Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using My Local Press ("the Platform"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use the Platform.

2. Service Description

My Local Press is a community-driven platform that enables local content creation, sharing, and discovery. We provide tools for communities to share news, events, and stories within their geographic area. We are a platform facilitator — we connect journalists, publications, and other content creators with their communities and advertisers, but we do not control or guarantee the content published by users.

3. Age Requirement

You must be at least 13 years old to use My Local Press. By using the Platform, you represent that you meet this age requirement.

4. Account Registration

• Accurate information — You must provide accurate and complete information when creating an account
• Account security — You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activities that occur under your account
• One account per person — Your account represents you, personally. The organizations and publications you create live under your account and can have many members; they don't maintain accounts of their own

5. Community Guidelines

My Local Press is a platform for local journalism and community life. These guidelines outline what is and isn't acceptable here, and they apply to everyone on the platform.

This is a place for open discussion of the issues that matter in your community, including controversial ones. Criticism of public figures, debate over local decisions, and reporting on uncomfortable subjects all belong here. Attacks on people do not.

Not allowed on My Local Press:

• Hate speech or discrimination based on identity
• Harassment, bullying, or targeted attacks
• Content that exploits or harms minors
• Threats of violence or intimidation
• Deliberately false information intended to cause harm
• Impersonating another person, including cloning or using someone else's voice without their consent
• Spam or malicious content

We may suspend or remove any account at our sole discretion, with or without notice. We don't do this lightly — and we won't hesitate when the community's safety or integrity is at stake. See our Our Principles for more on what we stand for.

Self-promotion and links. We want you to grow your audience here, and your profile is the place to link your website, newsletter, or the other platforms where you publish. Community feeds carry local content of every kind, but they aren't a place to solicit. Content whose primary purpose is promotion — a subscription pitch, a donation link, traffic to another site — remains visible to your own readers but isn't distributed to community feeds or promoted by the platform. That kind of promotion is what paid advertisements are for. Personal payment and donation links (PayPal, Venmo, tip jars, and similar) aren't allowed; creator earnings run through the platform's payment system. Payment details that are part of a story you're covering — a charity drive, a venue selling tickets — are fine. Whether something is a story or promotion is determined by My Local Press at our sole discretion, and that determination is final. If you want promotional content in front of the community, the path is simple: promote it.

6. Content Ownership and Rights

You retain ownership of the content you create and publish on My Local Press. By publishing, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide license to display, distribute, and promote your content on the Platform — the license that lets us show your work to readers.

• Your responsibility — You are responsible for the content you publish and represent that you have the right to share it
• Deletion — You may delete your content at any time
• Promotion — We may feature your content to promote local journalism

AI voice narration — My Local Press lets you narrate your published content in your own voice. If you set this up, you provide a short voice recording, and our voice provider (ElevenLabs) uses it to create an AI voice model that reads your content aloud.

• Your own voice only — You may create a voice model only from your own voice, or a voice you are legally authorized to use. You may not upload, clone, or use anyone else's voice without their explicit permission.
• No impersonation or deception — You may not use this feature to impersonate anyone or misrepresent who is speaking. AI-narrated audio is generated by artificial intelligence, not a live recording.
• Your responsibility — You represent that you have every right needed to create and use your voice model.
• Consequences — Creating a voice from someone else's voice without authorization, or using this feature to impersonate or deceive, may result in removal of the voice model and suspension or termination of your account.

We store the AI voice model and your consent record — not your raw recording. You can delete your voice at any time in Settings; see our Privacy Policy for how voice data is handled.

7. Payments and Revenue

My Local Press is a platform that facilitates transactions between journalists, publications, advertisers, and community supporters. We are not a guarantor of income or revenue.

• Direct support revenue — When an advertiser or supporter directs payment to a specific journalist or publication, the payment is processed through Stripe and routed directly to the journalist's or publication's connected account. My Local Press does not hold these funds. The current revenue split is 90% to the journalist or publication and 10% platform fee. This split is current operating policy and is subject to change with notice — it is not a contractual guarantee.
• Platform support — Revenue and advertising support that comes to My Local Press directly is used at My Local Press's sole discretion to fund journalism and operate the platform.
• No employment relationship — Content creators, journalists, and publishers on My Local Press are independent users of the Platform. Nothing in these terms creates an employment, partnership, agency, or joint venture relationship between you and My Local Press.
• Taxes — You are responsible for any applicable taxes on your earnings and for complying with all applicable laws in your jurisdiction.
• Payment processing — Payments are processed through Stripe. Subscription and membership fees are billed in advance on a recurring basis. You can cancel anytime; cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and your access continues until then. We don't provide refunds or credits for partial subscription periods, with one exception: new memberships come with a 30-day money-back guarantee — contact us within 30 days of your first membership payment and we'll refund that payment in full. New advertising partnerships carry the same guarantee, and their 30 days don't start until we've set up your first campaign with you — contact us within 30 days of that setup, or within 90 days of your first partnership payment if setup hasn't happened yet, and we'll refund your first partnership payment in full. Features described as unlimited support genuine publishing and creation; to keep the Platform fast, safe, and sustainable for everyone, we may apply reasonable technical limits — if you ever reach one, contact us and we'll work with you. We may change subscription and membership prices from time to time; if a price that applies to you changes, we'll notify you in advance, and the change takes effect at your next renewal — if you don't agree, cancel before then and you won't be charged the new price. These terms don't override any mandatory local laws regarding your cancellation rights.

For more details, see How Payments Work.

8. Location Services

My Local Press uses location to connect you with local content and communities.

• Permission required — Location access requires your permission
• Local content — We use location to show relevant local news
• Publishing location — Journalists can set a primary contributing location
• Travel welcome — Stories are tagged where they happen. Writing about a place you're visiting is welcome: that story reaches readers there, and your own readers see your work wherever you write from
• Privacy — Your location is never shared publicly
• Truthful representation — You agree to represent your location truthfully. Misrepresenting your location — such as claiming to be local to a community you have no genuine connection to — is a violation of these terms and may result in account suspension or termination, at our sole discretion

9. Privacy

Your use of the Platform is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which explains how we collect, use, and protect your information.

10. Termination

You may close your account at any time. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account at our sole discretion, with or without notice. Upon termination:

• Content removal — Your content may be removed from the Platform
• Payments — Outstanding payments will be processed per our payment terms
• Data retention — Some information may be retained as required by law

11. Disclaimers

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind. Any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any other warranty, whether express or implied, is excluded and disclaimed to the greatest extent permitted by law.

We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, reliability, or availability of the Platform or any content published on it. We do not guarantee that any user will earn revenue through the Platform. These disclaimers also apply to our subsidiaries, affiliates, and third-party service providers.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the greatest extent permitted by law, My Local Press is not liable to you for any incidental, consequential, special, indirect, or punitive damages arising out of these terms or your use or attempted use of the Platform. This includes but is not limited to: lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, business interruption, or reputational harm.

To the greatest extent permitted by law, our total liability for damages is limited to the amount of platform fees we have retained from your transactions in the twelve months preceding the applicable claim.

We are specifically not liable for losses associated with unfulfilled advertising commitments, payment processing issues, content disputes between users, or platform downtime. For this section, "we" and "our" includes our subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, and third-party service providers.

13. Indemnification

You will indemnify and hold harmless My Local Press from all losses and liabilities, including legal fees, that arise from these terms or relate to your use of the Platform. This includes claims arising from content you publish, your interactions with other users, or your violation of any applicable law.

We reserve the right to exclusive control over the defense of a claim covered by this section. If we exercise this right, you will assist in our defense. Your obligation to indemnify also applies to our subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, and third-party service providers.

14. Dispute Resolution

We encourage you to reach out through the Feedback page if you have a concern. We will try to resolve the matter informally.

If a dispute arises out of these terms or your use of the Platform, the dispute will be resolved in the federal or state courts located in New Mexico. Both parties consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the New Mexico courts for the purpose of resolving any such dispute. New Mexico law, excluding its conflict of law provisions, governs these terms, all other My Local Press policies, and any dispute that arises between you and My Local Press.

15. Class Action Waiver

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree that all claims against My Local Press can only be brought in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, consolidated, or other representative proceeding. You waive any right to participate in a class action lawsuit or class-wide arbitration against My Local Press.

16. Changes to Terms

The platform is evolving quickly, and these terms evolve with it. When we update them, we post the new version here and update the effective date. Continued use after an update means you accept the changes.

17. Contact Us

If you have questions about these terms, please reach out through our feedback form.