This is a working draft describing what Soki actually collects and does today. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer — have it checked before you rely on it as a binding legal document.
What we collect
- Account info: your email address and password (stored hashed, never in plain text).
- Profile info you choose to add: display name, bio, occupation, school, city/region, birthday, age band, avatar and cover photo.
- Content you post: text, photos, videos, and stories, plus comments, reactions, and messages you send.
- Relationship data: friends, follows, blocks, mutes, and restricts — who you connect with and who you don’t.
- Coarse location: if you set a city in your profile, it powers the Nearby tab in Discover. If you tap “Use my current location”, your device’s coordinates are sent once to our mapping provider (Mapbox) to find your city; we keep only the city and region you then confirm, never the coordinates. We do not collect or store precise GPS location.
- Family accounts: only an identity-verified adult can set up a family and create child accounts, must declare that they are the child’s parent or legal guardian (we keep that declaration), upload a document that shows it (such as a birth certificate or court order) which a member of our safety team checks against their verified ID before the child’s account is switched on, and can have at most six child accounts. The document is kept in private storage that only that adult and our safety team can open, and is never shown to anyone else. The parent who created the account may invite one second parent or legal guardian, who must be identity-verified, send their own document and be approved by our safety team in the same way; once approved they can manage the child’s controls and receive the same daily summary. These documents may first be read by an automated reader (an AI service) that reports what the document says; fixed rules compare that with our records and clear cases may be decided automatically, while anything unusual is decided by a person, a sample of automatic approvals is always re-checked by a person, and any decision can be reversed. Parents create their children’s accounts; an existing account can never be attached to someone else’s family. If a parent links a child’s account, the parent receives a daily summary of that child’s activity — time on Soki, posts and comments, new friends and follows, who they chatted or called and how much, and safety notices. It never includes the text of private messages, and the child can see the same summary.
- Children without a guardian: if a child’s parent or guardian is no longer able to look after the account, the child stays on Soki and can keep talking to other people under 18, but adults can’t see their profile or posts (our safety team excepted) or contact them, until a parent or guardian proves they look after the child and our team approves them.
- Young people’s safety rules: posts, comments, stories and bios written by someone under 18, messages they send outside their family, and messages an adult sends to a young person, are blocked if they contain a phone number, email address, street address or an invitation to another app.
- Identity verification: to be identity-verified you must provide both a photo of a government ID and a selfie. They are kept in private storage that only you and our safety team can open; every time a team member opens one it is recorded in an audit log. Photos are removed when your account is deleted.
- Deleting your account: you can ask to delete your account at any time; it is permanently deleted 14 days later unless you cancel. In a few safety situations (for example an open report, a suspension, files kept as evidence, or looking after child accounts) deletion is delayed until they are resolved.
- Activity records: to keep Soki safe and running, our team keeps a log of account activity — when people sign up and sign in, post, comment, message, call, connect, report and are moderated. It records that something happened and when, never the text of private messages, and only authorised staff can see it.
- Online status: while you use Soki we note when you were last active so your accepted friends can see a green dot. Only friends can see it, never people you’ve blocked, and you can switch it off in Settings → Privacy. It’s off by default for under-18 accounts, and a linked child’s stays off.
- Calls: voice and video calls are only between friends and travel directly between your devices (or through a relay server we operate or contract with). We record that a call happened and when, never its audio or video. Background blur and other video effects are computed on your own device; your camera picture isn’t uploaded to anyone for them. Without a relay, the person you call can see your device’s IP address; we use public STUN servers to help devices find each other.
- Identity verification documents, if you choose to verify your account — reviewed for that purpose only, by team members whose role includes identity review. Your ID photo and selfie are deleted 7 days after approval, or 30 days after a request is turned down. Guardianship documents are deleted 90 days after the decision on them. Files belonging to deleted accounts are removed automatically.
- Staff access: our team uses role-based access, so each person can see only what their job needs (for example, moderators see reported content but not email addresses, and only identity reviewers can open ID photos). Staff sign in with two-step verification, are signed out after 30 minutes of inactivity, and their use of sensitive access (opening documents, viewing contact details, exports) is recorded in an audit log.
- Reports you file or that are filed against your content, and the resulting moderation decisions. When something is reported, our safety team sees the reported content (for a message, a few messages around it, with names replaced by “Person A” and “Person B” for the automated reader), and an automated reader (an AI service) may assess how serious it looks and which of our Community Guidelines it may break, and suggest a response, so the most urgent reports are seen first. It only advises: a person decides every outcome, and nobody is suspended or banned automatically. We keep a record of confirmed breaches for 12 months so repeat breaches are handled consistently.
- Automated safety checks: to keep Soki safe, new posts, stories and comments are read by an automated reader (an AI service) as soon as they are written, and anything that looks like it breaks the Community Guidelines goes to our safety team marked as flagged by Soki’s AI; the AI never removes or punishes anything itself, and a person decides. Photos you upload, and still frames taken from videos you upload, are checked by an AI service for content that isn’t allowed (with a much stricter line for young people’s accounts); anything it can’t judge is held for a person. The sound of an uploaded video is turned into text by an open-source speech model so that swearing and sexually explicit or suggestive speech can be covered with a beep; the text is used only for that and is not kept (we keep only how many stretches were covered, and why).
- Usage data: your own screen-time tracking, and (for a child account) parent-visible usage totals.
- Technical data: IP address (used for bot/abuse prevention and rate limiting) and basic device info.
- Sign-in activity: to protect accounts left open on a shared or lost device, we note when you last used Soki (a signed cookie holding a time and whether the account is staff) and sign you out after 30 minutes of inactivity (staff accounts too).
How we use it
To run Soki: showing you a feed ranked by your relationships, delivering messages and notifications, enforcing the visibility you choose for each post, powering search and Discover, and keeping the platform safe through moderation and reporting. We do not sell your personal data.
Minors and parental controls
Accounts under 18 get additional protections: parental screen-time limits, bedtime restrictions, and restricted discovery, when a parent sets them up through Family & parental controls. A parent linked to a child’s account can see that child’s usage totals and moderation history.
Who we share data with
Other people on Soki see what your visibility settings allow (friends, followers, nearby, or public), and nothing more. We share data with service providers who run the infrastructure Soki depends on (hosting, database, storage, bot verification, city lookup, and push notifications — if you turn on push, our provider OneSignal receives your device’s push token, your Soki user id, and your city so we can send you notifications), bound to only use it to provide that service. We disclose data to law enforcement only when legally required.
Retention and deletion
You can request account deletion at any time from Settings › Privacy. You can also export a copy of your data before deleting. Deleted content is removed from active systems; some records may be retained briefly where needed for safety or legal reasons.
Your rights
You can access, correct, export, or delete your data at any time from your account settings. If you believe your rights under an applicable privacy law haven’t been honored, contact us using the details below.
Ads on Soki
Verified adults can pay to promote a post or run a small text ad. Ads are shown only to adults, never to young people, and every ad is checked by a person before it runs. Ads are not targeted using your profile, messages, location, friends, or activity: there is nothing to choose to target by. To avoid counting one view twice, Soki keeps a scrambled one-way code of “this account saw this ad this hour” for three days; it can’t be turned back into who saw what. Advertisers see only totals (views, clicks, spend), never who saw their ad. Payments for ad credit are handled by Stripe; Soki keeps the amount and Stripe’s payment reference, never card details.
Cookies and local storage
We use your session cookie to keep you signed in, and local storage for interface preferences like theme. We don’t use third-party advertising trackers.
Security
Passwords are hashed, data in transit is encrypted, and access to your data is restricted by row-level permissions enforced at the database. No system is perfectly secure, and we’ll notify affected users if a breach puts their data at risk.
Changes to this policy
If we materially change this policy, we’ll ask you to review and re-accept it the next time you sign in.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: reach out through the contact details on our support page.