1About this policy
This policy covers the Fern app, the Fern website, the waiting list on its front page and anything you send us. Fern (“we”, “us”) is run from Florida, in the United States, and is responsible for the information described here. Questions go to thefern.app@gmail.com.
2What we collect
- Your account. Your email address, and your password, which our sign-in provider stores only as a scrambled hash. If you sign in with Apple or Google, the identifier and email they give us (Apple’s can be a private relay address). For a passkey, only its public half; the private key never leaves your device. For an authenticator app, the shared secret it uses. And when you confirmed you’re 18 or older and agreed to the terms, and which version.
- Your profile. Your name, username, bio, picture, banner and link, and whether the account is verified.
- What you post and do. Your clips and photos with their titles, captions, text and tickers; your comments and replies; what you like, heart and save; who you follow and block; what you report; the messages you send; and the notifications you get.
- What you watch. How long you watched each clip, used only to rank your feed and kept 180 days.
- Your devices. For each sign-in, a random id for the browser or app install, the browser or app’s name and version, your IP address, and when the device was first and last seen.
- Notifications. If you turn them on, the address Apple or your browser gives us for sending them to your device.
- Camera, microphone and photos. Used only while you’re making a post, and only with your permission. Nothing you film or pick is uploaded until you post it.
- Usage counts. Which pages are viewed and how fast they load, without cookies and without following you to other sites. You can turn this off in Settings → Preferences.
- The waiting list. Your email, a short tag for the link that brought you (like “ig”), the site that sent you, and a one-way hash of your IP address, used to stop the same address joining over and over.
- What you send us. Emails, copyright notices and removal requests, with whatever they contain.
We don’t ask for your date of birth, your location, your contacts or any payment details, we don’t use advertising identifiers, and we don’t track you across other companies’ apps and sites.
3How we use it
- To run Fern: signing you in, showing posts and profiles, delivering messages and notifications.
- To rank your feed: from who you follow, what’s popular lately and what you’ve watched. It isn’t built from an advertising profile, and there are no ads.
- To keep Fern safe: reviewing reports, screening new posts (section 4), spotting a banned person back on a new account through a shared device or address, limiting how fast things can be done, and emailing you when a new device signs in to your account.
- To protect children: reporting apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), as US law requires.
- To email you: security alerts, sign-in codes and a welcome, and, if you joined the waiting list, the one email saying Fern is open.
- To follow the law and enforce our terms.
- To improve Fern, from counts and load times, not from watching individuals.
We sell nothing about you, show no ads and build no advertising profile. If you’re in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom: we rely on our contract with you to run your account; on our legitimate interests to rank the feed, keep Fern safe and secure and improve it; on legal obligations for child-safety reports and lawful requests; and on your consent for notifications and the camera, which you can withdraw at any time.
4AI
News summaries. An AI model (Anthropic’s Claude) writes the short summaries on News from the article’s own text. Nothing about you goes with it.
Screening posts, comments and messages. When you post, its title, caption and photos, and up to two still frames from a clip, are sent to the same model to check against the Community Rules. So is each comment you write (with the post’s title and caption for context) and each direct message you send, its words and any photo, to catch scams, harassment, sexual content and other people’s private details. Only that one message goes, never the rest of the conversation. Something it flags is held while it waits for a person: a post or comment is hidden, and a message isn’t delivered. A person makes the call. AI never limits, bans or deletes an account.
Anthropic handles this for us under its commercial terms, which don’t let it train its models on what we send. We don’t train AI models on your information either.
5Who can see what
- Members. Fern is members only. Your profile, posts, comments, followers and who you follow can be seen by every signed-in member, not only your followers, and not by the open web. The person whose post or comment you like can see it was you.
- The people you message see your messages. Each one is also checked by the AI screen in section 4, and nobody else sees them unless one of you reports the conversation or the screen holds a message (below).
- Moderators see reports with a copy of what was reported (for a reported conversation, your recent messages with that person; for a message the screen held, that message and its photo), past enforcement, name changes, and whether two accounts seem to share a device or an address, with the address masked. They never see your email, your password or your full IP address.
- Child-safety reviewers, a smaller group, see what a child-safety case holds.
- Search engines see only the front page and these policy pages.
7How long we keep it
- Your account and what you post: until you delete them, or the account.
- What you watch: 180 days.
- Device records: deleted a year after the device was last seen; the IP address on one is cleared after 90 days.
- Notification addresses: deleted when a device hasn’t opened Fern for a year.
- Reports: a report keeps its copy of what was reported even after the post is deleted. Reports go when the account that made them, or the one they’re about, is deleted.
- The moderation record: what moderators did, why and when, with the names involved, stays after an account is deleted, so that a ban holds and decisions can be checked.
- Child-safety reports: a year from the report, or longer if law enforcement asks, even if the account is deleted.
- The waiting list: until you ask us to take you off it, or the list closes.
- What you send us: as long as it takes to deal with it, and a record after that.
- Backups and logs at our providers roll off on their own, usually within a few weeks.
8Deleting your account
Settings → Delete account, at the bottom; it asks for your authenticator code first if you have one. Your email and password, profile, posts, clips, photos, comments, likes, follows, the messages you sent and your devices go with it, and your files are removed from storage. The only things that stay are those in section 7: child-safety holds, the moderation record and backups until they roll off. An account still waiting to be let in can delete itself from the waiting room.
9Your rights and choices
In the app: edit your profile, change your email, password and sign-in methods, delete any post or comment, block people, turn usage counts off (Settings → Preferences) and turn notifications off, there or in your phone’s settings.
By asking: you can ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, to delete it, or to limit or object to how we use it. Email thefern.app@gmail.com from the address on your account with “Privacy request” in the subject, so we know it’s you; otherwise we may ask for something to confirm who you are. It’s free, and we answer within 30 days (45 at most, where the law allows us to extend). Someone can ask for you with your written permission.
If we say no, reply to our answer to appeal, and we’ll look at it again. If you’re still unhappy, you can complain to your state’s attorney general or, in Europe and the UK, to your data protection authority.
US state privacy laws (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and others) give you these rights, plus the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your information, targeted advertising and profiling that affects you in significant ways. Fern does none of those. We honour Global Privacy Control signals anyway, and using your rights never costs you anything on Fern.
10For California residents
In the last 12 months we collected these categories of personal information, as section 2 describes: identifiers (email, username, IP address, device id); personal records (your name); internet activity (what you watch and do on Fern, your browser and device); audio and visual information (clips and photos); and inferences (the taste your feed is ranked by). Account sign-in details are sensitive personal information, used only to run your account.
It comes from you, your device and the sign-in provider you choose; we use it for the purposes in section 3 and disclose it only to the providers in section 6. We haven’t sold or shared personal information, and we don’t disclose it to anyone for their own marketing.
11Keeping it safe
Everything travels over HTTPS. Passwords are stored only as hashes. The database lets each person read only what they’re allowed to, and only the people who run Fern can reach the rest. You can add a passkey or an authenticator app, and we email you when a new device signs in. No system is perfectly secure; if your information is ever exposed, we’ll tell you as the law requires.
12Where it's stored
Fern runs in the United States, and so do the providers above. If you use Fern from elsewhere, your information goes to the US, where the law may protect it differently. Where the law requires it, our providers’ data-processing terms include the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
13Children
Fern is for people 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect information from anyone younger, and when we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we delete it. If you think a child is using Fern, tell us at thefern.app@gmail.com.
14Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes. If a change matters, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
15Contact
Write to thefern.app@gmail.com about anything in this policy. The Cookie Policy lists exactly what Fern keeps on your device.