Commona

Legal

Terms of Service.

Plain language first, written for a civic platform operating across borders. The formal legal version is available on request and governs in case of conflict. Where local law gives you stronger rights, those rights apply.

Effective date: 1 January 2026. Last updated: 24 May 2026. Version 2.0.

Plain-language summary

  • Commona is a civic coordination platform — not a social network and not a marketplace for attention.
  • You own the content you post. You give us a limited licence to host and display it inside the platform.
  • Don't use Commona to incite harm, deceive, harass, scrape data, run political ads or impersonate institutions.
  • Most of the platform is free. Optional fundraising flows show every fee before you give.
  • You can leave at any time. We delete your personal data within 30 days; anonymised civic records may remain to preserve community memory.
  • Where local consumer or data-protection law (EU, UK, California, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Canada, Australia and others) gives you stronger rights, those rights apply automatically.

1. Your agreement with us

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and Commona Ltd. ("Commona", "we", "our", "us") and govern your access to and use of the Commona website, mobile applications, APIs and related services (collectively, the "Service"). By creating an account, accessing the Service or clicking "I agree", you accept these Terms and our Privacy Notice, Cookies Policy and Community Guidelines, which are incorporated by reference.

If you are entering this agreement on behalf of an organisation (NGO, council, cooperative or company), you represent that you have the authority to bind that organisation, and "you" refers to both you and that organisation.

2. Eligibility & accounts

  • Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum digital-consent age in your jurisdiction — 16 in much of the EU, 14 in South Korea, 13 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and most of Africa). Some features (stewardship, ID-verified roles, fundraising, payments) require you to be 18.
  • Accurate information. Use your real name and real geographic affiliation for verified roles. Pseudonyms are allowed for standard residents where local law permits.
  • One person, one account. Duplicate accounts, bots and coordinated inauthentic behaviour are prohibited.
  • Account security. You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for activity under your account. Notify us immediately at security@commona.app if you suspect unauthorised access.

3. Using Commona

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for lawful civic purposes consistent with these Terms. You may not:

  • Reverse-engineer, decompile or attempt to extract the source code of the Service, except where this restriction is prohibited by applicable law.
  • Use automated means (scrapers, crawlers, headless browsers) to collect data from the Service without our prior written consent.
  • Interfere with, probe or test the security of the Service.
  • Resell, sublicense or commercialise the Service or its content without a written partnership agreement.
  • Use the Service to develop a competing product or to train machine-learning models without our prior written consent.

4. Your content & licence

You retain all ownership of the talking points, comments, votes, projects, media, petitions and other materials you submit ("Your Content"). You grant Commona a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable (only to our infrastructure providers) licence to host, store, reproduce, translate, adapt for accessibility, display and distribute Your Content solely:

  • within the Service, to the audiences you have chosen (your Circle, your region, the public);
  • to produce anonymised, aggregated civic intelligence; and
  • to comply with legal obligations or enforce these Terms.

This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for cached or anonymised civic records as described in our Privacy Notice, and except where Your Content has been shared by other members under their own copies.

You represent and warrant that you own Your Content or have all rights necessary to grant the licence above, and that Your Content does not infringe any third party's rights or violate any law.

5. Community conduct

Don't use Commona to:

  • Incite violence, harassment, hatred, discrimination or terrorism against any community, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, nationality or political affiliation.
  • Sexually exploit or endanger minors in any way. We report suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to the appropriate authorities (NCMEC, INHOPE network, local law enforcement) and preserve evidence as legally required.
  • Publish private personal data of others without consent ("doxxing"), including precise location, ID numbers, financial details or medical information.
  • Impersonate another person, role, official, journalist, NGO, council or institution.
  • Post deliberate misinformation about elections, public health, humanitarian emergencies or judicial processes.
  • Coordinate brigading, vote manipulation or astroturfing.
  • Run political campaigns, paid promotion, behavioural advertising or influencer-style monetisation.
  • Harvest personal data, scrape the platform, or interfere with its security or availability.
  • Distribute malware, phishing links, fraudulent fundraising or pyramid schemes.

Full standards live in our Trust & Safety page and our Community Guidelines.

6. Moderation & enforcement

We use a layered model: community-elected stewards handle local context; a trained safety team handles cross-border, legal, child-safety and crisis matters; appeals are reviewed by a separate reviewer. Enforcement actions may include:

  • Adding a context label or correction.
  • Removing content or limiting its reach.
  • Temporarily restricting an account's ability to post or fund.
  • Suspending or permanently terminating an account.
  • Reporting to law enforcement where legally required.

You will receive notice of any enforcement action against your account, the reason for it, and a meaningful right of appeal to a human reviewer — as required by the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065), the UK Online Safety Act 2023, and equivalent transparency obligations elsewhere.

7. Intellectual property & DMCA

Commona, the wordmark, the logo and the Service software are owned by Commona Ltd. and protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual-property laws.

We respect the rights of creators worldwide. If you believe content on Commona infringes your copyright, send a notice with the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c) (DMCA), the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) or equivalent local law, including: (i) your signature; (ii) identification of the work; (iii) the URL of the allegedly infringing material; (iv) your contact details; (v) a statement of good-faith belief; and (vi) a statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate. Send notices to copyright@commona.app. We honour repeat-infringer policies and provide counter-notice procedures.

8. Payments, fundraising & taxes

  • Free by default. Joining Commona, participating in your Circle and filing talking points are free.
  • Transparent fees. Optional fundraising flows carry a platform fee (currently 2%) plus payment-processor fees, both disclosed before you confirm.
  • Receipts & taxes. Contributors receive a receipt; tax-deductibility depends on the receiving organisation's status under local law. Commona is not a tax advisor.
  • Chargebacks & refunds. Refunds follow the receiving project's published policy and applicable consumer-protection law (EU Distance Selling rules, UK Consumer Rights Act 2015, Brazil CDC, US state law, etc.).
  • Sanctions & compliance. We screen payments against OFAC, EU, UK and UN sanctions lists. We may decline or freeze transactions that present financial-crime risk.

9. Third-party services

The Service integrates carefully-selected third parties (mapping, identity verification, payment processors, email and SMS delivery, mobile-money rails). Your interactions with those services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies; we list our processors in the Privacy Notice.

10. Suspension & termination

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, create a safety risk to the community, or are required by law. Except in urgent safety or legal cases, we will give you notice and a chance to remedy. On termination, the licences you granted survive only to the extent needed to operate civic records as described in the Privacy Notice.

11. Disclaimers

Except as expressly stated, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not guarantee that civic outcomes (a petition succeeding, a project completing) will be achieved. Nothing in this section limits warranties that cannot be excluded under your local consumer law.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Commona, its officers, employees and partners will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data, reputation or goodwill, even if advised of the possibility. Our aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) USD 100.

Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations. If you are a consumer in the EU, UK, Australia, California or other jurisdictions with stronger consumer rights, this section applies only to the extent permitted by the law applicable to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes our liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot be excluded by law.

13. Indemnity

If you are using Commona other than as a consumer (for example, on behalf of an organisation or for commercial purposes), you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Commona from claims arising out of (i) your breach of these Terms; (ii) Your Content; or (iii) your violation of any law or any third-party right.

14. Disputes & governing law

Informal resolution first. Most issues can be resolved by writing to legal@commona.app. We commit to respond within 30 days.

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. If you are a consumer, you may also rely on the mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence.

Forum. Subject to mandatory local rules, disputes will be resolved in the courts of London, England. EU consumers may use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

No class actions where prohibited. Where permitted by law, disputes will be resolved on an individual basis, not as part of a class or representative action. This clause does not apply where local law (for example in many EU member states, Brazil and parts of Canada) preserves your right to collective redress.

15. Country-specific terms

The following supplemental terms apply if you reside in the regions listed and prevail over conflicting provisions above to the extent of any inconsistency.

European Economic Area & United Kingdom

  • You retain all rights under the GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
  • You have a 14-day right of withdrawal from any paid digital service, beginning when you confirm purchase, except where you expressly waive it to receive the service immediately.
  • Mandatory consumer remedies under Directive 2011/83/EU and the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 are not limited by these Terms.
  • Statutory representatives in the EU and UK are listed in our Privacy Notice.

United States (including California)

  • California residents have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the rights to know, delete, correct, limit use of sensitive data and opt out of "sharing".
  • Commona does not "sell" personal information as defined by the CCPA.
  • If you believe your account was wrongly suspended, you may seek review under the procedure described in section 6.

Brazil

  • Rights under the LGPD (Lei nº 13.709/2018) and the Marco Civil da Internet (Lei nº 12.965/2014) apply.
  • Our data-protection officer in Brazil is listed in the Privacy Notice.

Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and others)

  • South Africa: rights under POPIA (Act 4 of 2013) and the Information Regulator apply.
  • Nigeria: rights under the NDPA 2023 and NDPR 2019 apply; the NDPC supervises.
  • Kenya: rights under the Data Protection Act 2019 and the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner apply.
  • Ghana: rights under the Data Protection Act 2012 and the Data Protection Commission apply.
  • Local consumer-protection and tele­communication regulations are respected; we cooperate with lawful authority requests through documented MLAT or local-law channels.

Canada

  • Rights under PIPEDA, Quebec's Law 25 and provincial privacy laws apply.

Australia & New Zealand

  • Rights under the Australian Privacy Principles and the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 apply.
  • Nothing in these Terms excludes consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.

India

  • Rights under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 apply.
  • Grievance officer contact details are published in the Privacy Notice.

16. Changes to these terms

We will notify you of material changes at least 30 days in advance, in-app and by email where we have one. Material changes affecting your statutory rights will not apply retroactively. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance. Prior versions are archived and available on request.

17. Contact

Postal: Commona Ltd., Legal Department, 1 Civic Square, London, United Kingdom. Reach us through the contact page for anything else.