Terms of Service

Status: BETA TEST PREPARATION

Effective Date: [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — launch date]

Last updated: September 24, 2026

This document is the Terms of Service (“Terms”) for the Duruha mobile application. It is a companion to the Duruha Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. Where these Terms describe how data is collected, used, or retained, the Privacy Policy controls.

Sections marked [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION] MUST be resolved before these Terms are hosted publicly or referenced in the Play Console store listing. The outstanding items are: legal entity name, registered address, effective date, dispute venue, and whether the wallet top-up surface ships (Section 15.3). The legal contact email below is an interim personal address and should be replaced with a company address before public launch.

1. Agreement to These Terms

Duruha (“Duruha,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) is operated by [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — legal entity name], based in the Philippines, with a registered address at [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — registered address].

These Terms govern your access to and use of the Duruha application — the Android app, and the iOS, web, and desktop builds where and when we release them — together with its features, content, and related services (collectively, the “App”). They also apply when you browse public Duruha content without an account.

By creating an account, accessing, or using the App, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by the Duruha Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not create an account and do not use the App.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated through the App or by updating the “Last Updated” date. Your continued use of the App after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

2. Eligibility and Accounts

2.1 Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old to use the App. By using the App, you represent that you meet this minimum age. We may suspend or delete accounts we reasonably believe belong to users below the minimum age.

2.2 Account registration. To use core features, you must register with a valid email address and create credentials. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your authorization.

2.3 Accurate information. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information when you register and when you submit identity or persona information. You may not impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your identity, affiliation, or credentials.

2.4 Personas. Duruha allows you to operate one or more personas associated with your account. You remain responsible for all personas under your account and for compliance with these Terms across every persona, including conduct toward users you have encountered through another of your personas.

3. Identity Verification Obligations

3.1 Voluntary verification.Applying for a Verified Persona badge is optional. If you apply, you agree to the private “know your customer” (KYC) review described in the Privacy Policy (Sections 2.2 and 4) and the Verification and Permissions Policy.

3.2 Authentic submissions. You agree to submit only authentic, non-expired, unaltered government identification, a genuine selfie, and truthful identity details and credentials that match the identity on your ID. Submitting forged, borrowed, recycled, or altered documents, or credentials that do not belong to you, is a serious violation of these Terms.

3.3 Document handling.Government ID images and the verification selfie are submitted to a private, access-controlled store, are never displayed publicly, and are permanently deleted upon approval; only a non-reversible identity fingerprint is retained for duplicate-fraud detection. See the Privacy Policy for full detail. This private handling applies ONLY to your government ID and selfie — it does NOT apply to persona/community role-verification proof, which is public; see Section 3.7.

3.4 Re-verification and resubmission. Changing fields tied to your verified status, or your registered name, automatically suspends your Verified Persona badge until you re-submit and are re-approved. You may edit a pending verification application and may resubmit after a denial or a required re-verification, subject to the same review standards.

3.5 No endorsement.A Verified badge means only that submitted evidence was reviewed and matched the stated persona at the time of approval. It is not an endorsement by Duruha of any user’s character, advice, opinions, or future conduct, and it is not a guarantee that any credential remains valid or in good standing. Content from verified personas is for informational or educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice.

3.6 Revocation. We may suspend or revoke verified status if a user submits fraudulent documentation, misrepresents their status, violates the Community Guidelines, or otherwise abuses the verification system.

3.7 Persona and community role-verification proof is public.Separately from the private government-ID KYC review in Sections 3.2-3.3, you may submit photos (such as a certificate, professional ID badge, or credential card — never a government ID) and links to prove a professional or lifestyle persona claim, or, if you lead or own a community, to prove your leadership or ownership of it. Unlike your government ID, this proof is uploaded to a public content-delivery network and displayed on your public profile (or the community’s public verification page) once approved, with no private staging copy, and it is not deleted after review. Do not submit any document or image through this flow that you do not want to be publicly and permanently visible. Revocation of the underlying verification (Section 3.6) removes the public display of this proof.

4. Acceptable Use and Community Guidelines

Your use of the App is subject to the Duruha Community Guidelines, which are incorporated into these Terms by reference. In summary, you agree NOT to:

• Create fake profiles, impersonate others, or submit false or forged verification documents.
• Harass, threaten, demean, or engage in hate speech against any person or group.
• Deliberately post misinformation, fabricated news, or misleading content, especially within a claimed area of expertise.
• Use bots, fake accounts, or coordinated behavior to manipulate votes, reputation, or content visibility.
• Publish or solicit another person’s private information (doxxing).
• Conduct fraud, phishing, scams, or deceptive financial solicitations.
• Post illegal content, infringe intellectual property, or violate the laws of the Philippines or your jurisdiction.
• Post sexual content involving minors. This results in immediate permanent ban and referral to authorities.
• Make threats or incite violence or illegal acts.
• Attempt to bypass, undermine, or fraudulently obtain verified status, or otherwise tamper with the platform’s trust, reputation, or security systems.
• Attempt to circumvent usage limits on AI features (Section 8), extract or misuse AI outputs to mislead others, or use AI features to generate or amplify prohibited content.
• Use messaging (Section 8A) to send unsolicited bulk messages, chain messages, scams, phishing, malware, or sexual content to people who have not asked for it, or to continue contacting someone after they have left a chat, blocked you, or asked you to stop.
• Republish, screenshot, or forward another person’s private message, unlisted journal entry, or masked (stealth) identity outside the context they shared it in, or attempt to unmask a persona in stealth mode.
• Cross-publish content to a Facebook Page you are not authorized to administer, or use the Facebook connection in a way that breaches Meta’s terms (Section 8B).
• Acquire, transfer, resell, or attempt to generate platform credits outside the paths the App provides, or exploit a bug in the credit, wallet, cosmetic, or subscription system rather than reporting it (Section 15).

You also agree not to reverse engineer, scrape, overload, disrupt, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the App or its infrastructure, except as permitted by applicable law.

5. User Content and Ownership

5.1 Your content.“User Content” means anything you create, post, or share through the App — including text posts, images, video, audio, comments, reactions, votes, journal entries, calendar and community event entries, messages you send in chats and news discussions, persona credentials, supporting links, mentions of other users, and feature requests or other feedback you submit through the App.

5.2 You retain ownership. As between you and Duruha, you retain all ownership rights you already hold in your User Content. These Terms do not transfer ownership of your content to us.

5.3 License to operate the App.To operate and provide the App, you grant Duruha a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, adapt (for formatting and display), and distribute your User Content solely for the purpose of operating, maintaining, securing, and improving the App and making your content available within the community context in which you choose to share it. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for (a) content others have re-shared or saved in accordance with the App’s features, (b) residual backup copies for a limited period, and (c) where retention is required by law or to enforce these Terms.

5.4 Feedback and feature requests. If you submit feature requests, ideas, suggestions, or other feedback about the App, you grant Duruha a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use that feedback for any purpose, including building and improving features, without obligation, attribution, or compensation to you. Feedback does not include the personal data within it, which remains governed by the Privacy Policy.

5.5 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for your User Content and represent that you have the rights necessary to post it and that it does not violate these Terms, the Community Guidelines, or any law or third-party right.

5.6 Content visibility and discovery.User Content may be visible to other users depending on the community and audience context in which it is shared, and some content is public — readable by people who are not signed in at all. Journal entries follow the audience you set on each entry (private, unlisted, or public); an unlisted entry is not listed but is reachable by anyone with the link. Messages are visible to the members of that chat or discussion. Your persona may also appear in search results and in location-based people discovery, subject to the search-visibility controls available in the App, which let you limit or hide your persona from search. Do not post sensitive personal information (government ID numbers, financial information, home addresses, phone numbers) in publicly visible content.

5.7 Deletion and export. You may delete your own posts and comments from within the App, each behind a confirmation dialog. You may also request an export of your account data through the in-app export tool. Deleting your account permanently removes your profile, personas, posts, and associated data via cascade deletion, as described in the Privacy Policy.

5.8 Stealth mode.Where the App lets you act through a masked (“stealth”) persona, the masking hides your identity from other users only. Duruha still knows which account and persona produced the content, remains able to moderate it, and may disclose it where required by law or to enforce these Terms. Stealth mode does not excuse conduct that these Terms prohibit, and attempting to unmask another user’s stealth persona is itself a violation.

5.9 Analytics about your content. The App shows authors view, engagement, and watch-retention statistics for their own posts and videos, and shows a persona a combined count of profile visits. These figures are estimates produced by automated counting, may be de-duplicated or corrected, and are provided without warranty of accuracy.

6. Duruha Intellectual Property

The App itself — including its software, design, user interface, trademarks, logos, the “Duruha” name, and all related materials, but excluding User Content and third-party content — is owned by Duruha or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable license to use the App for its intended purpose, subject to these Terms. No other rights are granted.

7. Reputation, Feeds, and Verification Are Signals — Not Guarantees

• Reputation and credibility scores reflect platform engagement signals. They are not independent assessments of any person’s trustworthiness, competence, or expertise.
• Feed ranking, content prioritization, location-based boosting, and community matching are automated and provided on a best-effort basis. They may surface, deprioritize, or omit content, and they may change at any time.
• Duruha may publish official announcements and broadcasts through the App. Only content clearly labeled as an official Duruha announcement originates from us; all other content is User Content.
• A Verified badge confirms only what is described in Section 3.5.

You should exercise your own judgment when relying on any content, persona, score, or interaction on the App.

8. AI Features

8.1 What they are.The App includes optional features powered by artificial intelligence (“AI Features”), currently: (a) AI news search, which answers questions and produces digests grounded in news content posted on the App, (b) AI community assistance panels, which display automatically generated, non-authoritative supporting information on certain news and alert posts, and (c) AI document summarization, which lets you extract and summarize the text of a PDF you select when composing a post. Users may react to and comment on assistance panels, and post authors may have controls to edit or disable them on their posts.

8.2 AI processing.AI Features are powered by Qwen large-language and embedding models provided by Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. When you use an AI Feature, your query (or, for document summarization, the text extracted from your selected PDF — not the original file) and relevant news content from the App are processed by that provider to generate the response, as further described in the Privacy Policy. Do not use AI document summarization on files containing other people’s private or sensitive information. AI Features are available only to signed-in users.

8.3 Usage limits and caching.AI Features are subject to daily usage limits, which may vary with your persona’s reputation score and may change at any time. Identical or similar queries may be answered from a shared answer cache rather than a fresh model call. We may throttle, modify, suspend, or discontinue AI Features at any time without liability.

8.4 AI output is not advice. AI-generated content is produced automatically and may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or misleading, even when it appears confident or cites App content. It is provided for convenience and information only. It is not professional, legal, medical, financial, or safety advice, and it is NOT a substitute for official emergency information or emergency services. During alerts or emergencies, rely on official government and emergency channels. You are responsible for independently verifying AI output before relying on it or sharing it.

8.5 No AI training on your private data. We do not use the AI Features to train models on your account credentials or verification documents. The scope of data shared with the AI provider is limited to what is described in the Privacy Policy.

8A. Messaging and Discussions

8A.1 What is provided.The App includes in-app messaging: one-to-one chats, group chats, community chats, and “Discussions” attached to a news post. Chat creation and participation may be limited by your subscription tier, your community role, or a community’s or post author’s settings.

8A.2 NOT end-to-end encrypted.Messaging on Duruha is NOT end-to-end encrypted. Messages, attached media, mentions, and edit history are stored on Duruha’s servers in a form Duruha can read, and authorized staff may access them to handle a report, investigate abuse, enforce these Terms, or comply with a legal obligation. Do not use the App to transmit information you need kept confidential, and do not send government ID numbers, financial account details, passwords, or one-time codes through chat.

8A.3 Your messages are User Content. Sections 5.1-5.5 apply to messages. You are responsible for what you send, and the license in Section 5.3 covers storing and delivering your messages to the chat’s members.

8A.4 Other members. Anyone in a chat can read, quote, copy, or screenshot what you send there. Deleting a message stops Duruha serving it to other members; it does not recall copies anyone has already taken. Duruha is not responsible for how other members use what you send them.

8A.5 Chat administration.A chat’s creator or administrator, a community’s leadership, and a news post’s author (for its Discussion) may rename a chat, invite and remove members, require approval to join, mute or “freeze” a member so they can read but not post, permanently remove and blacklist a member, delete messages, and turn a Discussion off. Exercising these controls is at their discretion, subject to these Terms and the Community Guidelines. Duruha may override any of them.

8A.6 Your controls.You can mute, archive, or leave any chat, delete or edit your own messages, report a user, and block a user — either one persona or every persona on that account.

8A.7 Availability.Messaging is provided on a best-effort basis. Delivery, ordering, presence (“online”) indicators, and notifications are not guaranteed, and we may change, limit, suspend, or discontinue messaging or any of its features at any time.

8B. Facebook Page Cross-Publishing

8B.1 What it does. If you lead or own a community, you may connect a Facebook Page to it and cross-publish Duruha posts to that Page. Connecting uses Facebook Login and grants Duruha permission to list the Pages your Facebook account administers and to create and remove posts on the connected Page.

8B.2 Your authority and Meta’s terms. You represent that you are authorized to administer the Page you connect and to publish the content you cross-publish to it. Your use of Facebook remains governed by Meta’s own terms and policies; nothing here grants you rights against Meta or makes Duruha responsible for Meta’s acts, omissions, availability, or enforcement decisions (including Meta disabling the Page, the connection, or the post).

8B.3 What leaves Duruha.Cross-publishing transmits the post’s text and media to Meta, where it becomes a public Facebook Page post. Once published there, it is outside Duruha’s control: deleting the Duruha post does not by itself remove copies others have made, and while the App offers an unpublish action, removal ultimately depends on Meta.

8B.4 Disconnecting. You may disconnect a Page at any time, which destroys the stored Page access token and stops further cross-publishing. A connection may also stop working if Meta revokes or invalidates the token, in which case cross-publishing simply fails until you reconnect.

8C. Journals, Calendars, and Screen-Time Tools

8C.1 Journals.Journal entries are personal posts with a per-entry audience (private, unlisted, or public). You are responsible for choosing the right audience. “Unlisted” means not listed — not secret: anyone holding the link can open the entry. Do not rely on any audience setting to protect information whose disclosure would harm you.

8C.2 Calendars and events. Personal and community calendars are organizational conveniences. Event details are supplied by users, may be wrong or change, and Duruha does not verify, host, or take responsibility for any event. Reminders are best-effort and must not be relied on for anything critical.

8C.3 Screen-time (“Mindfulness”) tools. The optional screen-time reminders and blocks track foreground usage on your device and can lock you out of the App for a period you choose, including modes that cannot be dismissed early. They are a self-management convenience — not a medical, clinical, therapeutic, or parental-control service, and not a safety feature. Do not rely on them in any situation where being able to reach content in the App matters, and note that alerts may still be exempted only where you configure that. Duruha is not liable for anything you miss while a block you enabled is in effect.

9. Third-Party Services

The App relies on third-party services, including Supabase (backend, auth, database, realtime messaging infrastructure, and storage), Firebase Cloud Messaging by Google (push notifications), Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (Qwen AI models powering the AI Features in Section 8), KLIPY (GIF, clip, meme, and sticker search and media), Bunny.net (content delivery network and video streaming, hosting persona/community role-verification proof and other platform media, and producing video watch-retention data — see Section 3.7), Meta / Facebook (Page cross-publishing — see Section 8B), Shorebird (over-the-air delivery of app code updates), and Google Fonts. Your use of features powered by these services may be subject to those providers’ terms and privacy policies, as further described in the Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, or content of third-party services.

10. Reporting, Moderation, Suspension, and Termination

10.1 Reporting and blocking. You can report posts, comments, and users through the in-app reporting tool, and you can block another user — either a single persona or all personas on that account — mute geographic areas and communities, and mute, archive, or leave any chat. Chat and discussion administrators have the additional controls described in Section 8A.5.

10.2 Moderation. We review reports and may remove content, limit features, or take other action. We do not guarantee real-time review of every report, but we treat serious violations (threats, illegal content, child safety) as priority.

10.3 Suspension and termination by us. We may, at our sole discretion and with or without prior notice where permitted by law, suspend, restrict, or terminate your account, any persona, or your access to the App, or remove content, if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, the Community Guidelines, or applicable law, or to protect the App, its users, or the public. Severe violations may result in permanent termination and referral to law enforcement.

10.4 Effect of termination. Upon termination, your right to use the App ceases. Provisions that by their nature should survive (including content ownership and license, feedback license, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law) survive termination.

10.5 Termination by you. You may stop using the App at any time and may delete your account through the in-app account deletion flow.

11. App Updates

We may update the App automatically, including delivering code patches over-the-air through Shorebird and prompting you to install new versions from the app store. Some updates may be required for continued use where older versions become incompatible or insecure. Features may be added, changed, or removed in any update.

12. Disclaimers

THE APP IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.

Duruha does not warrant that the App will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of harmful components, or that any content, persona, verification, reputation signal, analytics figure, or AI-generated output is accurate, reliable, or complete. Duruha does not warrant that messages will be delivered, delivered in order, or delivered at all, that presence indicators are correct, that cross-published content will reach or remain on Facebook, or that screen-time reminders and blocks will engage or release as configured. Messaging is not end-to-end encrypted (Section 8A.2). You use the App and interact with other users at your own risk. Duruha is not a party to, and is not responsible for, interactions, transactions, or arrangements between users.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any warranty or liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable Philippine law.

13. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, DURUHA AND ITS OWNERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) THE APP, ANY USER CONTENT, ANY AI-GENERATED OUTPUT, ANY INTERACTION WITH OTHER USERS, OR ANY THIRD-PARTY SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, DURUHA’S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE APP OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID TO DURUHA, IF ANY, IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE THOUSAND PHILIPPINE PESOS (PHP 1,000). BECAUSE THE APP IS CURRENTLY PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE AND COLLECTS NO PAYMENTS, AMOUNTS PAID WILL ORDINARILY BE ZERO.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations; in those cases the above applies to the fullest extent permitted.

14. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Duruha and its owners, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to your User Content, your use of the App, your violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

15. Payments

15.1 No charge, no processor. The App is currently provided free of charge. Duruha does not process real-money payments through the App and does not collect or store card, bank, or e-wallet data in the current build. No payment processor is integrated.

15.2 Virtual credits and wallets.The App includes a virtual, platform-internal credit system with a personal profile wallet and community wallets, used to meter publishing and AI (“Urduha”) usage by subscription tier, to pay community and feature fees inside the App, and to buy cosmetic items (Section 15.4). Credits are a licensed, revocable in-App accounting entry, not money, not a stored-value instrument, and not your property. They have no cash value, earn nothing, cannot be transferred outside the paths the App provides, and are not redeemable or refundable for currency. Unused credits are forfeited when an account or community is deleted or terminated.

15.3 Top-ups. Where the App offers a top-up option naming a method such as GCash, Maya, or Card, no payment is taken inside the App: the method is recorded only as a label on the resulting wallet entry, and any actual settlement is arranged separately with Duruha. Duruha may correct, reverse, or void any wallet entry that was created in error, through a defect, or through abuse (Section 4), and may require repayment of benefits obtained that way. [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — whether the top-up surface ships at launch. If it does, a real payment processor and consumer-payment terms, including refund and chargeback handling, must be added before launch.]

15.4 Cosmetic items. Avatar frames, post borders, loaders, and similar cosmetic items bought with credits are a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to display that item in the App. They are not goods and are not owned by you. We may change, retire, or withdraw any cosmetic item, and items are non-refundable except where refusing a refund would be unlawful.

15.5 Subscription tiers. Tier assignment, quotas, storage allowances, and overage charges against wallet credits may change with notice in the App. Duruha may adjust quotas and limits to protect the service.

15.6 Future paid features. If real-money paid features are introduced, additional terms — including pricing, billing, renewal, and refund terms — will be presented and must be accepted before any charge.

16. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. You agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the App will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — venue, e.g., the city of the registered address], except where applicable law grants you the right to bring proceedings in another forum.

Filipino users retain their rights under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173) and may contact the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph) regarding data-protection concerns not resolved by Duruha.

17. Miscellaneous

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Community Guidelines, constitute the entire agreement between you and Duruha regarding the App.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms, or notices required under them, may be directed to:

• Trust and Safety: trust@duruha.social
• Legal / Notices: lmrtamayor@gmail.com (interim — to be replaced with a company address before public launch)
• Legal Entity: [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — legal entity name]
• Address: [NEEDS FOUNDER CONFIRMATION — registered address]