1These terms
These Terms of Service are an agreement between you and Fern (“Fern”, “we”, “us”), which runs the Fern app for iPhone and the website at the-fern.vercel.app. They apply whenever you use either, the waiting list included. By creating an account, or by using Fern at all, you agree to them. If you don’t agree, don’t use Fern.
The Community Rules, the Copyright page and the Remove intimate images page are part of these terms. The Privacy Policy explains what we do with your information.
Please read section 18. Disputes between you and Fern go to individual arbitration rather than court, and class actions aren’t allowed. You can opt out within 30 days.
2Who can use Fern
- You’re 18 or older. Fern isn’t for anyone younger, and we remove accounts we learn belong to someone under 18.
- You can make a binding agreement, and no law bars you from using Fern.
- We haven’t banned you from Fern before, unless we’ve told you you’re welcome back.
- Each account is one person. You can hold more than one account, but not to get around a limit or a ban, and not to look like several people agreeing with yourself.
Fern is members only. A new account may wait for a moderator to let it in, and who gets in is our decision. Leaving your email on the waiting list doesn’t promise you an invitation.
3Your account
Use an email address you read, and keep your ways of signing in (password, passkey, authenticator app, Apple) to yourself. You’re responsible for what happens on your account, unless someone used it without your permission in a way you couldn’t reasonably have stopped. If you think someone else got in, reset your password, which signs out every device, and tell us at thefern.app@gmail.com.
Pick a username that’s yours to use. We can change or take back a username that impersonates someone, uses someone else’s trademark, misleads people or breaks the rules. Verified badges are ours to give and to take away.
We send email about your account: security alerts, sign-in codes, a welcome. You agree to receive these, and to agree to things with us electronically. They aren’t marketing, and they keep coming while you have an account.
4What Fern is, and what it isn't
Fern is a place to watch, read and talk about markets: clips and photos from members, live prices, the news, and short AI summaries of the news.
- Not a broker and not an adviser. Fern doesn’t buy or sell anything, hold your money or connect to your brokerage, and nothing on it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. See the Disclaimer.
- Prices and news come from others. Market data, charts, logos and news come from outside providers. They can be late, incomplete or wrong, and their own terms apply to them.
- AI can get it wrong. News summaries are written by an AI model from the article and can misstate it. Read the source before you rely on one.
- Posts are opinions. What members post is theirs, not ours, and we don’t check it for accuracy.
5What you post
You keep ownership of what you post: clips, photos, captions, comments and messages. You give Fern a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transcode, resize, make still frames and covers from, display and distribute it on Fern, to the people it’s meant for (a post to every member, including people who don’t follow you; a message to the people in the conversation), and to run, protect and improve Fern. The licence covers the providers named in the Privacy Policy doing those things for us.
The licence ends when you delete the post or your account, except for the copies the Privacy Policy says we keep: a copy of something reported, kept for moderation; anything held for a child-safety report or for law enforcement; and backups until they roll off.
You promise that you own what you post or have permission to post it, that it doesn’t break the law or these terms, and that anyone recognisable in it is happy to be in it. You’re responsible for what you post.
If you send us an idea or feedback, we can use it without owing you anything for it.
6What you can't do
On top of the Community Rules, don’t:
- break the law or help anyone else break it, including the laws against market manipulation and trading on inside information;
- scrape, crawl or copy Fern with bots or scripts, or collect other members’ information;
- probe, scan or test Fern’s security, or get around a limit, a block, a ban or anything else that controls access, except to report a security problem to us in good faith;
- copy, modify, reverse-engineer, resell or rent the app or the site, except where the law allows it;
- send spam or malware, or do anything that overloads or interferes with Fern;
- pretend to be another person or a company, or misstate who you’re connected with;
- advertise or sell on Fern, or post a paid promotion without saying it’s paid;
- use what you find on Fern to train an AI model or to build a competing service.
7How we moderate
We can review, screen, hide, remove or restore anything on Fern, and limit, suspend or delete any account, when we believe it breaks these terms or the rules, puts someone at risk, or exposes Fern or anyone else to legal harm. New posts are checked automatically, by an AI model among other things, and a post that looks like it might break the rules is held until a person looks at it. A person looks at every report within 24 hours.
We don’t have to watch everything, and we won’t catch everything. Something staying up doesn’t mean we approve of it.
When we act on your post or your account we try to tell you, unless the law, someone’s safety or an investigation means we can’t. If you think we got it wrong, write to thefern.app@gmail.com and a person will look again.
Anything that appears to sexually exploit a child is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as US law requires, and the account is closed.
8Copyright and intimate images
We respond to copyright notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as the Copyright page explains. An account with 3 upheld notices against it is removed.
If an intimate image or video of you was shared on Fern without your consent, ask for it to be removed on the Remove intimate images page. We remove what a valid request names within 48 hours.
9Fern's own things
Fern’s name, its F, the app, the site, their code and their design belong to us or the people we license them from, and these terms give you no rights to them beyond using Fern. We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence, which we can withdraw, to use the app and the site for your own non-commercial use under these terms.
10If you got Fern from the App Store
These terms are between you and Fern, not Apple. Also:
- Apple isn’t responsible for the app or what’s in it, and has no duty to maintain or support it.
- Your licence to the app covers Apple devices you own or control, as the App Store’s Usage Rules allow.
- If the app fails a warranty that applies to it, you can tell Apple, and Apple will refund what you paid for it, which is nothing. Apple has no other warranty duty for the app.
- Apple isn’t responsible for any claim about the app, including product liability, not meeting a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer-protection, privacy or similar laws. Those are between you and us.
- If someone claims the app infringes their intellectual property, dealing with it is ours, not Apple’s.
- You confirm you’re not in a country under a US government embargo or one it designates as supporting terrorism, and that you’re not on a US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
- Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and can enforce them against you.
Questions and complaints about the app come to us at thefern.app@gmail.com.
11Other services and links
Fern shows things from other services: prices and charts (TradingView’s among them), company logos, news articles and their pictures. Sign in with Apple is Apple’s. A link can take you to a site we don’t run; its own terms and privacy policy apply there, and we aren’t responsible for it.
12Changes to Fern and to these terms
Fern is new and changes often. We can add, change or remove features, or stop offering Fern, at any time.
We can change these terms. When a change matters, we’ll say so in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the date at the top changes. If you keep using Fern after it takes effect, you accept the new terms; if you don’t want to, delete your account.
13Ending
You can leave whenever you like: Settings → Delete account removes your account and what you posted, as the Privacy Policy describes.
We can suspend or end your account or your access, with or without notice, if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if we stop offering Fern. Whatever should outlast the account does: the copies we’re allowed to keep, and sections 14 to 20.
14No promises
Fern is provided “as is” and “as available”. As far as the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement and accuracy, and we don’t promise Fern will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors. Some places don’t allow these exclusions, so some may not apply to you.
15Limits on our liability
As far as the law allows, Fern isn’t liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, trading or investment losses, lost data or lost goodwill, arising from or related to Fern, even if we were told they were possible.
Our total liability for every claim about Fern is limited to the greater of US$100 and what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. These limits don’t apply where the law doesn’t let them, such as for fraud.
16If someone makes a claim over what you did
You’ll defend, indemnify and hold harmless Fern and the people who run it against claims, losses and costs (reasonable lawyers’ fees included) arising from what you post, how you use Fern, or your breaking these terms or someone else’s rights. We’ll tell you about such a claim, and we can take over its defence.
17Which law applies
The laws of the State of Florida and of the United States govern these terms, whatever the rules on conflicts of law say. A dispute that isn’t for arbitration under section 18 goes to the state or federal courts in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and you and we accept their jurisdiction. If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of your own country’s consumer law and can bring a claim in your own courts.
18Disputes and arbitration
Talk to us first. Before either of us brings a claim, the one with the complaint writes to the other (to us at thefern.app@gmail.com) with a name, a way to reply, what the problem is and what would put it right. We both try in good faith to settle it for 30 days.
Then arbitration. If that doesn’t settle it, any dispute arising from or relating to these terms or Fern is decided by final, binding arbitration between you and Fern alone, run by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, instead of in court. It can be held by video, by phone or on written submissions; a hearing in person is held in the county where you live. Fees follow the AAA’s rules, and if the arbitrator finds yours excessive, we pay them. The arbitrator can award you the same individual relief a court could. You and we both give up the right to a jury trial.
No class actions. Claims are brought only individually, never as a plaintiff or class member in a class, consolidated or representative action, and an arbitrator can’t combine more than one person’s claims. If this is found unenforceable for a claim, that claim goes to court rather than to arbitration.
Exceptions. Either of us can take a claim that qualifies to small-claims court, and either of us can ask a court to stop the infringement or misuse of intellectual property.
Opting out. You can opt out of arbitration by writing to thefern.app@gmail.com within 30 days of first agreeing to these terms, with your name, your username and a sentence saying you opt out. The rest of these terms still apply.
19California users
Under California Civil Code section 1789.3, California users can reach the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, California 95834, or by phone at (800) 952-5210.
20The rest
- These terms, with the rules and policies they name, are the whole agreement between you and Fern about Fern.
- If a part of them can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
- Not enforcing a part straight away doesn’t mean we’ve given it up.
- You can’t hand these terms to someone else; we can, for example to whoever takes Fern over.
- Nothing here makes us partners, employer and employee, or agents of each other.
- We aren’t responsible for delays or failures caused by things beyond our reasonable control.
- “Including” means “including but not limited to”. Headings are only there to help you find things.
21Contact
Write to thefern.app@gmail.com about anything in these terms. A person reads every message, and we reply within 24 hours.