This agreement is between you and [ legal entity name and registered address not yet established ], which operates Bearing. In these terms “we” and “us” mean that company and “you” means the person holding the account.

You accept these terms when you create an account. The privacy notice and the safety centre are part of the same agreement and are written to be read alongside it: the privacy notice says what we hold and what we do with it, and the safety centre says what blocking and reporting do and what we do not check.

Your permission to have us process your answers to the values topics is not given here. It is a separate, explicit step inside the product with its own screen and its own decision, and it can be refused without losing your account. Bundling it into a terms checkbox would not be valid consent and it would not be honest either.

Bearing is for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, and the date of birth you give is checked against that when the profile is saved — the database refuses a profile that is not eighteen, so this is a rule rather than a request.

It is a stated date of birth and we do not verify it. There is no document check and no identity check. If you believe somebody on Bearing is under eighteen, report them: that report is moved to the front of the queue by the software, automatically, the moment it is filed.

You may hold one account. You may not let anybody else use it, and you may not create a new one to get around a suspension.

What we promise. That the filter does what it says: a dealbreaker excludes, in both directions, and somebody who fails one of yours or whose own dealbreakers you fail is never shown to you. That your answers are shown to another member only when you have both agreed, in that conversation, at the same time. That every read of your answers is recorded and that the record comes out in your data export. That the price we published is the price.

What we do not promise. That anybody suitable is in your area. That you will match with anyone, or meet anyone, or that anything will come of it if you do. The feed is deliberately finite and will tell you when it has ended rather than padding itself, and an honest answer of “four people” is a normal outcome rather than a fault.

We do not conduct criminal background checks or screenings of any kind on members, we do not verify identity, and we do not vouch for anybody. The safety centre states that in the form the law requires and explains what we do instead.

We do not guarantee that the service is uninterrupted or error-free, and we may change, suspend or withdraw features. Where a change removes something you are paying for, the fair treatment of the money is covered by clause 6.

You are responsible for everything you upload, write or send. You agree:

• The photographs are of you, recent, and yours to use. No photographs of other people as if they were you, no photographs of children, and no sexual content.
• Not to harass anybody, threaten anybody, incite violence, or use the product to advocate harm against a group of people. Holding a position is the point of this product. Directing contempt at a person is not a position.
• Not to defraud anybody. No requests for money, no investment approaches, no soliciting, no advertising, no recruiting, and no directing people to other services for those purposes.
• Not to scrape, automate, or resell. No bots, no bulk collection of profiles or photographs, no reverse engineering, and no reselling access to what is here.
• Not to republish what another member showed you privately. A chart somebody agreed to roll out to you is for you. Their answers cover their politics, their religion, their health and their sex life, and passing those on outside the conversation is the most harmful thing a member of this service can do to another.

We may remove content and suspend or end an account that breaks these rules. Where the law requires a report to an authority — material depicting child sexual abuse being the obvious case — we will make it, and we will not tell you that we have.

You choose every answer and every rank, you can change any of them at any time, as often as you like, and every change takes effect immediately. There is no cooling-off period, no monthly limit and no charge for changing your mind. You get five dealbreakers, which is a real cap enforced by the database rather than by the screen.

Changes are visible rather than restricted. Answers are versioned and timestamped, and the chart shows both of you how old an answer is. That is the whole of the anti-gaming design: we make an edit legible, we do not make it expensive.

Rolling out the chart is mutual, per conversation, and revocable by either of you at any time. Revoking ends future access. It cannot un-show what was already shown, and it cannot prevent a screenshot — no service can, and we will not tell you otherwise.

Bearing has a free tier that does not expire and a subscription. Every price this company will ever charge is published in advance on the pricing page, including the future increases, and the ceiling is $20 a month, permanently. That ceiling is enforced by a constraint in the database as well as stated here.

The rate you start on is the rate you keep, for as long as you keep paying it. Two bands of members hold a rate for life: the first 10,000 members keep $1 a month, and members 10,001 to 20,000 keep $5 a month. Past member 20,000 there is no lock — those members pay the rung the ladder is on and their price rises with it. Which band you are in is decided by the member number assigned when your account goes live, which never changes.

A lock ends in one way and one way only: cancelling and staying away for more than 60 days. After that the rate is the current rung, and subscribing again locks that one on the same terms.

An annual subscription is charged for 10 months rather than twelve. Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Cancelling is done in our payment provider’s own interface with nothing in front of it asking you to reconsider, and it takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for.

Referral credits are free months rather than money. They have no cash value, cannot be transferred or redeemed for cash, and never expire. A credit is spent against a charge; it does not alter your locked rate.

Refunds beyond any statutory right you have: [ refund and statutory cooling-off terms for counsel — these vary by jurisdiction and none is stated yet ]. Card details are entered with our payment provider and never reach us; we hold the status of the subscription and the price, not the card.

Blocking and reporting are free, unlimited and never behind a subscription. A block works in both directions immediately and is not announced to the person blocked. Messages already sent are not deleted by a block, because a report is judged on what was actually written.

We may suspend or end an account for breaking clause 4, for a pattern of reports, or where we are required to. Reports about somebody underage or about violence are prioritised automatically rather than by somebody noticing.

There is an appeal and a person reads it. We do not fully automate a ban, because a values-based product will be brigaded and mass false reporting is the obvious attack on it.

We do not promise a response time to a report or an appeal. One person reads that queue today and a service level nobody has staffed would be a worse promise than none.

You can pause your account, which hides you in both directions immediately and is undone in one tap. Pausing does not by itself cancel a subscription; if you want the billing to stop as well, cancel it, which is a separate button and takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. You can also delete the account outright, from inside the product, at any time.

Deleting means deleting. There is no thirty-day holding period, no hidden archive and no way back. Your answers, their history, the log of who read them, your photographs and their stored files, your messages and your matches are destroyed. What survives is a single anonymous row recording that a deletion happened — no identifier, no name, nothing that can be traced to you — because the exit rate has to come from a record of departures rather than from an estimate.

One exception, and it is a legal one: where material has been the subject of a report we are required by law to file, we are also required to preserve it for a fixed period. That preservation survives a deletion request. It is the only thing that does.

We may end this agreement with you by closing your account under clause 7. If we do and you were paying, [ treatment of the remaining paid period on an account we close — for counsel ].

[ warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability and any cap — for counsel ]

Two things we want counsel to keep rather than soften. We arrange an introduction; we are not a party to what happens afterwards, and we have said plainly above that we check nobody’s criminal record and verify nobody’s identity. And nothing in this clause is meant to limit liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under the consumer rights of wherever you live.

We will publish a new version here with a new version number and date, and tell you before a change that materially affects you takes effect. A change to these terms cannot raise a rate you have already locked. That is not a courtesy; it is the one promise the whole pricing model rests on, and nothing in this document may be read as permission to break it.

If you do not accept a change, you can stop paying or delete the account, and both are one screen away.

[ governing law, jurisdiction, and any dispute-resolution or arbitration provision — none is stated, because there is no entity and no established jurisdiction yet ]

Where you live may give you the right to bring a claim in your own courts and under your own consumer law regardless of what this clause eventually says, and that right is not being waived by silence here.

Notices to us, including legal notices: [ notice address and email not yet established ].

For anything about a specific account or conversation, the report form inside the product is faster, because it arrives attached to the account it is about.