Terms of Service

amphi is a platform for philosophical discussion: threaded arguments with citations, structured debates, reading from a public-domain archive, private communities, and AI features for exploring texts and strengthening arguments.

We are a host, not a publisher. Content on amphi is written by its users. We do not endorse it, verify it, or vouch for it, and you should not treat it as ours.

amphi is unfinished software offered as-is. Features will change and be removed. Data written during beta may be migrated, reset, or lost during development. We may impose or change usage limits at any time.

Do not use amphi as your only copy of anything you care about, and do not build anything that depends on amphi remaining available or unchanged.

You must be at least 16 years old. By using amphi you confirm you are.

You must also not be barred from using amphi under the laws that apply to you, and must not have been previously removed from amphi for violating these terms.

If you accept these terms for an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Choose a real password, do not share it, and tell us at amphiforum@gmail.com if you think it is compromised.

One human, one account. Do not create accounts to evade a suspension, to manufacture agreement with yourself, or to vote on your own content.

Give accurate information when you register and keep it current. We may reclaim handles that impersonate someone, are held purely to squat, or violate the Acceptable Use Policy.

You can delete your account at any time. Read Privacy §11 before you do: on amphi, deletion removes your content everywhere, permanently, including posts other people have replied to.

You keep ownership of everything you write. We claim no ownership of your posts, comments, arguments, essays, or messages.

To run amphi we need permission to handle what you post. You grant Amphi a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for formatting and display, back up, and publicly display your content — for the sole purpose of operating, securing, and improving amphi, and only for as long as you keep the content on amphi. Sublicensing extends only to the infrastructure providers who host and serve it on our behalf.

That licence is deliberately narrow. Specifically, it does not include:

• Selling or licensing your content to anyone else.
• Training AI models on your content, whether ours or a third party's. AI features process your content to answer your request; that is not a training licence, and if we ever want one we will ask separately.
• Using your writing in advertising or marketing without asking you first.

The licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies in backups until they cycle out, and for anything other users lawfully quoted before deletion.

You are responsible for what you post. By posting, you confirm you have the rights to it, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights or break the law or our rules.

Public content is public. Content in public circles can be read, quoted, and archived by anyone, including search engines and third parties we do not control. We cannot retrieve it once it has been copied elsewhere.

Two documents form part of these terms:

• [Community Guidelines](/legal/guidelines) — the standard of discourse amphi holds you to.
• [Acceptable Use Policy](/legal/acceptable-use) — prohibited conduct and technical restrictions.

Breaking either breaks these terms.

We may remove content, restrict features, suspend accounts, or terminate them where we reasonably believe our rules, these terms, or the law have been broken, or where content presents a risk to users or to us.

Moderation on amphi is substantially automated. Published posts and comments are scored by a language model, and content over threshold is redacted without prior human review. Privacy §6 explains this in detail, including the automated decision-making rights that come with it.

You can appeal. Every automated redaction can be appealed, and appeals are read by a person. We aim to respond within 14 days. We keep a record of moderation actions so appeals can be reviewed against what actually happened rather than what anyone remembers.

We are not obliged to monitor content, and not removing something is not endorsement of it.

amphi includes AI features: grounded chat, argument steelmanning, argument linting, and generated challenges.

AI output is unreliable. It can be wrong, incoherent, or biased, and it can fabricate quotations, attributions, and citations that look entirely convincing. Verify anything that matters against the underlying text.

It is not advice. Nothing amphi generates is legal, medical, financial, psychological, or professional advice of any kind. Philosophical text engages with hard questions about meaning, death, and how to live; amphi is a study tool, not support. If you are in crisis, contact a professional or a crisis line.

Your input goes to third parties. Text you enter into AI features is sent to external model providers for processing. Privacy §4 names them and explains the consequences. Do not enter anything you would not send to an outside company.

Do not misrepresent AI output as your own scholarship. Passing generated text off as your own argument, in academic work or on amphi, is your problem and against our Community Guidelines.

We may change, limit, or withdraw AI features at any time, including rate limits on the endpoints they use.

amphi's archive holds public-domain and openly licensed texts from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, and PhilArchive.

Public domain status varies by country. A text free to use where we host it may still be in copyright where you live — that is your responsibility to check. Each work records its stated licence and source; where a source imposes terms, those terms travel with the text.

Archive texts are provided as they came to us. We do not guarantee that transcriptions, translations, or attributions are accurate, and scholarly editions differ. Cite the original edition, not us.

Communities are created and run by users. Their owners and moderators set their own rules and manage membership and invitations.

Community rules operate in addition to these terms and our Community Guidelines, never instead of them. A community cannot authorise what amphi prohibits.

We do not control how community moderators exercise their powers and are not responsible for their decisions. We may intervene in, restrict, or remove any community that violates our rules, and we may take over or close a community abandoned by its owners.

Content in private communities is visible to members. Any member can copy it elsewhere. "Private" describes access control, not confidentiality.

Direct messages are private between participants, subject to two limits worth stating plainly:

• They are not end-to-end encrypted. We can technically read them, and we may access them where necessary to investigate abuse, comply with law, or keep the service running.
• The recipient can do anything with them, including screenshotting and publishing them.

Do not use amphi DMs for anything requiring genuine confidentiality.

amphi is free during beta. There is nothing to buy and we take no payment information.

If we introduce paid features, we will give notice first, and existing functionality that you rely on today will not be moved behind a paywall without reasonable notice and the chance to export your data.

The amphi name, logo, design, interface, and software are owned by Amphi and protected by intellectual property law. These terms grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable licence to use amphi as intended — nothing more.

You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, or create derivative works from amphi's software, or use our name or branding without written permission.

Suggestions you send us we may use freely, without obligation or compensation. Do not send us anything you want to keep or be paid for.

You may stop using amphi and delete your account at any time.

We may suspend or terminate your access where you break these terms, where required by law, or where your use poses a risk to other users or to us. Except for serious violations or legal requirement, we will tell you why and, where practical, give you a chance to respond.

We may also discontinue amphi entirely. If we do, we will give at least 30 days' notice and a way to export your data.

Sections 5 (as to content already lawfully used), 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, and 20 survive termination.

amphi links to and depends on services we do not control — infrastructure providers, AI model providers, text sources, and any external site a user links to. We are not responsible for them, their content, or their practices. Your use of them is governed by their terms.

amphi is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or trade usage.

We do not warrant that amphi will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free; that defects will be corrected; that content — user-written, archive, or AI-generated — is accurate, complete, or reliable; or that amphi will meet your requirements.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither Amphi nor its officers, employees, or agents is liable for:

• Indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages.
• Lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or anticipated savings.
• Loss or corruption of content — see §2 on beta status.
• Anything another user does or posts.
• Decisions you make in reliance on AI-generated or archive content.
• Unauthorised access to your account or data resulting from your own failure to keep credentials secure.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to amphi will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars (US$100). amphi is currently free, so for most users that ceiling is US$100.

These limits apply regardless of the legal theory — contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, or otherwise — and even if we were told the damages were possible. They do not apply where the law does not permit them, and consumers retain any non-waivable statutory rights.

You will indemnify and hold harmless Amphi and its officers, employees, and agents against claims, damages, losses, and reasonable legal fees arising from your content, your use of amphi, your breach of these terms, or your violation of anyone's rights.

We will notify you of any such claim and may participate in its defence at our own expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that imposes obligations on us without our written consent.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflict of law rules.

Talk to us first. Before filing anything, email amphitheatreforum@gmail.com with a description of the dispute and what you want. We will do the same. Most problems are cheaper to solve this way, and neither side may commence proceedings until 60 days after that notice.

If that fails, you and Amphi agree that the state and federal courts located in Fulton County, Georgia have exclusive jurisdiction, and each consents to personal jurisdiction there.

Consumer protection is preserved. If you are a consumer resident in the EEA, the UK, or another jurisdiction whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings locally or to rely on mandatory local consumer protections, this section does not take that away.

<!-- EDITOR NOTE: courts rather than binding arbitration is a deliberate choice. See docs/legal/README.md, "Open decisions" §1, before changing it. -->

We may update these terms. Material changes get at least 30 days' notice by email and in-product before they take effect. Minor corrections take effect on posting, with the date at the top updated.

Continuing to use amphi after a change takes effect means you accept the new terms. If you do not accept them, delete your account before the effective date.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with the Community Guidelines, Acceptable Use Policy, Copyright Policy, and Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about amphi.

Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stands.

No waiver. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.

Assignment. You may not assign these terms. We may assign them to a successor in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

No third-party beneficiaries, except the indemnified parties in §19.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

• General: amphiforum@gmail.com
• Legal notices and disputes: amphitheatreforum@gmail.com
• Copyright: amphitheatreforum@gmail.com — see the Copyright Policy
• Privacy: amphitheatreforum@gmail.com — see the Privacy Policy
• Post: Amphitheatre, 1055 Windermere Crossing, Cumming, GA 30041