Terms of Service — The Motherhood Diary and Den of Mamas


Effective date	[EFFECTIVE DATE]
Last updated	[LAST UPDATED]
Version	Draft 2 — revised against the system as built, and extended to cover Den of Mamas
Who we are	Motherhood Diary Media Company, [STATE OF INCORPORATION], [COMPANY ADDRESS]
Reach us	[CONTACT EMAIL]

The short version

This is the agreement between you and us for reading the Blog, receiving The Mama Who Knew newsletter, and being a member of Den of Mamas. You keep the copyright in everything you share, and we use it only where you said we could. Nothing you write is destroyed by a moderation decision; it is held, and you can always ask why. The Blog and the letter are for adults, Den of Mamas is for mothers, and all of it is free.

The Den carries one advertisement: a card in your Local Den's feed, from a business near you. It knows which Den you are in and nothing else about you.

What's in here

Who we are, and what these terms cover
Who can be here
Your account and your subscription
The Community Standards
What happens when something breaks a standard
Held content is not deleted, and why
If you are in crisis
Inside Den of Mamas
Sponsored cards in Den of Mamas
Your stories, your posts, your photos
Our writing, our name
Not advice
Recipes, activities, and the Kids' Job
Partners, affiliate links, and sponsored posts on the Blog
The Mama Who Knew newsletter
Leaving
Your privacy, in one paragraph
Changes to these terms
Availability, and the honest limits of a small company
Limitation of liability
Governing law
If we disagree
The small print that makes the rest work
Contact

— For the attorney

1. Who we are, and what these terms cover

The Motherhood Diary is a community brand run by Motherhood Diary Media Company. Makenna founded it in [FOUNDING YEAR], and she is the person who runs it: the editor, the moderator, the only administrator, and the one who reads your messages.

These terms cover three things:

The Blog — news for families, recipes with a Kids' Job, and stories from the community.
The Mama Who Knew newsletter — our free email newsletter, which is also what opens the full Blog.
Den of Mamas — a free, mothers-only community made of Local Dens. A Local Den is a named area, built from one or more ZIP codes. You belong to one of them, and your feed is that Den's feed, newest first. A real person moderates it, and there is only one of her.

When we say "the site", we mean all three. When we say "you", we mean the person reading, subscribing, or joining. When we say "we", we mean Motherhood Diary Media Company, and most days that means Makenna.

Two other documents are part of this agreement and should be read with it:

The Community Standards (section 4) — the five things we ask of everyone in the room.
The Privacy Policy — what we collect, what we don't, and your rights over it.

If we ever sell something — a magazine, a download, a store — we'll publish terms for that before it opens. These terms don't cover any of it yet. Nothing is on sale today. The shape it will take, when it comes, is already decided: a paid download will be tied to the account that bought it, served through a link that expires, carrying the purchaser's name inside the file, with a limit on how many times it can be fetched. None of that is in force until the terms for it are published.

By subscribing, commenting, sharing a story, or joining Den of Mamas, you're agreeing to these terms. If you don't agree with them, that's alright. The homepage is still yours to read.

2. Who can be here

2.1 Adults only

Everything we make is written for adults. You must be 18 or older to subscribe to the letter, comment on the Blog, share a story, or join Den of Mamas. Nothing here is designed for children, and no part of the site is meant to be used by a child, directly or through a parent's account.

2.2 Den of Mamas is for mothers

The Den is a room for mothers. That is the whole point of it, and it's what makes the room safe enough to be honest in. "Mother" is broad here — by birth, adoption, fostering, step-parenting, or a child you carry in memory — and no experience is ranked above another. [FOUNDER TO CONFIRM THE SCOPE OF "MOTHER", INCLUDING WHETHER EXPECTING MOTHERS ARE INCLUDED — see For the attorney, point 6]

When you ask to join, we ask you to confirm one thing on the form: that you are an adult and a mother. That confirmation is a promise you make to us and to every other mother in the room. We take you at your word — we never ask for an identity document.

Two ways of being let in are built, and a setting chooses between them. Under one, your own confirmation is enough and you are approved straight away. Under the other, your request waits in a queue and Makenna reads it herself: she may approve it, write back with a question first, or decline it. She doesn't have to give a reason, though the system will not let her decline without sending you a message. A decline isn't a judgment on you. It's her keeping the room what it is, and you are invited to write again after 30 days. [PLACEHOLDER: which of the two is switched on at launch. Both are built; the setting is verification.method.]

If it turns out someone joined who isn't a mother, or isn't an adult, the account is removed. That's true whether the confirmation was a mistake or a choice.

2.3 If you're not eligible for the Den

You're welcome to read. If you're an adult who isn't a mother — a father, a grandparent, a friend — the Blog and The Mama Who Knew newsletter are open to you. Only the Den is not.

3. Your account and your subscription

3.1 Subscribing to the Blog

The homepage is open to everyone. Every click past it — a full article, a full recipe, the full week's news — asks for your email address. That's the price, and we say it out loud: free, one letter on Sundays.

When you give it we record your address, the piece you were reaching for when you gave it, and which site sent you to us if one did. Nothing more. We then email you a link; opening that link is what confirms the address and lets the writing through. Section 15 is about the letter. The Privacy Policy is about the address.

3.2 Joining Den of Mamas

The Den needs an account. That's for moderation, not for gating: a real person needs to know who is in the room. The application asks for these things, and nothing else:

your name, which becomes the name other members see, and which does not have to be your legal name;
your email address, which is your identity here and how you sign in;
your ZIP code, which is how we know which Local Den is yours;
your confirmation that you are a mother and over 18;
a few lines about yourself, in your own words, and an answer to one question we ask everybody. Both are optional, and both are there so that a person rather than a form decides.

Your browser's time zone is recorded with the rest, so that quiet hours land at the right time of day for you. Nothing else is taken from your device.

Why we ask for a ZIP code. A Local Den is a named area made of ZIP codes, so the ZIP is how you get placed in the right one. We keep the ZIP and nothing finer. No street address, no coordinates, no location from your phone, no city. We do not ask for those and there is nowhere in our system to put them.

We collect nothing at all about your children. Not names, not ages, not birthdays, not due dates, not how many. There is no field for any of it, the form never asks, and there is no column anywhere in our database where such a thing could be written. A local list of children's names and ages beside their mothers' is the one thing this community must never become.

Some questions come later, are optional, and sit behind their own separate "yes":

your life stage — Expecting, New Mom, Toddler Years, School Age, Teen Years, Empty Nest and Beyond. Optional, shown beside your posts, and unreadable by the advertising system.
your own age band and working pattern, behind one consent;
household income and partner status, behind a second and separate consent, because they are more sensitive than the rest.

You can say no to any of them and lose nothing. If you never gave the consent, we do not hold the answer — that is enforced in the database, not in the form. Take a consent back and what it covered is emptied, so the record reads "not collected" rather than "she asked us to stop".

3.3 One account, and it's yours

One account per person. Please don't share it, lend it, or make one for someone else. Please don't open a second account to get around a pause or a removal. You can choose a username later if you want one; you don't need one to use the Den.

3.4 How you sign in

We email you a link, and the link signs you in. There is no password to forget at 2am.

If you would rather have a password, you can set one. We then keep only a scrambled, one-way version of it, held apart from the rest of your account. Nobody here can read it, and no one from The Motherhood Diary will ever ask you for it — by email, by message, or any other way.

You can see every device signed in to your account, end any of them, and sign out everywhere in one tap. When a new device signs in, we email you. A session record carries a label for the device, like "Safari on iPhone", and the description your browser sends about itself. It carries no IP address — the field exists in the table and is never filled.

If you lose access to your email, anything beyond "send me the link again" goes through Makenna personally. "I've lost access to my email" from a woman whose former partner has her phone is a safety event, not a support ticket, and the system should not resolve it on its own.

If you think someone else has been in your account, tell us at [CONTACT EMAIL] and we'll help.

3.5 Keep your details true

Keep your email address current, so the letter and anything important from us reaches you. And keep the confirmation from section 2.2 true. If what you told us at signup stops being right, the account may be closed.

3.6 Your home Den, and the waitlist

Your home Den comes from your ZIP code. One ZIP belongs to one Den.

If no Den serves your ZIP yet, you are still a real member. You go on the waitlist for that ZIP, we tell you plainly that this is what has happened, and you are moved into a Den the moment one opens covering you. That happens by itself; you don't have to ask.

If you move house, change your home Den in settings. Your connections come with you. Your old Den's feed does not. The change is written to our audit log.

4. The Community Standards

These five standards apply to everything shared here: posts and comments in Den of Mamas, comments on the Blog, and stories you send us. They are part of this agreement, and they are the measure for every moderation decision.

No judgment. Every mother is doing her best.
Support, not unsolicited advice.
Every story matters. No experience is ranked.
Honesty and privacy. Never share identifiable information about another person's child without consent.
This is a safe space. The person who shared is always protected first.

That last one is the tie-breaker. When we're unsure, we protect the person who spoke. A comment that leaves a mother feeling foolish, ashamed, or unsafe for having said anything at all is removed, whatever was meant by it.

You accept the standards on your way into the Den, and we record the date and time you did, and which version you saw. If the wording ever changes materially, you are asked again before you post.

A few things follow from the standards, spelled out so there are no surprises:

No selling. The Den isn't a marketplace, and comments aren't a place for promotions. Mentioning something you love is fine. A pattern of promoting a brand isn't — three or more mentions of the same brand name is one of the things the software sets aside for a person to read.
Links wait for a look. Any external link is held briefly before it appears, so we can check it's safe and belongs. Our own Blog address is allowed straight through.
Other people's privacy. Your story is yours to tell. Other people's — your partner's, your friend's, another child's — are theirs. Change names, leave out what isn't yours, and never post someone's private details.
Nothing that breaks the law, or asks someone else to.
Some things end membership at once. Hate aimed at who someone is, anything that endangers a child, sexual harassment, threats of violence, and flooding the room with spam. There is no ladder for these. See section 5.3.

The standards are published on the site at /community-standards. The notes around them may grow as the community does. The five themselves are settled.

5. What happens when something breaks a standard

5.1 The software looks first; a person decides

Everything you write here passes through a small piece of software before anyone else can read it — posts, comments, help requests, poll questions and their options, meet-ups, private messages, your profile text, and the name you display. It works from a list of words and patterns. It can let something through, set it aside for a person, or in the worst cases take it out of view straight away. Then Makenna reads it. Every decision that matters is hers, and the software never has the last word.

To be plain about the limits: she does not read every post before it appears. She reads everything the software sets aside, and everything anyone reports.

Two things to know about how she reads:

Context counts. Grief, loss, self-criticism, and honest hard days are never removed for being hard to read. The software may set them aside for a moment so that she sees them before the community does, and can welcome them properly. For grief and loss, and for anything that reads like a crisis, there is no remove button at all — the database refuses the action.
The first time is a conversation. Your very first post is held so she can welcome you personally when it goes up, and you're told that is what is happening. It isn't a punishment and it isn't a strike.

5.2 The ladder, in plain words

If something you share falls short of a standard — a judging comment, advice nobody asked for, one mother's choices held up against another's — here is what will happen, in order:

The first time, it comes out of view and you get a private note saying which standard it was and why.
The second time, you get a private message from Makenna before anything is removed. The system will not let her remove a second item until that note is written.
The third time, commenting pauses for 48 hours. You can still read. The composer tells you, warmly, the exact time it lifts. That one is enforced by the code and Makenna cannot shorten it by hand.
After that, if it keeps happening, membership ends. It's rare, it's the last step, and you'll be told plainly.

Every step is written down. From the first one, the item, the standard it fell short of, the decision and the date are kept on your record, and your position on the ladder is counted there rather than remembered. That record is what stops a decision at step two being taken as though it were step four — and it is also what lets you ask why. Section 6 explains what is kept and section 5.5 how to ask for it.

5.3 The things with no ladder

Some things end membership at once: hate aimed at who someone is, anything that endangers a child, sexual harassment, threats of violence, and flooding the room with spam or sales. The software takes these out of view immediately, without waiting for anyone. Closing the account is still Makenna's decision, taken after she has read what happened — the software has never closed an account and cannot. When she does close one, the email address is added to a list that refuses a new application. Where the law, or the rules of another platform, call for it, we report it. There's no warning step, because there's nothing to discuss.

5.4 Selling

If a pattern of promotion appears — the same product turning up again and again — the comments come down, the account is restricted, and you'll hear from us once about it.

5.5 You can always ask why

Every moderation decision is written down: what was written, in full and untruncated, which rule matched, what was decided, when, and by whom. That record cannot be deleted from any screen, by anyone — the database refuses it. If something happens to your post and you want to know why, ask. The answer exists, and you're owed it. Write to [CONTACT EMAIL].

[PLACEHOLDER: how long a moderation record is kept. The system keeps it indefinitely — deletion is refused in the database. The removal notice we send says twelve months. Those two cannot both be published; one of them has to change, and this paragraph must then say which.]

If you think we got it wrong, say so. A second look is a real one, and the words are still there to put back (section 6).

6. Held content is not deleted, and why

When something is held or removed here, it leaves view. It is not deleted.

We keep it — the full text, exactly as you wrote it — in a private record that only Makenna can see, alongside the rule that matched, the decision and the date. Nothing you have written is destroyed by a moderation decision, and there is no path in our system for content to disappear before a person has seen it. That is not a policy we try to remember. Those records carry a rule in the database that refuses every delete, for every account including our own servers'.

We do it this way for three reasons:

So you can ask why. A decision with no record can't be explained. Section 5.5 only works because this one does.
So a decision can be undone. If we got it wrong, the words are still there to put back.
So a hard day doesn't cost you your words. A post held at 2 a.m. and reconsidered at 9 is still whole at 9.

The held copy is used for those purposes only. It's never published, never shown to partners, and never used for anything commercial.

This is different from you deleting your own words, which you can do at any time and which really does remove them: section 8.3.

7. If you are in crisis

Sometimes a mother writes something here that says she isn't safe — that she's thinking of harming herself, or that she's in danger at home. If that's you, here is exactly what happens, so there are no surprises at the worst moment.

It is never removed. Not by the software, not by Makenna. The database refuses the action, so it cannot happen by mistake either.
A check-in reaches you within seconds, privately, in Makenna's name. The subject line is plain — A note from The Motherhood Diary — because a subject line can be read over a shoulder. It carries the numbers: text HOME to 741741 for Crisis Text Line, or call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Both are free, answered any hour, in the United States. [UK AND EU CRISIS LINES — TO BE CONFIRMED AGAINST THE CRISIS RESPONSE PROTOCOL]
Where the words suggest someone may be hurting you, the check-in stays inside the app and does not go to your email at all, because the person you live with may read your inbox. That is the default, and it takes a deliberate setting to change it.
Makenna is told immediately, on every channel she has, and that alert can't be switched off, by her or by anyone.
She will reply to you personally. The system puts a clock on it and shows her the time it is due; the standard is two hours. It is an aim, not a guarantee — see section 19.
Your post is set aside for a short while, so that the first reply you get is a personal one and not a public one. We do not put a notice on it telling you that. We would rather reach you with a message than a system banner, and nothing marks the post for anyone else either: no member can tell that a post was ever flagged. It isn't a mark against you and it doesn't count on the ladder in section 5.
Sponsored cards stop appearing for you for 30 days. Nothing is sold to a mother the system has reason to worry about. The advertiser is never told (section 9).

If you are ever worried about another member, one of the reasons you can report a post is simply "I'm worried about her." It routes exactly like a crisis flag, straight to Makenna, and she is not told who raised it.

Two honest things. We are not an emergency service, and one person moderates this room; she is not awake around the clock. If you are in immediate danger, please call 911 in the US, 999 in the UK, or 112 across the EU. And the software that notices is a list of words and patterns, not a mind. It will sometimes miss, and it will sometimes check in when you're fine. If it does, we'd rather have asked.

We do not send anything about you to Crisis Text Line, to 988, or to any crisis service. The numbers are for you to use, if and when you want to.

What we do in these moments is kept apart from everything else. A crisis flag lives only in the private record for Makenna. It never becomes a segment, a figure a partner sees, or a reason an ad is shown to you — and the advertising code cannot read it at all. The Privacy Policy says this too, in more detail.

8. Inside Den of Mamas

This section describes the room you are joining. It is here because you are agreeing to it, not as a feature list.

8.1 One feed, and it is local

Within a Local Den there is one feed. No groups, no topics, no rooms, no categories. A Local Den is not a group inside the community; it is the community.

The feed is newest first, and only newest first. There is no ranking, no "top posts", no engagement weighting, nothing chosen for you because of what you read last week. It paginates and it ends: when you reach the last post since your previous visit, it says so and stops. There is no infinite scroll.

There are two tabs. Your Den is your home Den's feed. Following is posts from mothers you follow, whichever Den they are in. That is the whole of the navigation: no Explore, no Trending, no Suggested.

Four reactions, and only these: Holding you, Me too, That helped, Celebrating. There is no thumbs-down, no laugh, no anger. Counts are shown to everyone; who reacted is shown to the author of the post only.

Comments go one level deep and no further, oldest first — a conversation, not a contest.

No numbers about you appear anywhere. No follower count, no friend count, no post count on any profile. You can see your own figures in your own settings and nowhere else. No badges, no streaks, no leaderboards.

8.2 What you can post

Five kinds, from one composer:

A post — words, and up to four photographs. No length limit. Four, because a post is a moment and not an album; the fourth is a limit the database keeps, not a suggestion.
Needs a hand — a structured ask: what you need, by when, and how someone can help. You close it yourself with "Sorted — thank you," which posts a closing note so your Den sees the ending. If nobody has answered after 72 hours, it goes to Makenna automatically.
A poll — a question and two to four options, closing when you choose (48 hours by default). Voting is anonymous to everyone, including you. Makenna sees totals only. There is no screen anywhere, hers included, that joins a vote to a name.
A meet-up — what, when, where, and who is coming. Public places only. RSVPs are visible only to the others who have RSVP'd. Every meet-up carries one quiet line: The Den introduces; it cannot vouch. Makenna can cancel any meet-up.
An event thread — Makenna's, for dedication days and marked dates.

Anonymous posting. Any post or any comment can be anonymous. It shows as "A mama in [Den]." That is anonymous to the community and not to Makenna — she can still see who wrote it, because moderation needs an author. The composer says exactly that before you post.

[PLACEHOLDER: whether messages (8.5) and meet-ups ship in the first version of the Den. Both are built and both have a setting. Confirm before launch; this section changes if either is held back.]

8.3 Editing, and deleting

Edit any time. The post is marked "edited", and the original is kept for Makenna, because moderation needs to know what was actually said.

Delete a post, a comment or a message and it leaves everyone's view straight away. We keep the record for 30 days, so that a question about it can still be answered, and then a scheduled job purges it for good. Thirty days is a setting, and it is the one the system runs on today.

A message works a little differently, because a conversation belongs to more than one person: deleting removes it from your view, and the record goes when everyone in the thread has deleted it, or when an account in it is deleted.

8.4 Your profile, and Quiet Mode

Your profile holds the name you chose, a photograph if you want one, your home Den shown as text, your life stage if you set one, a few lines about you, and the month and year you joined — not the date. Nothing about your children, because there is nowhere to put it.

Your home Den is the one piece of location the Den shows anyone. There is no map, no distance, no "0.4 miles away", no "mothers near you".

Quiet Mode keeps you out of your Den's directory and out of name searches. You are reachable through the connections you already have and the posts you choose to make. It is offered at signup, in plain words, for anyone who needs to be hard to find. [PLACEHOLDER: whether Quiet Mode is on or off by default at launch.]

The directory — "Mothers in your Den" — is a plain alphabetical list of the members of your Den who are not in Quiet Mode. That is the entire discovery surface. There is no "people you may know", built from your contacts, your mutuals or your behaviour, and we will never ask for your phone's address book. That feature is not built, so it cannot be switched on later by accident.

8.5 Following, friends, blocking, and messages

Follow is one-way and needs no approval. Her posts appear in your Following tab. She can see who follows her. Nobody is watched here without knowing it.
Friends are mutual: you ask, she accepts. Friendship is what unlocks messages. Your friend list is visible only to you and to the friend herself — that is enforced in the database, not by a setting. In a room where everyone lives nearby, a public list of who a woman is close to is a map, and the person most motivated to read it is the person she most needs not to have it.
Block is total, mutual invisibility. Neither of you is notified. She cannot see your posts, comments, reactions, RSVPs, profile or your name in the directory, and you see nothing of hers. Blocking someone also ends any follow or friendship between you, both ways. Nothing anywhere gives away that a block exists.
New accounts can send ten follow or friend requests a day for the first 14 days. A new mother does not need fifty friends on day one. Someone with worse intentions does.
Messages are between mutual friends only. There are no message requests from strangers — not a setting you have to find, the path is not built. Small groups go up to eight, and everyone in one must be a friend of whoever started it. No read receipts and no typing indicators. A mother who cannot reply yet should not owe anyone an explanation for having read something.
Makenna has no inbox view. There is no screen anywhere that shows her a conversation she is not part of. She sees a message in exactly two situations: the distress software matched it, in which case she sees that message and not the conversation around it; or somebody reported it, in which case she sees that message, the messages above it in the thread, and who was in the conversation. If you report a message you are told exactly that before you confirm, and nothing after the reported message travels. The person you reported is never told who reported her.

8.6 Photographs

Every image you upload — a photo in a post, and your profile picture — is stripped of location and device data and re-encoded before anything is stored. Only the stripped file is ever written. The original, with whatever your camera put in it, never reaches our storage at all. Because of that, no coordinate for any member exists anywhere in our system: none is ever accepted.

Photographs are kept in private storage and served only through short-lived signed links, made for you, which expire and do not work for anyone else. There is no public address for any member photograph and none can be guessed or linked to from outside the Den. Alt text is prompted every time and never required.

8.7 Nothing in the Den is public, and there is no share button

Not one page of the Den renders to a signed-out visitor. Every route tells search engines not to index it, there is no sitemap for the Den, and a pasted link produces no preview card — it shows nothing at all to anyone who cannot sign in. The only page of the Den application that opens without signing in is /advertise (section 9).

No action on anyone's post produces a link that works outside the Den. "Copy link" produces a link that opens only for a signed-in member of that Den.

No third-party script runs inside the Den. No analytics tag, no advertising pixel, no chat widget, no ad-tech kit. Nothing that would carry your presence out of the room.

We cannot stop a screenshot, and we do not pretend we can. What's shared here stays here is a promise we ask you to keep, because it isn't one we can enforce with code. Standard 4 covers the rest.

8.8 Your own copy, whenever you want it

From your settings, without asking anyone, you can download everything we hold about you as a member: your profile, the consents you have given and withdrawn, your posts and comments, your reactions, your messages, your connections, your notifications, your share permissions, your sessions and your settings — and your safety history, which is the notes Makenna has sent you and every time something you wrote was set aside, with the reason in plain words and what was decided. Photograph links inside the file work for fifteen minutes, and the file says so.

9. Sponsored cards in Den of Mamas

The Den carries advertising. One kind, and only one:

A card in the feed of one Local Den, for a term, sold to a business local to that Den.

A bakery, a pediatric dentist, a swim school, a photographer — somebody actually down the road. It is part of how the Den stays free. An earlier version of these terms said the Den carried no advertising at all; that decision was reversed deliberately, and the reasoning behind it is what every rule below is built from. The Den sells local reach. It never sells a vulnerable moment.

What it knows about you. Which Den you are in. That is the whole of it. There is no targeting by life stage, by anything you have written, by anything you have read, by keywords, by behaviour, by lookalike audience, or by retargeting. This is not a promise held up by policy: the advertising code runs as a database account with no permission to read members, posts, comments, messages, or anything carrying a life stage. It can see campaigns, creatives, the Dens and the daily totals. That is its whole world.

How it is counted. On our own servers, as daily totals for each campaign in each Den — impressions, clicks and paused days. Never per member. There is no record anywhere of which mother saw which card, because there is no table to write one to.

Where a card is never allowed. Never in the first three positions of your feed. Never more often than one card per ten ordinary posts — Makenna can make that sparser, nothing can make it denser. Never directly above or below a help request, an anonymous post, a post the grief-and-loss filter matched, or an event thread. Never inside a thread, in Messages, in notifications, on a profile, in search, in the composer, at sign-up, on the Community Standards page, or anywhere near a crisis check-in — there is no slot on any of those surfaces to switch off, because none was built. Paused across the whole Den for 48 hours around each dedication day. And never to you at all for 30 days after a crisis flag, or while a help request of yours is open (section 7).

How it is labelled. Sponsored · Local to [Den] across the top of the card, in the Den's own type, never smaller than body text. If the label fails to render, the card is pulled.

What you can do with any card. Three things, on every one: "Why am I seeing this?", which answers in one line — Because you're in the [Den] Den. That's the only reason. — Hide this ad, which we remember on your own record so it is not shown to you again and which no advertiser can read; and Report this ad, which goes to Makenna like any other report.

What an advertiser gets, and what they never get. A monthly report: impressions, clicks, click rate, paused days, and members reached as a rounded count, withheld entirely when it would be smaller than 25 — plus a written note from Makenna. Never a member, never a list, never which mother saw anything, and never the fact that a card was withheld from anyone. There is no advertiser login. Advertisers do not join the Den, cannot see it, and cannot message a member.

If you want to buy one, it is at /advertise, linked from the Blog footer and never from inside the Den. Your card is authorised at application and charged only if Makenna approves; a decline releases it and nothing is taken. Nothing renders before she has approved it, and the creative passes the same rules engine that reads members' posts. Section 14 and our Affiliate & Sponsorship Disclosure set out the rest.

10. Your stories, your posts, your photos

In short: you own them. We use them only where you said we could, and you can narrow that later.

10.1 You keep the copyright

Every story, post, comment, and photograph you share here stays yours. You own the copyright. You aren't giving it to us, and we aren't asking for it. You can publish the same story anywhere else, before or after it appears here.

10.2 What you're giving us, and nothing wider

To publish something, we need your permission to do it. Here is the shape of that permission.

For a story or an image you send to the Blog, the submission form asks you, in plain words, where it may appear. Four destinations, and for each one you choose named, anonymous, or not there at all:

on the Blog
in The Mama Who Knew newsletter
in the printed magazine
in our social posts

The answer can be different for each. A story can carry your name on the Blog and no name in print. You have to answer all four — the form will not accept a story with a destination left blank, because a blank is not a yes.

You are also asked to confirm three things: that the story is yours, in your own words, and happened to you; that you are 18 or over; and that anyone else who could be recognised in it has said it is okay, or has been changed enough that they cannot be. Photographs are not taken by the form — they are sent by email once we have written back, so that no photograph is ever held before its permissions are.

That is the whole permission. It doesn't include anything you didn't tick: not a paid product, not an advert, not a partner's presentation, not a book. If we'd ever like to use your words somewhere you didn't say yes to, we'll come and ask, and you can say no.

Our publishing system is built so that a story cannot be placed outside the permission you gave. A story cleared for the Blog but not the magazine is refused by the database when anyone tries to put it in the magazine. It is not a check on a screen that could be skipped.

For a post or comment in Den of Mamas, what you write stays in the Den. You're giving us permission to show it to the members of your Den and to anyone who follows you, to keep it, back it up, and hold a copy for moderation (section 6).

Nothing you write in the Den appears on the Blog, in the letter, on social, or in the magazine unless Makenna asks you first and you say yes. She asks with a request called "May I share this?", per destination, and for each destination you choose named or anonymous or no. Your answer is recorded against your account and the publishing system cannot place anything anywhere you did not allow.

For all of it, the permission is non-exclusive (yours to give to others too), free in both directions, and worldwide, because the internet is. [DURATION OF LICENCE — ATTORNEY, point 10]

Sharing a story is a gift to the community, not a sale. We don't pay for stories, and we don't charge to publish them.

10.3 You can narrow it later

If you change your mind about where a story may appear, tell us — or reply to any note we have sent you — and say what you would like: your name off, a detail changed, the story out of one place, or out of everything. You do not need a reason. The submission form currently promises this is done within five working days. [PLACEHOLDER: confirm the five-working-day commitment before publication; it is written on the form as a proposal, not yet confirmed as a binding promise.]

We'll update the permission, and it will apply to every future use. Some things can't be undone — a magazine already printed stays printed, a social post already shared may have travelled — but nothing new will happen outside your updated choice. If you'd like a story taken off the Blog, ask, and we'll take it out of public view. A copy stays in our private record, as section 6 explains.

A "May I share this?" permission works the same way: you can withdraw it, and the withdrawal is recorded beside the original answer.

10.4 If you asked to be anonymous

Anonymity, once asked for, is carried through automatically. The byline defaults to a description rather than a name, and it can't be changed by accident — overriding it takes a typed reason, recorded. If you're anonymous on the Blog, you're anonymous everywhere that story goes, unless you told us otherwise for a particular destination.

10.5 The edits we might make

We fix typos. We may suggest splitting a long piece into two — anything over 2,000 words is set aside so we can ask you — and we'll ask you first rather than cut. We don't rewrite your meaning, sand off your edges, or tidy the truth out of a piece. If we think something needs more than a light touch, we'll come back to you.

Every story you send gets a reply. The system acknowledges it at once and promises you an answer within 48 hours. If we can't publish it, we'll say so warmly and invite you to send it again — and the database will not let a story be declined without a message to its author. There is no silent decline.

10.6 Photographs of children

If a photograph shows a child who could be recognised — yours or anyone else's — we need a signed release before we publish it. Where a photograph is recorded as showing an identifiable person, the publishing system refuses to attach it to anything until that release is on file. Makenna's own children are no exception. The release isn't paperwork for its own sake. It's a record of what was agreed, and future-you will want it. [RELEASE FORM — TO BE DRAFTED, point 14]

Photographs you post inside the Den are a different thing: they are your content, private to your Den, stripped of location and device data (section 8.6), and never published anywhere else without your permission through "May I share this?".

10.7 What you promise about what you share

When you share something, you're telling us that:

it's yours, or you have permission from whoever it belongs to;
it doesn't identify another person's child without that person's consent;
it doesn't reveal private things about other people that aren't yours to reveal;
it doesn't break the law, or ask anyone else to;
and, in the Den, you are who you said you were at signup.

If something you share leads to a claim against us because one of those wasn't true, we'll ask you to stand behind it. [INDEMNITY — ATTORNEY, point 15]

11. Our writing, our name

Everything we make — the articles, the recipe write-ups and photographs, the letter, the design of the site, the name The Motherhood Diary, the name Den of Mamas, and the logo — belongs to Motherhood Diary Media Company. Where a partner's logo or an advertiser's photograph appears, it's theirs, on loan to us for the length of our agreement and blocked the day the term ends.

Read it. Cook from it. Print a recipe for the fridge. Send a link to a friend — we'd love that. Quote a line, with a link back.

Please don't copy articles or recipes onto another site, scrape the site, repost our photographs, or use our name or logo as if they were yours. Please don't feed anything here to a machine to train it, or sell it on. A list of ingredients belongs to no one, and we'd never pretend otherwise. The words around it and the pictures are ours.

If you believe something on the site infringes your copyright, write to [DMCA AGENT NAME AND CONTACT] with the details a proper notice needs, and we'll act on it. If we find our work lifted elsewhere, we'll do the same.

12. Not advice

Nothing here is medical, legal, or financial advice, and it isn't a substitute for any of those.

Stories are one mother's experience, told honestly. Recipes are what worked in one kitchen. When we mention research, we'll say so — and every child is different. For anything about your health, your child's health, your money, or your rights, please talk to a professional who knows your situation: a doctor, a lawyer, an adviser. We'll cheer you on, but we can't be that person.

The same is true of what other members write. Advice in the Den is one mother to another. Take what helps, leave what doesn't, and check anything that matters with someone qualified.

A meet-up arranged in the Den is between the mothers who go to it. We don't check anybody, we don't attend, and we don't stand behind anyone who does. That is why every meet-up carries the line it carries: The Den introduces; it cannot vouch.

13. Recipes, activities, and the Kids' Job

Every recipe has a Kids' Job — the system will not publish one without it. Every activity is meant to be done together. They're written for a parent and child side by side, with the parent there the whole time.

You decide what's right for your child. Which job fits their age, their hands, their attention. What's a job for a four-year-old in one family is a job for a nine-year-old in another.
Heat, knives, and small pieces are yours to manage. Ovens, stovetops, blenders, sharp things, and anything that could be a choking hazard stay with the adult.
Allergies. We list ingredients as we used them. We can't know what's in your pantry, what you've swapped, or what your child reacts to. Please read every label and adjust for your family.
Results vary. Ovens run hot or cold; flour and fruit differ; children improvise. We test everything in a real kitchen, but we can't promise the same result in yours.

Cooking with children is a joy and a small, ordinary risk. You're the one in the room, and the judgment is yours. We'll write clearly, so that judgment is easy to make.

14. Partners, affiliate links, and sponsored posts on the Blog

We sell trust, not attention. So here is how money works on the Blog, in full. Advertising in the Den is section 9, and it works differently.

14.1 Always disclosed, at the top

Sometimes a link earns us a commission if you buy something. Sometimes a post is paid for by a brand. When either is true, you'll see it at the top of the post — above the headline, before you've read a word — marked Affiliate links, Sponsored, or Paid partnership. Never in the footer. Never in small print.

Our system won't let a post with a paid relationship publish without that label — the database refuses it, so there is no way round it. If the label ever fails to show on a live post, the post comes down until it's fixed. This isn't a setting. It can't be switched off.

14.2 Partners don't shape the writing

Every partner — affiliate, sponsor, advertiser, or a business buying a card in a Den — passes the same five questions before we work with them, and the first is whether Makenna would use it with her own children. Partners agree in writing that they don't see what we write before it's published, don't change it, and accept an honest write-up, including a lukewarm one. The system refuses an application with either of those undertakings unticked, and refuses an agreement that is not signed on both. Some brands are never accepted, whatever they'd pay.

For every paid post, there are at least three that aren't. The system counts affiliate posts, sponsored posts, ad-carrying pages and live Den cards together, and won't schedule a paid post that would break that.

14.3 Where ads go on the Blog, and where they never go

There are four ad positions on the Blog and no others: below the header on the homepage and section pages; beside the article; further down the sidebar; and, on recipe pages only, one between the steps.

An advert never sits inside or beside a community story. Not between paragraphs, not in the sidebar, not at all. Community stories are the heart of this place and they are not for sale.

An unsold position renders nothing — no box, no placeholder, no house ad.

14.4 Affiliate links

If you click an affiliate link and buy something, the brand pays us a small commission. It costs you nothing extra. So that a purchase can be traced back here, a small first-party cookie remembers which link you followed for 30 days — but only if you said yes to measurement cookies in the banner. If you said no, the link still works; we just don't get the credit. The Privacy Policy lists every cookie by name, and the Affiliate & Sponsorship Disclosure explains exactly what a click does.

14.5 What you buy from a partner is between you and them

We introduce; we don't sell. If you buy from a partner, or from a business whose card you saw in your Den, the purchase, delivery, returns, and any problem with the product are between you and that business, under their terms. We choose carefully, and we'd want to hear if something we recommended let you down, but we can't stand behind their product the way they can.

14.6 What partners see about you

Nothing that is a person. A partner sees how many people clicked their own links, by post and by position; the conversions they report back to us and the value they attach; and how large an audience built for them is, as a number. Never a name, never an email, never any individual reader by any identifier, never our site totals or subscriber count, never another partner's figures, and never anything at all from Den of Mamas.

A Local Den advertiser sees the daily totals in section 9 and nothing else.

15. The Mama Who Knew newsletter

It's free. It's one letter, on Sundays. That's the whole schedule, and we won't quietly add a Tuesday.

Unsubscribe any time. There's a one-click link at the bottom of every letter. It works immediately, and we won't ask you why. Once you have unsubscribed, a form on the site cannot put you back on the list — only you can, from the letter's own link or by asking us.
Sponsors, occasionally, and always marked. Once the list reaches 2,000 subscribers, a letter may carry one sponsor, clearly marked at the top of that section. Never more than one — the system refuses to sell the same issue twice — and never disguised as our own words.
The letter and the Den are separate choices. Your subscription and your membership are two separate records with a link between them, so unsubscribing from the letter doesn't close a Den account, and closing a Den account doesn't stop the letter unless you ask us to stop it too. [PLACEHOLDER: whether subscribers and members should be one record or two is still an open founder decision. Two is what the system does today. If it changes, this paragraph and sections 3.1 and 3.2 change with it.]
Unsubscribing and the full Blog. Your address is also what opens full articles. If you unsubscribe, [WHAT HAPPENS TO FULL BLOG ACCESS — FOUNDER DECISION].

We'll also use your address for the things this agreement needs — a change to these terms, a notice about your account, a sign-in link, a crisis check-in, a reply to something you sent us. Those aren't marketing, and they aren't optional while you're a member. They're also rare.

16. Leaving

16.1 If you want to go

Stop the letter. The link at the bottom of any letter.

Close your Den account. In your settings, or by writing to [CONTACT EMAIL].

What happens the moment you ask. Your account, your posts, your comments, your photographs and your messages leave everyone's view straight away. Nobody in the Den can read them, find them, or reach you. Your sign-in links, your sessions, your password if you set one, your notification settings and your push subscriptions are deleted there and then, and your follows and friendships are removed. Your identity is scrubbed at once: your name, your email address, your ZIP code, your photograph, the few lines you wrote at signup, and every answer you gave about yourself.

What happens within 30 days. A scheduled job then purges the rest for good — your posts and the comments beneath them, your own comments, your reactions, your votes, your RSVPs, your messages, your notifications, and your photographs, out of the database and out of storage. Not hidden, not archived under another name. Gone.

Your permissions. When you close your account we ask about anything you agreed to share — a post that was going into the letter, a story headed for the magazine. Unless you tell us otherwise, every outstanding permission is narrowed to "no", on every destination. We never widen one after you have gone. You can also ask us to keep them as they stand, or to withdraw every one of them including the ones already answered.

What stays, and only this. The moderation record and the audit log survive, because they are what lets us answer a question about a decision we made. Your name is replaced in them with "former member". Nothing that identifies you remains — and the database allows exactly that one redaction and refuses every other change to a log entry, including our own. The audit log keeps its entries for twelve months and then a scheduled purge removes them; that purge is the only thing in the whole system permitted to delete a log line. Your request to be erased is itself logged, with the reason you gave, so we can show it was done. Section 5.5 covers how long the moderation record is kept.

Your stories on the Blog keep the permission you gave them, and you can narrow that as part of leaving (section 10.3).

Your rights. If you're in the UK or the EU, erasure is your right under UK GDPR and GDPR, and you also have the right to see what we hold, to correct it, to take a copy away, to restrict or object to how it's used, and to complain to your data protection authority. If you're in California, you have the rights to know, to delete, to correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing — and we don't sell or share your data in that sense. Wherever you are, you can ask, and we'll answer. The Privacy Policy has the detail and the how, and you can take your own copy away at any time from settings (section 8.8).

[PLACEHOLDER: there is a setting that chooses between this purge and an older behaviour in which a member's words stayed under an anonymous byline. The purge is what runs today. Confirm before launch that the setting is pinned to purge, or removed, so the code cannot drift from this section.]

16.2 If we have to close your account

We'll close an account when:

what you told us at signup wasn't true — you're not a mother, or not an adult;
something in section 5.3 happened;
the ladder in section 5.2 reached its last step;
a pattern of selling continued after we'd asked once;
you opened a second account to get around a pause or a removal;
the law requires it, or a court or authority tells us to.

You'll be told, once and plainly, by email. A closure of this kind is not the same as choosing to leave. Your content is handled as in section 6: nothing is destroyed, and the record of what happened is retained. Your email address is added to a list that refuses a new application — that is a safety measure, and it is the one case where a record survives a closed account. Your personal details are otherwise handled as the Privacy Policy describes.

We won't close an account for disagreeing with us, for a hard day, or for the kind of thing a private note can fix. That's what the ladder is for.

16.3 If we ever close the Den

We don't plan to. But if Den of Mamas ever closes, we'll tell you at least [30 days] ahead, by email, and tell you how to keep a copy of your own words before it does — the download in section 8.8 is that copy, and it works today. [FOUNDER TO CONFIRM the notice period.]

17. Your privacy, in one paragraph

The Privacy Policy is the full picture, and it's part of this agreement. The shape of it: we collect only what a "yes" from you covers, and a question you didn't consent to is never asked, and could not be stored if it were. Sensitive questions have their own separate yes. We hold your ZIP code and nothing finer — no street, no coordinates, no location from your device, no city. We hold nothing at all about your children, and there is no column in which we could. Your IP address is not written to your account or to your sessions. Nothing about your safety or your hard times is ever a segment, a figure a partner sees, or a reason to show you an ad, and the advertising code cannot read it. Cookies beyond the essential ones stay off until you switch them on, and Blog pages about pregnancy, loss, feeding and mental health carry no advertising tags at all, whatever you chose. Partners never see a person. That's the whole idea, and the Policy shows the working.

18. Changes to these terms

We'll change these terms sometimes — because the law changes, because we add something, or because we learn a better way to say it.

Material changes — anything that changes what you're agreeing to — we'll tell you about by email, or in The Mama Who Knew newsletter, at least [30 days] before they take effect. The notice will say what changed, in plain words.
Small fixes — a typo, a clearer sentence, an updated address — may go in without notice.
If you don't agree with a change, you can leave before it takes effect (section 16.1), and we'll help. Staying past the date means you've accepted it.

A change to the Community Standards is handled separately: you are asked to accept the new version before you post again, and that acceptance is recorded with its date.

Every version is dated at the top. Earlier versions are kept at [ARCHIVE URL].

19. Availability, and the honest limits of a small company

We run this with care, and we're small. So:

The site may be down sometimes — for maintenance, for a fault, for a reason beyond us. We'll be back as quickly as we can, and we don't promise it's never interrupted.
We may change, add, or retire features. Stories and recipes rotate; a Local Den stays one flat feed. If something you rely on is going away, we'll say so.
One person moderates, and she is not awake around the clock. She does not read every post before it appears — she reads everything the software sets aside and everything anyone reports. Response times are our aims, not guarantees. The 48-hour reply to a story, the 48-hour reply to a partner, and the two-hour personal reply after a crisis flag are all aims. The one thing that is not an aim is the alert itself: a crisis flag reaches her immediately, on every channel she has, and that cannot be switched off.
Members write what members write. We moderate carefully, but we can't read every word before it appears, and we can't promise that nothing hurtful ever slips through. When it does, section 5 is how we put it right.

20. Limitation of liability

Written plainly, because you deserve to know where you stand.

The site, the letter, and the Den are provided as they are, free of charge. To the extent the law lets us:

we aren't responsible for what members post, or for the advice one mother gives another;
we aren't responsible for a partner's or an advertiser's product, delivery, or service;
we aren't responsible for what happens at a meet-up members arrange between themselves;
we aren't responsible for what happens in your kitchen, as long as we've written clearly and honestly;
we aren't responsible for a loss you suffer from the site being unavailable, from a mistake in an article, or from relying on something here instead of on a professional;
and where we are responsible for something, our total liability to you is limited to [AMOUNT — ATTORNEY, point 45].

Nothing in these terms takes away a right the law gives you that we aren't allowed to change. If you live in the UK or the EU, your rights as a consumer stand in full. And we never limit our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law says can't be limited.

21. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of [GOVERNING LAW — STATE, USA]. If you live in the UK or the EU, you keep the protection of the consumer law where you live, and nothing here takes that from you.

22. If we disagree

Talk to us first. Write to [CONTACT EMAIL], tell us what's wrong, and we'll reply within [X DAYS] and try in good faith to put it right. Most things can be settled by two people being honest with each other, and that's how we'd like to settle them.

If that doesn't work: [DISPUTE RESOLUTION — ATTORNEY TO ADVISE: courts of [VENUE]; arbitration or not; small-claims carve-out; class-action waiver or not; and the home-court rights of UK and EU residents].

23. The small print that makes the rest work

This is the whole agreement. These terms, the Community Standards, and the Privacy Policy together are the agreement between you and us about the site. Nothing else — no message, no post — changes it, unless it's a written change from us.
If a part doesn't hold, the rest still does. A court striking one line doesn't undo the page.
If we let something go once, we can still hold to it later.
If the company changes hands, these terms and the permissions you gave may pass to whoever runs The Motherhood Diary next, on the same promises. We'd tell you. Your permissions in section 10 don't get wider because of it. [ASSIGNMENT — ATTORNEY, point 49]
Some parts outlast an account: your ownership of your words, the permissions you gave and any you narrowed, sections 6, 11, 20, 21, and 22, and every promise about what stays private.
English is the version that counts. If we ever translate these, the English text governs. [ATTORNEY — point 50]
Headings are here to help you find things, not to change the meaning.

24. Contact

Motherhood Diary Media Company [COMPANY ADDRESS] [STATE OF INCORPORATION]

General and account questions: [CONTACT EMAIL]
Privacy and your rights: [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL]
Copyright notices: [DMCA AGENT NAME AND CONTACT]
Local Den advertising: through /advertise, not by email
UK / EU representative, if one is required: [REPRESENTATIVE DETAILS]

We reply to everything. Give us [48 hours] on ordinary days.

For the attorney

This is a draft for review, written in the brand's voice. It was checked line by line against the system as built — the database schema and its triggers, the Blog application, the Den application and the Partner Portal — and every factual claim in it was either found there or removed. Where the software and the older draft disagreed, the software won and the change is noted below. Part P, Den of Mamas Platform Specification, is the governing source for sections 8 and 9; where Part B and Part P differ, Part P wins.

Every point below needs confirmation, correction, or a decision before publication. The admin portal's launch checklist blocks all account creation until these terms are published, so this list is a launch blocker.

Entity and basics

Legal name, form, and state of incorporation of Motherhood Diary Media Company; registered address; whether "The Motherhood Diary" and "Den of Mamas" should be listed as trading names.
Effective date, versioning, and whether prior versions must be archived and where.
Contact addresses: general, privacy, and a DMCA agent (including registration in the US Copyright Office's DMCA designated-agent directory). Whether a UK or EU representative under GDPR Art. 27 / UK GDPR is required, given the readership.

Eligibility

18+ as the age floor in every territory (US, UK, EU member states); whether any state or country requires different handling.
Mothers-only membership: lawfulness of a sex-based and status-based private membership community under US state public-accommodation law (for example California's Unruh Act), the UK Equality Act 2010 (single-sex and association exemptions), and EU equal-treatment law. Wording of section 2.2 to fit whichever exemption applies.
The definition of "mother" for eligibility (birth, adoption, fostering, step, bereaved, expecting). A founder decision to confirm with Makenna, then review for consistency with point 5.
Self-attestation at signup: adequacy as a verification method; enforceability of removal for misrepresentation; whether "ask a question / decline" needs anti-discrimination safeguards. Note the change: both verification paths are built and a setting chooses. The old draft said Makenna reads every request, which is only true under one of them. Section 2.2 now says so and carries a placeholder for which is switched on.
ZIP codes. The old draft said "what we won't ask for: your full postcode or zip code". That was wrong: the Den asks for a ZIP and cannot place a member without one. Section 3.2 now says so plainly, and says the ZIP is the finest location held. Confirm the disclosure, and confirm what a UK member is asked for — the database accepts a UK outward code, the application form currently accepts five US digits only.
Children. The old draft said "we ask for age bands instead" of a child's date of birth. There are no fields about children of any kind, and no column in which one could exist. Confirm section 3.2's wording and that the same statement appears in the Privacy Policy and the Community Standards.

Member content and copyright

The licence in section 10.2: confirm non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide; settle duration; whether sublicensing to service providers (email platform, hosting, social platforms whose own terms require a licence) must be stated explicitly.
Moral rights (UK CDPA 1988 and EU equivalents): whether to seek a waiver, assert attribution, or leave as drafted; interaction with the anonymity choice in 10.4.
Narrowing and withdrawal in 10.3: mechanics and limits for already-published Blog content, print, and social. The submission form promises five working days; confirm that as a binding commitment or soften it. Confirm with Makenna that "take it out of public view on request" is the intended behaviour and consistent with section 6.
Den posts: confirm the display-only licence, the "May I share this?" rule and the backup and moderation-copy language are what the founder intends. Note that the permission is recorded per destination on the member's own record and that the publishing system refuses a destination that was not granted.
Child photo releases (10.6): a release form to be drafted; whether one parent's signature is sufficient; retention period for releases. Note the enforcement is conditional on a photograph being marked as showing an identifiable person; confirm that is a strong enough control.
Indemnity in 10.7: enforceability and fairness under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive; whether the plain wording is enough or a formal clause is needed.
The recipe copyright statement in section 11 (ingredient lists not protectable; expression and photographs are): confirm accuracy in the US and in the UK/EU.
The anti-scraping and AI-training sentence in section 11: enforceability, and whether it should be mirrored in robots.txt and a terms-of-access notice.
Trademark status of "The Motherhood Diary" and "Den of Mamas": use the appropriate symbol until registered; whether a trademark notice belongs in section 11.

Moderation, held content, and platform duties

Section 230 (US) protection for member content, and the effect, if any, of pre-moderation on it.
UK Online Safety Act 2023: whether the Den is a regulated user-to-user service; the duties that follow (illegal-content risk assessment, terms-of-service content requirements, complaints procedure); whether these terms meet the "clear and accessible terms" duty. Sections 5, 7, 8 and 9 are written to be that description.
EU Digital Services Act: obligations of a hosting service or online platform — notice-and-action mechanism, statement of reasons for each removal (Art. 17), internal complaint handling (Art. 20), and the advertising transparency duty in Art. 26 as it may apply to the Den card — and whether the Den's size exempts it from platform-level duties. Adjust sections 5.5, 9 and 22 as needed.
Held content (section 6): lawful basis under GDPR / UK GDPR for retaining removed content; how held content is handled in a subject access request. Note that the member's own download already returns her safety history in plain words.
The moderation-record period must be decided. The database refuses to delete a moderation record; the removal notice sent to a member says twelve months. Those cannot both be published. Section 5.5 carries a placeholder saying so. Decide, then make the code, the notice, section 5.5 and the Privacy Policy agree.
The ladder, as built (section 5.2). The old draft said the first removal left "no record". It does: the item, the rule, the decision and the date are kept, the strike is counted on the member record, and the account is marked for a closer look. The second removal is refused by the database until the private note exists. The 48-hour pause at the third is enforced in code. Confirm the description, and confirm that stating the record plainly is preferred to the softer version.
Crisis handling (section 7): duty-of-care exposure from stating a two-hour personal-reply aim, which is a configurable setting rather than a fixed promise; whether automated distress flagging processes special-category health data under GDPR Art. 9 and needs explicit consent or another Art. 9 condition; the design choice that a member is not told her post is held at the moment of flagging, reconciled with the transparency in these terms; the in-app-only check-in for matches suggesting abuse in the home, and whether stating the reason for it publicly is wise; UK and EU crisis resources to insert once the crisis response protocol is final; emergency-number wording.
Distress detection on private messages (8.5, section 7). The rules engine reads member-to-member messages. On a match Makenna sees the matched message alone, unless the thread is reported. Advise on the confidentiality-of-communications position — ePrivacy Art. 5(1) in the EU/UK, and the US Stored Communications Act and state wiretap analogues — including whether acceptance of the Standards is sufficient consent from both parties to a conversation. This blocks Den launch.

Advertising in Den of Mamas (section 9)

The reversal. These terms previously said "Den of Mamas carries no advertising. Not switched off — there is nothing to switch on." That is no longer true, and the same sentence appeared in the Affiliate Disclosure and may appear in the Community Standards. Confirm the wording of section 9, and confirm that saying openly that the decision was reversed is right.
Whether serving a card selected only by Local Den constitutes "profiling" under GDPR Art. 4(4) or "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising under CPRA. Nothing about the member is used beyond the Den her feed belongs to, no identifier crosses any context, and no third party is involved.
The suppression rules — 30 days after a crisis flag, and while a help request is open — are personal data derived from a sensitive circumstance. Confirm the basis, and confirm that describing them publicly while never telling the advertiser is right.
Disclosure: whether "Sponsored · Local to [Den]" satisfies the FTC's Endorsement Guides and .com Disclosures, and UK CAP/CMA rules.
The advertiser relationship: /advertise is the only signed-out page of the Den application; the fee is authorised at application and captured on approval; there is no advertiser login. Confirm the payment description and the processor's role, and set the rate bands before the first advertiser.

Commercial (section 14)

Disclosure wording in 14.1: FTC Endorsement Guides (US), UK CAP Code / ASA and CMA guidance, EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Whether "Sponsored", "Paid partnership" and "Affiliate links" suffice everywhere, or "Ad" / "Advertisement" is required in some territories. Note that the blog's ad positions carry the word "Advertisement" with the brand's name, which differs from the label on a post.
The affiliate attribution cookie in 14.4: consistency with the cookie register and consent categories in the Privacy Policy (tmd_ref, measurement category, 30 days, last click). Note that a tracked click also carries a market name to the partner's analytics where advertising consent was given; the Affiliate Disclosure describes it and these terms point there.
The partner-product disclaimer (14.5) and the "we introduce; we don't sell" characterisation, given a possible future store, and given that it now also covers a Local Den advertiser.
Meet-ups (8.2, section 12 and section 20): liability for gatherings members arrange through the platform, the sufficiency of the public-place rule and the "introduces, cannot vouch" line, and whether more is needed.

Newsletter and the email gate

The email gate (3.1): whether conditioning full Blog access on a newsletter subscription is a valid basis for processing under GDPR / UK GDPR (freely given consent versus contract), and the PECR / ePrivacy position on the resulting marketing email; CAN-SPAM compliance for the letter. Note that the gate is enforced in the database — publishing is refused while the gate is off.
Section 15 open items: what happens to full Blog access after unsubscribing (founder decision); the letter/Den separation, pending the subscribers-versus-members record decision. Two records is what the system does today.
Transactional email ("the things this agreement needs") as distinct from marketing, and whether the wording is sufficient now that it includes sign-in links and crisis check-ins.

Leaving and data rights

Erasure model (16.1). The old draft described a tombstone: posts kept under a byline saying a member had left. The system does the opposite by default — everything out of view at once, purged within 30 days, including the comments beneath a purged post. Section 16.1 now describes the purge. Confirm it satisfies GDPR / UK GDPR Art. 17 and the CCPA right to delete as described, and confirm before launch that the setting choosing between the two behaviours is pinned to purge or removed.
Replies beneath a purged post. Purging a member removes the comments other mothers left under her posts. Part P is silent on this and it is a real loss to the people who wrote them. Confirm it is intended, and whether it should be disclosed more prominently than it is.
The narrowing of outstanding share permissions on deletion (16.1), and the three choices offered — narrow, keep, withdraw everything. This is a proposed commitment, not yet a Makenna decision.
Erasure timeline (30 days; GDPR one month) and the audit-log redaction: exactly one change to a log line is permitted while erasing, and every other change is still refused. Confirm that replacing the name with "former member" is adequate anonymisation for the remainder of the twelve months.
Termination by TMD (16.2): whether a "for any reason with notice" right is wanted; notice and fair-process requirements under the DSA / OSA; the blocked-email list, which is personal data with no natural end and needs a period and a review.
Closure notice for the Den (16.3): notice period, and confirmation that the self-service download satisfies the data-export commitment.

Liability, law, and disputes

Section 20: the liability cap amount; enforceability of the "as is" position for a free service; required carve-outs in the UK/EU (death and personal injury, fraud, statutory consumer rights); US state-specific disclaimer requirements, including conspicuousness.
Governing law: choice of state; mandatory consumer-law override for UK and EU residents.
Dispute resolution: arbitration and class-action waiver (enforceability, and whether wanted at all), venue, small-claims carve-out, UK/EU consumer home-court rights, and any required alternative-dispute-resolution information for UK/EU residents.
Changes clause (section 18): notice period; unilateral-variation fairness under UK/EU consumer law; the right to exit; and the separate re-acceptance flow for a new version of the Community Standards.
Assignment on change of control (section 23): whether member permissions can transfer without re-consent.
Language clause and any EU member-state requirements for consumer terms in the local language.

Consistency and open build decisions

Cross-check every promise here against the Privacy Policy, the Community Standards page, the submission-form permission wording, the child photo release, the crisis response protocol and the partnership agreement template, so that no two documents contradict each other. The advertising sentence and the erasure model are the two that were contradicting before this revision.
Confirm the response-time commitments stated as aims (48-hour story reply, two-hour crisis reply, [48-hour] general reply) are ones Makenna wants in a binding document, or should be softened further.
Open build decisions that change what this document says, and are flagged in place: which verification method is on (2.2); whether messages and meet-ups ship in the first version (8.2); the Quiet Mode default (8.4); whether subscribers and members are one record or two (15); and the moderation-record period (5.5).
Future paid products: when the magazine or a paid download launches, the per-copy watermark, expiring signed links and download limits described in section 1 must be written out in full here and in the Privacy Policy before the first sale. The tables exist and nothing is on sale.
Not promised, and deliberately so: two-step sign-in. The old draft told members to switch it on in settings. It is not built. If it is built, add it here.