verification (via ID.me) are only available to U.S. residents who can pass identity proofing. Rep + candidate accounts require manual verification by CivicView staff and are limited to actual elected officials, declared candidates, and authorized staff.

2. Your account

  • You're responsible for providing accurate information at signup. Misrepresenting yourself as someone else — especially as an elected official or candidate — is grounds for immediate termination.
  • You're responsible for keeping your password and 2FA recovery codes secure. We strongly recommend enabling 2FA on all rep, candidate, and admin accounts (and encourage it for citizen accounts).
  • You're responsible for activity on your account. Notify us immediately at civicview@civicview.app if you suspect unauthorized access.
  • One human, one account per identity type — you can hold a citizen + rep + candidate account simultaneously, but only one of each.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Post content that is unlawful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, infringing, or designed to harass.
  • Impersonate any person or entity — particularly an elected official, candidate, or their staff. Verified rep + candidate accounts go through a manual claim process for exactly this reason.
  • Doxx others (post their address, phone, or other private contact info without consent).
  • Scrape the Service, use automated tools to extract content, or run bots without prior written permission.
  • Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service or other accounts.
  • Engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior, including operating multiple accounts to amplify content or manipulate poll results.
  • Violate federal, state, or local election or campaign-finance law. CivicView surfaces public political discourse; it is not a vehicle for unreported coordinated political advocacy.
  • Use the Service to distribute malware, phishing, or other harmful code.
  • Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from any CivicView application.

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate accounts that violate these rules. See Editorial standards for the detailed moderation process, including how appeals work.

4. Your content

You retain ownership of the content you post on CivicView (your comments, polls you create as a citizen, posts you publish as a verified rep or candidate, images you upload). By posting, you grant CivicView a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, display, distribute, and adapt the content as needed to operate the Service — including showing it to other users, displaying it in search results, and storing backup copies.

This license terminates when you delete your content or your account, except for: (a) backups we may retain for a reasonable period for operational and legal compliance reasons; (b) anonymized or aggregated data that no longer identifies you.

You're responsible for the content you post. CivicView is not liable for user content; we don't approve it before it appears. We may remove content that violates these Terms or applicable law.

5. CivicView's content

The Service itself — the CivicView name, logo, software, design, AI-generated bill summaries, and curated editorial content — is owned by CivicView. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the Service without our written permission.

Public data we surface (Congressional rosters, bill texts, voting records, candidate-stated positions) is in the public domain or sourced under permissive terms. You can use that underlying data; you cannot scrape CivicView to obtain it.

6. Subscriptions and payments

CivicView's free tier provides access to public officials' pages, public discussion, and basic engagement features. The paid subscription ($5/month USD, not yet available for purchase) will provide additional features as described on the subscription signup page when it launches.

Subscriptions are processed by Stripe. The Android and Windows apps do not sell subscriptions.

  • Cancellation: you can cancel any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep access until then.
  • Refunds: we generally don't offer refunds for partial periods, but contact us if you believe your situation warrants one. Refunds are issued through Stripe to the original payment method.
  • Price changes: we may change subscription prices with 30 days' notice. If you don't accept a new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.
  • Failed payments: if a subscription payment fails, we may suspend paid features until payment succeeds. Your account and content are retained.

7. Termination

You can delete your account at any time at /account/delete. Two modes:

  • Archive (30 days): account is hidden; recoverable by signing in within 30 days. After 30 days the account is permanently purged.
  • Immediate: account and content (including polls you started) are removed immediately, along with your tracked items, saved items, notifications, device registrations and sign-in records. Your votes on other people’s polls stay in their totals with no link to you. We keep only a one-way hash of a verified citizen’s email and verification date (so a future signup doesn’t pay for re-verification), and any appeals you filed and records of moderation decisions about your content, as an audit trail. See the Privacy policy for details.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms, if required by law, or if your continued use of the Service would create undue legal or security risk. We'll provide notice when reasonable.

8. Service availability

We work to keep CivicView available, but we don't guarantee uninterrupted access. Planned maintenance, hosting provider outages, third-party API failures (Congress.gov, ID.me, Stripe, etc.), and unexpected incidents may take the Service offline. We don't offer service-level agreements (SLAs) on the free tier; paid features may include limited SLAs as disclosed at signup.

9. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING (BUT NOT LIMITED TO) MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

CivicView does not endorse any candidate, party, or position. AI-generated summaries are provided for convenience and may contain errors; always verify against the primary source when accuracy matters (legal filings, voter decisions, etc.). The official record — the actual bill text, the actual roll-call vote — is the source of truth.

We don't verify the accuracy of user-submitted content beyond the moderation process described in our Editorial standards. A verified citizen's opinion is not endorsed by CivicView.

10. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, CIVICVIEW AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES — INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION — ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS.

Some jurisdictions don't allow these limitations. In those jurisdictions, the limits apply to the maximum extent permitted.

11. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless CivicView, its officers, employees, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable attorney's fees) arising from your use of the Service, your content, or your violation of these Terms.

12. Dispute resolution and governing law

We hope you'll never have a dispute with us. If you do, please email civicview@civicview.app first — most issues resolve faster informally than through litigation.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, where CIVICVIEW, INC. is incorporated, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. If informal resolution doesn’t work, disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Orange County, Florida, unless the dispute qualifies for small-claims court where you live. Nothing in this section takes away rights that the law where you live gives you and that cannot be waived by contract.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We'll change the "Last updated" date at the top + bottom of this page. For material changes (anything that affects your rights, billing, or what we collect), we'll notify signed-in users via in-app banner at least 30 days before the change takes effect, and you can cancel your subscription before the new terms apply if you don't agree.

14. Other

  • Entire agreement: these Terms (plus the Privacy policy and Editorial standards referenced within) are the complete agreement between you and CivicView for the Service.
  • Severability: if any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
  • Waiver: our failure to enforce any provision doesn't waive our right to enforce it later.
  • Assignment: you can't assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them to a successor entity (e.g., as part of a corporate transaction).
  • No agency: these Terms don't create any joint venture, partnership, or employment relationship.

15. Contact

Questions, concerns, or notices regarding these Terms should be sent to:

Email: civicview@civicview.app
Mailing address: CIVICVIEW, INC., PO Box 621182, Orlando, FL 32862-1182
Subject lines that help us route faster: "Legal notice", "DMCA notice", "Privacy request", "Security disclosure".

Last updated: September 24, 2026