Terms of service

01 Who can use it

You must be 18 or older. If you are under 18, do not use celestual. When we learn that somebody on it is under 18 we take the account off.

Use it as yourself. Prove a handle only if you hold that account, use only an email address you control, and do not let anybody else send a note, write a letter or a reply, or buy pings through your access.

You can sign in with a link we mail to an email address, a school address included, with a Google account, or by confirming your Instagram handle with one direct message to our Instagram account. A mailed link works once, for thirty minutes, and signs in the browser that opens it. Whoever can read an inbox can sign in with its address, so use one that only you can read.

We run celestual from the United States and offer it there. If you open it from somewhere else, that is your own decision and your own local law applies to you.

02 What the service does

• You send a private note to an Instagram handle. That person is never told, and nothing is ever posted, messaged, followed or liked on your behalf.
• Every note runs to a reveal, on Saturday at 9pm California time: the first one at least a day after the note is sent. If the person it is to has sent one to you, the pair is sealed from the moment the second note is sent until the next reveal, and you both find out that night, at the same moment. If not, neither of you ever does. A note that is not mutual is shown to nobody.
• A note that is not mutual lapses at its reveal. It stays listed to you for seven days, so that you can send it again, and then it is deleted. You can keep a running note for the following week, one week ahead at a time.
• Letting a note go before its reveal deletes it the same day and tells nobody anything. A note that has turned out mutual cannot be let go.
• Sending a note spends a ping. You have one free ping for every Saturday reveal, and you can buy more. Nobody can have more than ten pings in one reveal. Section 08 has the rules.
• A note can carry up to 280 characters of your own words. They stay sealed unless it turns out to be mutual. A note whose words carry a link, an email address, a phone number, a street address or a slur is not sent.
• After you send one you are shown a single fact about that handle: whether it has reached celestual yet. It says nothing about who has sent a note to whom, and nothing about anybody's feelings or activity.
• To send a note you first prove your own handle, by sending a one time code to our Instagram account from that account. A mutual is never revealed to an unproved handle.
• When it is mutual we tell both people on the night of the reveal, by email if there is an address on file, and by Instagram direct message inside the window Meta allows. That is the only message celestual ever sends anybody that names another person.
• Sending notes is rate limited, so the service cannot be used to sweep a list of names.

The numbers above are the ones in force today. We can change how the mechanic works as the product changes.

03 The wall

celestual carries a wall: short anonymous letters, each written to one Instagram handle or to a first name. These are its rules.

• The wall is public. Every letter on it, and the names the letters are written to, can be read by anybody, with no account.
• A letter never prints the handle it is written to. It opens with the writer's greeting, or with the first name on that handle's public profile, and it is filed under the handle so that the person it is to can find it.
• Anybody can write a letter. It is screened before it goes up: software reads it first, a person reads anything the software is unsure of, and a letter that fails the screen is stored and never shown.
• A writer who has confirmed a berkeley.edu address can post as a Berkeley student instead. That letter carries the Berkeley mark and goes up at once. It is screened where it stands, and it comes down if it fails.
• We limit how many letters can be written, and we can change the limit.
• A letter stands for thirty days and then comes off by itself.
• Anybody can heart a letter. A heart shows as a count, and nobody is shown who gave it.
• Anybody signed in, by any of the ways in section 01, can report a letter. Reporting takes it off at once, before anybody reviews it, and a person at the desk decides whether it goes back.
• The person a letter is written to, once they have proved that handle is theirs, can remove it from the wall, and can undo that within a day. They can also ask to be emailed when somebody writes them a letter. That mail says only that a letter was written, never who wrote it, and it carries a link that removes the letter.
• They can also take their whole name off the wall. Every letter written to that handle goes with it, the name cannot be written to again, no desk can put it back, and there is no appeal for them to answer. Taking the handle off celestual entirely does the same thing, for good.
• We do not tell anybody who wrote a letter, including the person it is about. A valid legal demand is the one thing that could compel us to produce what we hold about the account or device it came from, and the privacy policy lists what that is.

Replies

A letter can carry replies under it. Anybody can read them and like them. These are the rules for writing one, and you accept them before your first.

• Replying takes a confirmed school email address. The one exception is the person the letter is written to, once they have proved that Instagram handle is theirs: they can reply without one, and their replies are marked as theirs.
• Replies are anonymous to other people. Each writer is shown as a small creature with a one word name, the same all the way down one thread and different under the next letter, so nobody can follow a writer from one thread to another.
• Replies are not anonymous to us. We keep who wrote each reply, so that we can act on abuse, and we do not show it to anybody else, including the person the letter is about.
• A reply never names or tags anybody else. No @, no handle and no full name of anybody, whether or not they are on celestual.
• Nothing hateful, threatening or sexual about a person, nothing that exposes something private about them, and no contact details, addresses, timetables or anything that says where somebody will be.
• Every reply is screened before it appears. Software reads it first, and a reply the software is unsure of waits for a person and is shown to nobody but you until it passes. A reply that fails the screen is refused and kept in our records.
• Anybody can report a reply. A reply reported from three different devices comes off until a person reviews it.
• The person a letter is written to can stop new replies, leaving the ones already there, or put the whole thread away so that nobody else sees it, and open it again.
• We limit how many replies can be written, in a day and under any one letter.
• Abuse has consequences. We can take a reply down, take away your ability to reply or to use the wall, and where the law or your school's own rules require it, report what was written to your school.

04 What you write

You keep what you write. So that celestual can carry it, you give us a non exclusive, royalty free, worldwide licence to store, screen, reproduce and display it here, and to take it down. That licence ends when the content does, apart from copies that sit in backups for a short period and the record of a moderation decision.

By putting something up you promise it is yours to put up, that it is lawful, and that it does not carry anybody's contact details, address, timetable or whereabouts.

We do not check whether a letter or a reply is true and we do not adopt what it says. Letters are written by people about people, and reading one is not reading us.

We can refuse, hold or take down anything, at any time, without notice and without owing you a reason. What we refuse or take down is kept in our records rather than destroyed, so that a decision can be looked at again or reversed.

If something here infringes your copyright, write to contact@celestual.app with the work, where it is on celestual, and your contact details. We take down what infringes and we bar handles that make a habit of it.

05 What you agree not to do

• Use celestual to harass, stalk, intimidate, threaten, humiliate, out, or endanger anybody.
• Send a note to somebody under 18, or write a letter or a reply about them.
• Impersonate anybody, prove a handle you do not hold, or use an email address that is not yours.
• Write anything unlawful or defamatory, anything sexually explicit about a real person, or anything that says where somebody lives, works, studies, or will be.
• Try to work out who sent a note to whom, who wrote a letter or a reply, or who is on the service, including by sending notes to test names.
• Use bots, scrapers, automation or bulk entry, or reach the service through anything other than the site.
• Probe, overload, reverse engineer, or work around any part of the service, its screening, its rate limits, or the weekly limit on pings.
• Pay with a card or an account you are not allowed to use, or buy pings meaning to charge the payment back.
• Sell or resell pings, or sell or promote anything through celestual.
• Break Instagram's or Meta's terms while using it.

06 When we step in

We can suspend or bar a handle, hold or remove content, and refuse service, when these terms are broken, when the law requires it, or when we believe somebody is at risk. We can do that without notice, and while we are still working out what happened. We can also change or stop offering the service at any time.

When a handle is barred we keep a salted hash of it, because a permanent refusal we forget is not permanent. Nothing else about it survives.

07 Your data

What we hold, what we deliberately cannot hold, and how long any of it lasts is in the privacy policy. The short version: notes are matched on salted hashes, a note that is not mutual is shown to nobody and is deleted a week after its reveal, a letter comes off the wall after thirty days, and a card number never reaches us. The opt out below is one act and it covers everything. You are responsible for the handles and addresses you enter.

08 Pings and payment

Most of celestual is free, and it carries no advertising. The one thing we sell is pings, for anybody who wants to send more private notes in a week than the free one allows.

What is free

Reading the wall, writing letters, replying, hearts and likes, one ping for every Saturday reveal, the reveal itself, letting a note go, proving your handle or your school, signing in, alerts, taking a handle off, and deleting your data. None of it costs anything.

What we sell

• Pings, at $2.99 each, bought in any number from one to ten at a time. Prices are in US dollars. Each purchase is a single payment: there is no subscription, and nothing renews or charges you again.
• You buy pings for the handle you have proved, and they are yours alone. They cannot be passed to anybody else.
• A bought ping never lapses. It is spent only when you use it, and only once that week's free ping is gone. A free ping belongs to its week, and one you do not use does not carry over.
• A ping is spent when you send a note to somebody new, send again a note that was not mutual, or keep a note for the following week. Changing the words of a running note costs nothing, and so does sending the same note again in the same week.
• A ping comes back when you let its note go before the reveal it was spent on, or when a note you kept for a later week turns out to be mutual first. It comes back as what it was: the free one if the free one was spent, and a bought one otherwise. A note that ran to its reveal has used its ping, whatever the answer was.
• Nobody can have more than ten pings in one reveal, free and bought together.

What money cannot do

A ping buys the chance to send a note, never a reveal. Paying changes nothing about whether a note is mutual, when anybody finds out, or what anybody is told, and money can never reveal who sent a note. Nobody on celestual is told that you bought pings.

Paying

Payment is taken by Stripe, on a page Stripe hosts. celestual never sees or stores your card number. Stripe is told what is being bought and an opaque purchase number, and never which handle it is for. Stripe's own terms apply to the payment itself.

The total on Stripe's page, before you pay, is what you are charged. Where we collect sales tax or a similar tax, it is part of that total, and nothing is added after you pay. If your own bank charges a fee, for example for paying in US dollars, that is between you and your bank.

Delivery, refunds and chargebacks

• Pings arrive as soon as Stripe confirms the payment. If a payment went through and the pings did not arrive, write to us and we will put it right.
• A purchase is final once its pings are delivered, except where the law gives you a right to cancel or to a refund, and except as the next point says.
• Bought pings you have not used are refunded if you ask within fourteen days of buying them. Write to contact@celestual.app with your handle and when you bought them. The unused pings are taken back and their price is refunded, through Stripe, to the way you paid. Pings already spent are not refunded.
• If a payment is refunded or charged back, the pings it bought are taken back from what you hold, down to none. A note already sent is never taken back by a refund, a chargeback or anything else to do with money, because removing it would tell somebody it had been sent.
• If we change the price, the new price applies to purchases made after the change, never to pings you already hold. If we stop selling pings, the ones you hold stay yours to use.
• Taking your handle off gives up any bought pings you have not used. The deletion page says how to ask for a refund first, or after.

09 No guarantees

celestual is provided as is and as available, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non infringement. In plainer words:

• A mutual means two people sent each other a note. It is not evidence of anybody's feelings, intentions, identity, or safety.
• We do not check who anybody is beyond the handle proof, and we run no background check of any kind.
• celestual is not a dating service, a safety service, or a crisis service. If somebody is in danger, call your local emergency number.
• Mail and Instagram messages travel through companies we do not run, so we cannot promise that any of them arrives.
• The service can be interrupted or changed, and data can be lost.

Some places do not allow parts of this, so some of it may not apply to you.

10 Other people

celestual carries what other people write, and it tells two people about each other. Whatever happens between you and somebody else, here or after here, is between the two of you. To the fullest extent the law allows, you release Celestual LLC from any claim arising out of it, known or unknown. If you live in California, you give up the benefit of Civil Code section 1542, which would otherwise keep a general release from covering claims you do not know about yet.

11 Limit of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Celestual LLC, its members, officers, contractors and operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost profits, or emotional distress, arising out of celestual or out of your inability to use it. This holds even if we were told such damages were possible, and even if a limited remedy fails its essential purpose.

Our total liability for every claim together is limited to the greater of fifty US dollars or what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. These limits are part of the basis of this agreement. Some places do not allow them, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

12 Covering us

You will cover Celestual LLC and the people who run it against any claim, loss, damage and reasonable legal fees arising out of your use of the service, anything you put up, or your breach of these terms or of somebody else's rights. We may take over the defence of a claim you are covering, and you will not settle one in a way that binds us without our written agreement.

13 Not Instagram, not Meta

celestual is independent. It is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc. Instagram and Meta are their owners' trademarks, named here only to say what the product works with, and your use of Instagram stays subject to Instagram's own terms.

Everything else on this site, including the name celestual, the mark, the type system, the writing and the code, belongs to Celestual LLC. Use of it needs our written permission.

14 Disputes

This section changes how a disagreement between us is decided, so read it.

Talk to us first

Write to contact@celestual.app with your handle, what happened, and what you want. Most things end there. Both of us agree to try for thirty days before anything is filed anywhere.

Arbitration

If that does not settle it, any dispute between you and Celestual LLC is resolved by binding arbitration, administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator. It is held in Delaware, or by telephone, video or written submission if you prefer, and the arbitrator can award you anything a court could award you individually. The AAA's own rules decide who pays the filing and arbitrator fees. Judgment on the award may be entered by any court with jurisdiction.

One at a time

Claims are brought individually. No class action, no collective action, no representative action, and nothing consolidated with anybody else's claim, in arbitration or in court. Both sides give up a jury trial. A court, not the arbitrator, decides whether this paragraph holds, and if any part of it does not, the whole arbitration agreement drops away for that dispute.

What is left out

Either of us may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court, and either of us may ask a court for an injunction over misuse of the service or of intellectual property.

Opting out

Email contact@celestual.app within thirty days of first agreeing to these terms, with your handle and one line saying you opt out of arbitration. Nothing else about your account changes.

A time limit

Any claim has to be brought within one year of when it arose, unless the law where you live does not allow that.

The law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Where arbitration does not apply, a dispute belongs to the state or federal courts sitting in Delaware, and both sides consent to their jurisdiction. Nothing here takes away a consumer protection you hold where you live.

15 The rest of it

Changes

We can update these terms as the product changes. The date at the top moves when they do, and using celestual after that means you accept the new ones. If you do not, stop using it and take your handle off.

Ending it

You can stop at any time, and erase everything through the opt out. We can suspend or end your access at any time. Sections 04, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 carry on after either.

The usual

If part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest of them stands. Not enforcing something once does not give it up. You cannot transfer this agreement; we can, to whoever takes over the company. We send notices by email or by posting them here, and you agree to be reached that way. If you send us an idea for the product, we can use it and owe you nothing for it. Neither side is liable for a failure caused by something outside its control. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Celestual LLC about celestual, and the headings are there to help you find things rather than to change what is under them.

16 Contact

Celestual LLC, 8 The Green, Dover, Delaware 19901. contact@celestual.app.