Terms and Conditions | Hi – Human Intelligence

1Purpose and scope

These General Terms of Use (hereinafter the "Terms") govern access to and use of the Hi mobile application (hereinafter the "App"), published by S2ND Lda (hereinafter "Hi" or "we"). By downloading, installing or using the App, the user (hereinafter "you") accepts these Terms without reservation. If you do not accept these terms, you must stop using the App immediately. These Terms apply to anyone accessing the App, in accordance with Portuguese law and applicable European law.

2Description of the service and philosophy

Hi is a social messaging platform governed by the principle of ephemeral memory. The fundamental concept of the App rests on the systematic erasure of stagnant data, in order to prevent any exploitation, profiling or theft of data, thereby actively protecting the privacy of its users. Hi reproduces the way the human brain works: stagnant data is systematically erased. The App is the real-time reflection of what the user builds in it; if it is not maintained or used, content and contacts fade and then disappear. This is the very embodiment of the slogan: "Your memory forgets. Hi erases. That's life!"

The architecture of the Hi service is organised around three distinct layers.

LAYER 1: EPHEMERAL CONVERSATIONS

Hi offers exchanges of text, photos and short video messages, only inside conversations.
A video message lasts 10 seconds at most and is recorded with sound. In the conversation, it plays in a loop without sound, like an animated image.
The App has no function to download or share photos and videos.
No internet link can be sent in conversations, by any user: Hi blocks links to protect users from malicious links and phishing. Invitation links generated by the App itself (Hi_app Pass, a space link, a QR code) are not affected.
One-to-one conversations and Discussions (up to 50 participants, by invitation): all messages are erased 48 hours after being sent. When a space no longer contains any message, it is deleted after 48 hours without a new message.
Circles, public (up to 250 participants) or private (up to 150 participants): messages are erased 48 hours after being sent. When a Circle no longer contains any message, it is deleted after 5 days without a new message.
Events, public (up to 250 participants) or private (up to 150 participants): messages are erased 48 hours after being sent. The space is deleted 2 days after the date of the event, if no new messages have been sent.

LAYER 2: CONTACT LEVELS

To prevent any intrusive behaviour, access to profiles, limited to 9 public photos, follows a strict relational logic.

Connection: a connection is someone you've just crossed paths with: in the same Circle, the same Event, or who shared their Hi_app Pass with you. The connection doesn't exist yet. It starts, or it doesn't. Like at a bar: you cross paths with people, but you won't talk to all of them.
A connection can exchange texts, photos and videos with you, only inside conversations. They have no access to your private albums and cannot recommend Circles or Events.
A connection is kept for 7 days at most.
After 10 messages exchanged on each side, you can suggest that a connection becomes a friend. They are free to accept or decline.
Friend: this is someone with whom something real has been built. Exchanges create the link. Like in real life, if you stop interacting, it fades and disappears.
This status unlocks access to private albums (up to 30 albums of 21 photos each) and the ability to recommend Circles or Events.
Rule of relational forgetting: if there is no interaction between two friends for 2 years, the contact and its associated history disappear permanently. A link that is not maintained fades, as in real life.

LAYER 3: COMMUNITY BALANCE (TREND)

Gamification on Hi is not designed to capture attention, but to reward respect. The Trend system dynamically awards points and badges based on kindness and participation, recalculated daily on a rolling basis. Incivility or abusive reports lower this score, which may lead to temporary or permanent access restrictions.

3Protection of minors

Access to the App is strictly reserved for people aged 13 or over.

Age confirmation

When the account is created, after subscribing, the user ticks the box "I confirm that I am 13 years of age or older".
This is a declaration: Hi does not verify age. No date of birth is requested. Only the confirmation is recorded, with no link to a civil identity.
Without this confirmation, access to the App is not possible. As the subscription is managed by the platform (Apple or Google), any refund request must be addressed to it.
A person under 13 knowingly ticking this box is a serious breach of these Terms. If detected by our services, or following a substantiated report from the community, S2ND Lda applies a zero-tolerance policy: immediate and permanent suspension of the account, without notice, and a strict ban on creating a new account associated with the same device or the same platform identifiers, within the limits of the technical blocking mechanisms available on the platforms concerned, with no refund of the current subscription.

Platform mechanisms

Hi relies on the native, secure mechanisms of the Apple (App Store, StoreKit) and Google (Google Play, Google Play Billing) ecosystems to identify accounts subject to a family restriction.

When the account associated with the device is configured with an age under 13, downloading the App is technically blocked by the platform.
When the user is 13 or over and a parental control mechanism is active on the family account (Apple's Ask to Buy, or Google Family Link purchase approvals), parental consent is requested: the subscription is put on hold until approved by the holder of parental responsibility.
If no such parental control mechanism is active on the account, the subscription is approved immediately, as for an adult account.

We draw parents' attention to an important point: the platforms' parental control mechanisms depend exclusively on the settings configured by the family on the child's device and account. If these restrictions are disabled or not configured, or if the user has an independent means of payment, the platform will send a direct purchase signal identical to that of an adult account. Responsibility for correctly configuring the device's parental restrictions lies exclusively with the holders of parental responsibility.

4Account creation and data minimisation

Registration on Hi takes place after the subscription described in article 7.

Hi does not collect any direct civil identity data: no name, email or telephone number.
When you subscribe, the App creates an anonymous technical identifier (Firebase Authentication). The subscription is managed by Apple or Google, and the RevenueCat service passes the status of that subscription to Hi.
To recover your account on another device, you choose a username and a password. Hi associates a fictitious internal address with this username, which is not a real email address. The password is managed by Firebase Authentication, and Hi has no access to it.
As Hi holds no real email address, no reset email is possible. If you lose your username or password and are no longer logged in on a device, Hi cannot restore access to your account. Keep them somewhere safe.
The subscription depends on the platform on which it was taken out (Apple or Google).
In accordance with article 4(5) of the General Data Protection Regulation, the technical identifier is pseudonymised data: it makes it possible to recognise the same account over time without ever linking it to a civil identity known to S2ND Lda.
Each user may hold only one active account. Creating multiple accounts, in particular to get around a suspension, results in the permanent suspension of all the accounts concerned.
Acceptance of these Terms is evidenced by active consent given at registration, by ticking a box, time-stamped and securely recorded, which constitutes proof of acceptance of the contract between the user and S2ND Lda.

5Architecture and data erasure periods

Conversational exchanges are ephemeral by design.

Messages (text, photos and videos) are erased 48 hours after being sent.
For a video, the file, its soundtrack and its thumbnail are erased from the hosting infrastructure.
This erasure is total, immediate and irreversible for this category of data. S2ND Lda keeps no archive or hidden backup of these flows, with a single exception: reported content (article 6).
Ephemerality is not a legal shield: automatic erasure of content does not release any user, minor or adult, from civil and criminal liability for content sent during its period of active visibility in the App.

As an exception to the principle of ephemerality, the data needed for the structure of the account (profile, albums, personal journal, lists) remains stored for as long as the account is active, or until the user deletes it manually. If an account is inactive for a prolonged period, this data is also permanently erased.

An Album is a folder; a Post is a piece of content. An Album is a permanent space that groups Posts together. Each Post pairs a photo with a text and follows its own life cycle: it is erased 1 year after it is created, regardless of the lifespan of the Album that contains it. The Album itself remains active for as long as the account exists, even after the oldest Posts it has held have been erased.

End of subscription

If your subscription ends and is not renewed, your account and all associated data (friends, albums, messages, profile) are permanently deleted at the end of the platform's grace period [7 days]. Notifications warn you before the deletion.
Without an active subscription, access to the App's features is not possible.
If you subscribe again afterwards, you start again with an empty account: your friends, albums and messages are not restored. The "Restore Purchases" button restores the subscription, not the deleted data.

Default retention periods

Messages (Discussions, Circles, Events, one-to-one conversations): erased 48 hours after being sent.
Spaces: a Discussion or one-to-one conversation is deleted after 48 hours without a new message, a Circle after 5 days, an Event 2 days after its date, if no new messages have been sent.
Posts in an Album: erased 1 year after they are created. Albums, profile, biography, personal journal and lists: kept for as long as the account is active.
Friends: kept permanently, unless 2 years without interaction trigger their erasure.
Connections: kept for 7 days.
Account: deleted at the end of a subscription that is not renewed, after the platform's grace period.
Reported content: destroyed within 48 hours if the report is closed with no further action, kept for 5 years at most if it is upheld (article 6).

The precise periods and capacity limits applicable to each feature can be consulted at any time directly in the App and in our Privacy Policy. These elements may change to reflect improvements made to the service, under the conditions set out in article 8. The structural guarantees described above (total, immediate and irreversible erasure of conversational flows once their period has expired, no archive or hidden backup, apart from reported content) apply in all circumstances, regardless of any adjustments that may be made to specific periods or limits.

6Moderation, reporting and freeze mechanism

Reporting

Any user may report content or behaviour, either to Hi or to the Administrator of the space concerned, through the App interface.
Any unlawful content must be reported to Hi. Administrators deal with breaches of the rules of their space.
As messages disappear after 48 hours, report quickly: content that has already been erased can no longer be reviewed.
Each user can hide a message on their device, without erasing it, which allows it to be reported afterwards. They can also block a contact.

Emergency freeze

By express derogation from article 5, as soon as a report reaches Hi, whether it comes from a user or from an Administrator, an automated emergency technical freeze isolates the history of the last 50 messages of the conversation concerned (text, photos and videos with their sound), provided they have not already expired at the time of the report.
Content is erased automatically, except content that is the subject of a report, which is kept for review by Hi's human moderation team, for the sole purpose of assessing the situation.
If the report is closed with no further action, the frozen data is permanently destroyed within 48 hours.
If the report is upheld, the frozen content and the moderation decision are kept for 5 years at most for security purposes, and then destroyed. Hi may exclude the user concerned from the platform.
In the event of a serious criminal offence, the frozen items may be passed to the judicial authorities exclusively on presentation of a formal legal order or warrant.

Protection against capture

Hi uses technical measures to prevent screen capture and recording. No measure is infallible, and a third party can film a screen with another device.

Encryption

Data exchanged on Hi is encrypted in transit and at rest by the underlying technical infrastructure. Hi deliberately does not use end-to-end encryption: this architectural choice makes possible the human moderation mechanism described above, which helps in particular to protect minor users against harassment and sextortion. Outside the strict framework of a report, no conversational content is viewed, analysed or exploited by Hi.

7Subscription and financial terms

The App is free to download, but access to it is conditional on taking out a paid, automatically renewing subscription, offered as an in-app purchase as soon as the App is opened. Hi has no free access: each new user benefits from a first month offered, starting from the subscription. At the end of this period, the monthly subscription of €0.99, or its local equivalent, including all taxes, is automatically billed by the platform, unless cancelled at least 24 hours before renewal.

The end of a subscription that is not renewed results in the deletion of the account and all associated data, under the conditions described in article 5.

All financial transactions are handled exclusively by Apple through the App Store or by Google through Google Play. S2ND Lda does not process or keep any banking data. Any refund request must be addressed exclusively to the download platform concerned.

This financial barrier, combined with the total closure of our application programming interfaces (APIs) to any third-party software, reduces the risk of automated intrusions and mass spam campaigns, without however guaranteeing the total absence of fraudulent accounts created by human users.

8Technical and functional limits of use

Hi sets technical and functional limits of use (number of participants per space, friends, posts, lists, Circles or Events created, etc.), which can be consulted and are kept up to date within the App. These limits may be increased or adjusted without notice. Any significant reduction of a limit likely to affect data or relationships already established by the user will be subject to reasonable notice and will not apply retroactively to forcibly delete content or contacts already acquired beyond the new threshold.

9User obligations

By using Hi, you undertake to:

not publish or send any unlawful content, including child sexual abuse material, the glorification of terrorism, incitement to hatred, harassment or defamation;
respect other users and refrain from any verbal violence, insults or discrimination;
respect the privacy and the image and voice rights of others: only film, photograph or record a person, and only send their image or voice, if you have the right to do so;
not circumvent the capture and recording protections, and not film another device's screen in order to keep or distribute another user's content without their consent;
not attempt to circumvent the blocking of internet links;
not disrupt the service with malicious bots, scripts or emulators;
explicitly declare any content generated by artificial intelligence.

You are solely responsible for the content you send, including your videos.

10Community regulation and roles

Group Discussions accept up to 50 participants. Public Circles and Events accept up to 250 participants, private Circles and Events up to 150 participants.
Each collective space may be overseen by a maximum of 4 Administrators from the community.
Administrators are responsible for their space: they set its rules, moderate it directly, apply exclusion sanctions within their collective space and deal with breaches of the rules of their space.
Any unlawful content must be reported to Hi, by any user as well as by any Administrator. Administrators undertake to report to Hi any manifestly unlawful behaviour, on pain of exclusion.
S2ND Lda acts as a technical intermediary and is not responsible for the moderation decisions taken by Administrators within collective spaces.

11European compliance and publisher's liability

S2ND Lda complies with the provisions of the European Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). Users may report any unlawful content or content contrary to these Terms through the notification mechanism provided in the App. The liability of S2ND Lda is limited to the legal provisions applicable to it under the Digital Services Act. It cannot be held liable for content or messages permanently erased in accordance with the periods described in article 5, nor for relational conflicts between users or service interruptions beyond its control.

12Users' rights over their personal data

In accordance with articles 12 to 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2016/679, each user has the following rights over the data concerning them processed by S2ND Lda:

the right of access: to obtain confirmation that data concerning them is being processed and to obtain a copy;
the right to rectification: to correct inaccurate or incomplete data;
the right to erasure: to request the deletion of their data, in particular by deleting their account, which triggers the erasure defined in article 5;
the right to restriction of processing: to request the temporary suspension of processing in the cases provided for by the Regulation;
the right to data portability: to receive the data provided in a structured and commonly used format;
the right to object to processing based on the legitimate interest of S2ND Lda.

The architecture of Hi rests on the absence of collection of civil identity, as described in article 4. Most of these rights are therefore exercised directly within the App, your account being identified only by an anonymous technical identifier and, where applicable, by the username you have chosen, without any additional verification of civil identity being possible or necessary on our part.

For any request that cannot be met directly within the App, you may contact tech@s2nd.life stating your pseudonym. We may ask you for a confirmation made from the App logged in to your account, in order to verify, to the extent of the technical means available given this architecture, that the request does indeed come from the holder of the account concerned.

Independently of any step taken with S2ND Lda, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority: in this case, the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados in Portugal, or the data protection authority of your country of residence within the European Union.

13Estimated digital sobriety

By continuously purging expired ephemeral data flows and limiting long-term storage to the essential structural elements only, Hi reduces the footprint of its infrastructure. We estimate that this architecture significantly reduces the server load required, compared with the long-term storage models of traditional social networks.

14Intellectual property

All rights in the App (name, logos, visual identity, code) belong to S2ND Lda.

The content you send (texts, photos, videos and sounds) is subject to a free and temporary technical hosting licence, which ends automatically when the data concerned is erased, whether scheduled or manual, subject to reported content (article 6). You warrant that you hold the necessary rights in the content you send, including the agreement of the people who appear in it.

15Changes to the Terms

S2ND Lda reserves the right to amend these Terms. Any major change will be notified within the App, with 30 days' notice.

16Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by Portuguese law and European law. Any dispute falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Lisbon, Portugal, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protection rules applicable in the user's country of residence.

17Contact

S2ND Lda. Website: hi.s2nd.life. General enquiries: info@s2nd.life. Technical support and reports: tech@s2nd.life. Registered office: Atlantic Station, Rua Dr. José Joaquim de Almeida, 2, 4º A, Edifício Parque Oceano, Santo Amaro de Oeiras, 2780-322 Oeiras, Portugal.

18Provisions specific to the distribution platform

The provisions of this article apply in addition to these Terms, depending on whether you downloaded the App through Apple's App Store or through Google Play, referred to together as "the Platforms" and individually as "the Platform concerned".

These Terms constitute an agreement concluded exclusively between you and S2ND Lda. Neither Apple Inc., nor Google LLC, nor their respective subsidiaries, referred to as "the Platform Operators", are parties to these Terms or assume any obligation under them.
S2ND Lda grants you a limited, non-transferable and non-exclusive licence to use the App, restricted to devices that you own or control, in accordance with the rules of use of the Platform concerned.
S2ND Lda is solely responsible for providing any maintenance and support services relating to the App. The Platform Operators have no obligation to provide any maintenance or support services concerning the App.
In the event of the App failing to conform to an applicable warranty, and if you downloaded it through the App Store, you may notify Apple, which will refund the purchase price of the App where applicable, to the extent permitted by applicable law; Apple will have no other warranty obligation with respect to the App. If you downloaded the App through Google Play, any warranty-related request must be addressed to S2ND Lda in accordance with article 17. In all cases, any other claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense attributable to a breach of warranty is the sole responsibility of S2ND Lda.
S2ND Lda, and not the Platform Operators, is solely responsible for handling any claim from you or a third party relating to the App or to your possession and/or use of it, including, without limitation, any product liability claim, any claim that the App fails to comply with an applicable legal or regulatory requirement, and any claim arising under consumer protection law or similar legislation.
In the event of a third-party claim that the App, or your possession and use of it, infringes that third party's intellectual property rights, S2ND Lda, and not the Platform Operators, will be solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of any such claim.
You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a United States government embargo or designated by that government as a "terrorist-supporting" country, and that you are not on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
Apple Inc. and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms with respect to users who downloaded the App through the App Store, and will have the right to enforce these Terms against those users in that capacity.
In accordance with article 7 of these Terms, the automatically renewing subscription offered within the App is taken out, managed, billed and cancelled entirely and directly from the user account of the Platform concerned (Apple ID / App Store, or Google account / Google Play), according to the terms specific to each of these platforms. Any refund request must be addressed exclusively to the Platform concerned, in accordance with its policies. S2ND Lda does not collect, process or keep any banking data, and has no capacity to initiate, approve or process a refund in its own name.