Terms of Service

1. You must be 18 or older

The Service is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, publish a story, or otherwise use the Service. There are no accounts for minors.

By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you are at least 18 years of age.

If we learn or reasonably believe that an account holder is under 18, we will terminate the account and delete the associated data. You may not use the Service if you have previously been banned, or if you're barred from using it under applicable law.

2. Your account

• You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for everything that happens under your account.
• You agree to give accurate information when you sign up and to keep it current.
• Tell us promptly at bark@zeph.dog if you believe your account has been compromised.
• You may close your account at any time. See Section 10 for what happens to your content.

3. Your content

You own what you write. What If Stories does not claim ownership of the stories, passages, images, or other material you create or upload ("Your Content").

License you grant us. To operate the Service, we need permission to store and display Your Content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for formatting and display purposes), publish, and publicly display Your Content solely for the purpose of operating and promoting the Service. This license is not sublicensable except to our hosting and storage providers acting on our behalf, and it ends when you delete Your Content or close your account, except:

• for copies retained in routine backups for a limited period,
• where Your Content has been shared or reposted by others in ways we can't control, and
• where we're required to retain it by law.

No AI training. No licensing to third parties. We do not use Your Content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine-learning or artificial-intelligence models. We do not sell, license, or otherwise make Your Content available to any third party for AI training, dataset construction, or content licensing purposes. This is a commitment, not a default setting — if we ever intend to change it, we will give affected authors advance notice and an opportunity to delete their content and close their accounts before the change takes effect.

Promotion. We may feature excerpts, screenshots, cover images, or titles of publicly published stories in Service promotion (for example, on a homepage, a social post, or a newsletter), with attribution to you. If you'd rather we didn't, email bark@zeph.dog and we'll stop.

Your responsibility. You represent that you have the rights to everything you publish, including any images, audio, or embedded media, and that Your Content doesn't infringe anyone's rights or break any law.

Public means public. Stories you publish with a public URL are visible to anyone with that link and may be indexed by search engines, cached, or archived by third parties. Don't publish anything you wouldn't want permanently public.

4. Mature content

Adult and mature content is permitted on What If Stories, subject to the rules in this section and in Section 5.

Tagging is mandatory. If a story contains sexual content, graphic violence, or other material intended for adult audiences, you must mark it as Mature using the tools provided in the story editor. This is a requirement, not a courtesy.

Tag at the story level before publishing. If a story develops mature content after publication, update the tag immediately.

Consequences of mistagging. Publishing mature content without the Mature tag is a violation of these Terms. We may re-tag the story ourselves, unpublish it, restrict your ability to publish, or suspend your account, depending on severity and repetition. Deliberately mistagging to evade filters is treated as a serious violation and may result in immediate termination.

Hard limits apply regardless of tagging. The Mature tag permits adult content. It does not permit anything listed in Section 5 — no tag makes prohibited content acceptable.

5. Prohibited content and conduct

You agree not to use the Service to create, publish, or distribute content that:

• sexualizes minors in any way — this includes written fiction, illustration, AI-generated imagery, and any depiction of a person under 18 in a sexual or eroticized context, regardless of stated ages, fictional framing, or Mature tagging. This is an absolute prohibition and results in immediate termination and, where required, a report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or law enforcement;
• is otherwise unlawful, or promotes or facilitates illegal activity;
• harasses, threatens, defames, or targets a real individual or group;
• depicts real, identifiable people in sexual content without their consent;
• incites violence, or promotes terrorism, hate, or violent extremism;
• infringes copyright, trademark, publicity, or privacy rights;
• contains malware, phishing, or malicious code;
• is spam, or is published to manipulate discovery, rankings, or metrics.

You also agree not to:

• scrape, crawl, or bulk-download the Service except as permitted by our robots.txt;
• use the Service or its content to train, fine-tune, or build machine-learning models, or to construct datasets, without our express written permission;
• reverse-engineer, disrupt, or attempt to circumvent security or rate limits;
• access another user's account, or impersonate another person or entity;
• resell or sublicense access to the Service.

6. Moderation and enforcement

We may — but are not obligated to — review content on the Service. If we believe content or conduct violates these Terms, we may remove or restrict content, re-tag it, limit its discovery, suspend or terminate accounts, and report to law enforcement where required.

Where practical, we'll tell you what happened and give you a way to appeal by writing to bark@zeph.dog. In urgent cases — legal risk, safety risk, ongoing abuse — we may act first and explain after.

7. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at bark@zeph.dog including:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the copyrighted work you claim was infringed;
3. the URL of the allegedly infringing material;
4. your name, address, phone number, and email;
5. a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
6. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you're the owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

We'll remove or disable access to material in response to valid notices, and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. If you believe your content was removed in error, you may submit a counter-notice to the same address.

8. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party providers for hosting, authentication, database, and storage. Stories may embed third-party media (images, video, audio) hosted elsewhere. We're not responsible for third-party content, sites, or services, and your use of them is governed by their own terms. Current providers are listed in our Privacy Policy.

9. Availability, changes, and beta features

The Service is offered on an ongoing but not guaranteed basis. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of it, and may release features that are experimental or incomplete. Beta features may change or disappear without notice.

Export your work. You are strongly encouraged to keep your own copies of anything you care about. We provide export tools where we can, but we don't guarantee permanent availability of the Service or of your data.

10. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. On deletion, we remove or de-identify your account and published stories within 30 days, subject to backup retention and legal obligations described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your access at any time for violation of these Terms, for legal reasons, or if the Service is discontinued. Sections 3 (license survival and the no-AI-training commitment), 11, 12, 13, and 15 survive termination.

11. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DATA WILL NOT BE LOST.

We are not responsible for user-generated content. Views expressed in stories are those of their authors. Fiction on this Service may contain mature themes; you use it at your own discretion.

12. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WHAT IF STORIES AND ITS OPERATORS, CONTRIBUTORS, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR CONTENT, ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM, OR (B) USD $100.

Some jurisdictions don't allow these limitations, in which case they apply to the fullest extent permitted.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless What If Stories and its operators from any claims, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of Your Content, your use of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or of anyone's rights.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. If changes are material, we'll give notice by email or in-product at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after that date means you accept the updated Terms.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. You and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Orange County, Florida, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

16. Miscellaneous

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us regarding the Service.
• Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a provision isn't a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

17. Contact

What If Stories bark@zeph.dog