This policy explains how Public Comment collects, uses, discloses, and retains information when you use our website, app, and related services.
Last updated: June 1, 2026
Some activity on Public Comment is public by design. Some activity is shown only in aggregate. Some activity is visible only to you, Public Comment, service providers, moderators, administrators, or other authorized reviewers. Visibility depends on the feature, your settings, and the type of action you take.
Public Comment may allow you to choose how your account is publicly identified, including by using an anonymous or limited-profile display option where supported. These display choices do not mean that your activity is anonymous to Public Comment systems or impossible for others to infer from public context.
We may collect information used to create, authenticate, and manage your account, such as your email address, sign-in provider information, display name, profile settings, avatar information, account status, and similar account data.
We may collect information you provide or configure for public display, including profile names, profile images, public account settings, official or representative roles, and anonymous or limited-profile display choices where supported.
We may collect poll responses, rankings, exclusions, arguments, write-ins, endorsements, reports, drafts, moderation submissions, published content, official actions, administrator actions, and related activity on the platform.
We may collect device, browser, app, log, performance, security, analytics, crash, and diagnostic information, including information produced by hosting, database, authentication, storage, analytics, and error-reporting services.
Public Comment is designed to help people understand public issues, compare viewpoints, and evaluate the reasoning behind them. To support that purpose, some information is public or may become public when you submit, publish, endorse, or otherwise participate in public features.
Poll responses may be used to produce aggregate public results. Individual poll responses are not necessarily displayed publicly, but your views may become inferable if you choose to publish related arguments, write-ins, explanations, endorsements, or other public content.
Arguments, write-ins, endorsements, and similar contributions may be public, private, attributed, anonymous, pseudonymous, or aggregated depending on the feature settings and your choices. Public Comment encourages greater attribution where appropriate to build trust, but may also support anonymous or limited-identity participation.
Reports and moderation submissions are generally not public, but may be reviewed by Public Comment operators, moderators, administrators, service providers, or other authorized reviewers to enforce rules, respond to abuse, maintain integrity, and protect users or the platform.
If you act as an official, candidate, administrator, moderator, representative, or similar role, role-related information and actions may be visible, logged, retained, or reviewed for authorization, integrity, audit, public accountability, and platform operations.
We may use information for purposes including:
To create and manage accounts, authenticate users, display public content, record responses, calculate results, prevent duplicate or unauthorized actions, process drafts and publications, provide support, and operate platform features.
To enforce rules, review reports, moderate content, investigate abuse, detect fraud or security issues, verify roles and permissions, protect users, and preserve platform integrity.
To understand feature usage, improve reliability, diagnose errors, evaluate product performance, develop new features, and improve the quality, safety, clarity, and usefulness of Public Comment.
We may use information collected through Public Comment, including public content, public profile information, platform activity, aggregate sentiment data, and de-identified or non-identifying data, to operate, analyze, improve, develop, and support Public Comment and related tools, including machine learning and artificial intelligence systems.
Public Comment may use service providers for hosting, authentication, database services, storage, analytics, crash reporting, security, email, support, and related operations. These providers may process information on our behalf so they can provide services to us.
We may collect analytics and diagnostic information to understand whether the platform works, how features are used, and where errors occur. We try to use product analytics in a way that avoids unnecessary raw civic content, direct account identifiers, and high-detail user-generated text where practical.
We may retain information for as long as needed to operate Public Comment, provide services, maintain records, resolve disputes, enforce rules, comply with legal obligations, preserve security, prevent abuse, support public accountability, and maintain the integrity of public or aggregate results.
If you delete your account or request deletion, we may delete, de-identify, aggregate, restrict, or retain information depending on the type of information, feature behavior, legal requirements, backups, logs, public records, platform integrity needs, moderation history, and operational constraints. Public content, aggregate results, public-interest records, or non-identifying data may remain after account deletion.
Public Comment is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without appropriate consent, we may delete it.
We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information. However, no website, app, database, network, or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
You may be able to edit your profile, choose how you are publicly displayed, use anonymous or limited-profile display options where supported, manage certain account settings, delete your account, or contact us about privacy-related requests. Some choices may be limited by feature design, law, security, moderation, public-record, public-accountability, backup, or platform-integrity needs.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we update it, we may change the “Last updated” date above. If changes are material, we may provide additional notice as required or appropriate.
For privacy questions or requests, contact us at hello@pcomment.com.