Terms of Service & Community Guidelines

You must be at least 16 years of ageto create an account or use the Service. The Service is not directed to children under 16. We require this at sign-in: you must affirm that you are 16 or older before either sign-in path becomes available. We set the minimum at 16 to align with the digital age of consent set in Ireland (the controller’s jurisdiction) under Article 8 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation. If we become aware that an account belongs to a person under 16, we will close it and delete the associated data.

You must also:

• have the legal capacity to enter a binding contract under the laws of your country of residence;
• not be barred from using the Service under applicable law (for example, you must not be located in a country subject to a European Union, Irish, United Kingdom, or United States embargo, and you must not be on any government list of prohibited or restricted parties);
• not have been previously suspended or removed from Lumesce, unless you have our express written permission to create a new account.

One account per person. Each Lumesce account belongs to one natural person. You may not share your account with anyone else, and you may not maintain multiple accounts to evade enforcement of these Terms.

Lumesce uses passwordless sign-in (email magic link or Sign in with Apple). You are responsible for keeping access to your email inbox or Apple ID secure, and for all activity that takes place under your account.

You must provide accurate information when prompted and keep your profile information up to date. You may not impersonate any person or organisation, misrepresent your affiliation with any person or organisation, or use a username, display name, or avatar that is intentionally misleading or deceptive.

If you suspect any unauthorised use of your account, contact us promptly at hi@lumesce.app.

The Service is free of charge.We do not currently offer a paid subscription tier, an “ads off” upgrade, or any in-app purchase. You cannot pay Lumesce to change what content you are shown.

To support the Service, we earn revenue from curated promotional content shown to users in three clearly designated places: the Billboard section of the Discover tab (a labelled space for editorial brand promotions), a small number of sponsored cards interleaved into the main photo feed at a configured cadence, and a single clearly-labelled sponsored rowat the top of the Activity tab while a campaign is running. Promotional content is always clearly labelled as such, and sponsored content links out to the advertiser’s own website. Lumesce itself does not handle any payment from end users, take a commission on any sale, or operate any in-app marketplace.

The way we run sponsored content is deliberately narrow:

• Country-only targeting. Advertisers may ask that their content be shown only to users in particular countries, derived from your device region setting. We do not profile your individual behaviour, your photographic interests, your social graph, or any other personal characteristic for ad-selection purposes.
• No auction, no real-time bidding, no third-party ad networks, no cross-app tracking. Lumesce alone decides which promotion to show. Advertisers do not bid on individual impressions, and there is no ad-tech intermediary between you and us.
• No personal data shared with advertisers. We report only aggregate metrics to advertisers — for example, the total number of unique accounts that viewed a campaign and the total number of taps it received. We do not tell an advertiser who you are, what photographs you have posted, or what content you have engaged with.
• No sale of personal data. We do not sell or otherwise transfer personal data to advertisers, and the licence you grant us in section 10 does not extend to advertiser use of your User Content.

A limited amount of personal data is processed to run the feed sponsored cards responsibly — to frequency-cap how often the same person sees the same promotion, to measure aggregate campaign reach, and to honour your right to object. The categories of data, the retention periods, the legal basis, and your rights in this regard are described in detail in our Privacy Policy (see “First-party sponsored content”). If you wish to object to this processing, email hi@lumesce.app and we will action your objection within 30 days (Article 21 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation).

We may adjust the cadence, placement, or selection of sponsored content from time to time, and we may decline particular advertisers in our sole discretion. The commitments above — country-only targeting, no behavioural profiling, no auction, no third-party trackers, no sale of personal data — are part of these Terms; we will not depart from them without a material update under section 20.

Your personal data is governed by our Privacy Policy, published at lumesce.app/privacy. The Privacy Policy is incorporated into these Terms by reference and explains:

• what personal data we collect and how we collect it;
• why we process it (the legal bases under the EU General Data Protection Regulation);
• who we share it with and for what purpose;
• how long we retain it;
• the limited processing involved in sponsored content (see section 3 above);
• your rights as a data subject — including access, rectification, erasure, portability, and the right to object — and how to exercise them;
• how to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Where these Terms and the Privacy Policy address the same subject from different angles, the Privacy Policy is the authoritative source for how your personal data is handled, and these Terms are the authoritative source for the contractual relationship and the rules of use.

Lumesce is built for photographers. The Service is a quiet, curated space designed for the appreciation and sharing of photographs. It is deliberately not a venue for engagement-maximising behaviour, public vanity metrics, or commercial promotion outside the channels we provide.

The Community Guidelines below set out what you may and may not do on Lumesce. They apply to everything you post — photographs, captions, tags, comments, your profile, and how you interact with other users. They apply equally to private contact (for example, the email exchanged via our contact-request flow) where that contact arises from your use of the Service.

We enforce the Guidelines using both human review and automated tools, in our sole discretion, with appeals available where applicable (see section 13).

The following categories of content will be removed immediately on discovery, the account responsible will be suspended or terminated, and we will, where the law requires it, report the content and the account to the relevant authorities (including the Irish An Garda Síochána and, for child sexual abuse material, the U.S. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children via established reporting mechanisms):

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or any sexualised imagery of a minor, real or generated. There is no artistic, journalistic, or educational exception to this rule.
• Content that sexually exploits, endangers, or causes harm to a minor, including grooming, solicitation, or non-sexual imagery shared in a sexual context.
• Non-consensual intimate imageryof any person (commonly called “revenge porn”), including imagery created or altered without the subject’s consent (so-called “deepfakes”).
• Terrorist content or content that promotes, incites, glorifies, or recruits for a terrorist organisation, as defined under EU Regulation (EU) 2021/784 and the laws of Ireland.
• Credible threats of violence against an identifiable person or group, and content that incites imminent violence.
• Doxxing— publishing or threatening to publish another person’s private personal information (home address, workplace, government identification, financial information, contact details not already public) without their consent, especially where the publication is intended to or could reasonably be expected to harass, intimidate, or harm that person.

Posting any of the content above will result in immediate account termination and may result in reports to law enforcement. Where required by law we will preserve evidence and respond to lawful requests from authorities.

In addition to the zero-tolerance categories in section 6, you may not post, link to, or otherwise share through the Service:

• Explicit sexual content or pornography. Lumesce is not a venue for explicit nudity or sexual content. Fine-art photography that depicts the human form is reviewed in context — our automated moderation flags content for human review rather than removing it automatically — but our reviewers have final discretion and may remove content that falls outside the editorial context the Service is built for.
• Hate speech. Content that promotes hatred against, or incites discrimination or violence against, a person or group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or serious illness.
• Harassment and bullying. Targeted insults, repeated unwanted contact, coordinated attacks, or content intended to demean, intimidate, or shame a person.
• Content that promotes self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders, or that romanticises, encourages, or provides instructions for these behaviours. (Content sharing personal experience in a recovery or awareness context, with appropriate care, is generally permitted; the line is intent and effect.)
• Promotion or sale of regulated or dangerous goods or services — including firearms and ammunition, controlled substances, prescription medicines, tobacco, vaping products, gambling services, human body parts, endangered species or their parts, and counterfeit goods.
• Content that infringes intellectual property rights — including photographs that are not yours to share, watermarks removed from third-party work, or trademarks used without permission.
• Misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive content — including impersonation, manipulated media presented as authentic where the manipulation would mislead a reasonable viewer, fake giveaways, phishing, and financial or investment scams.
• Spam. Repetitive posting, mass following or commenting designed to attract attention, undisclosed paid promotion, content posted primarily to direct users off the platform, and use of automation for these purposes.
• Content that violates a third party’s right to privacy, including posting identifying imagery of private individuals in contexts where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
• Content that violates applicable law in the country where you are located or where the content is reasonably likely to be seen.

We apply the prohibitions above in our sole discretion. Criticism, satire, parody, scientific or medical discussion, public-interest reporting, religious or philosophical viewpoint, and impolite or unflattering opinion are not, on their own, prohibited under these Guidelines — even where particular phrases, taken in isolation, could be read pejoratively. Whether specific content crosses the line is for us to determine; we may decline to act where we judge that doing so would silence legitimate expression.

Beyond what you post, the following conduct is prohibited:

• Scraping or bulk data collection. You may not use automated tools (bots, crawlers, scrapers) to access, collect, or reproduce content from the Service, except for your own data via the in-app GDPR export tool we provide.
• Circumventing security or rate limits. You may not probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service; bypass or attempt to bypass any authentication, rate-limiting, or content-moderation mechanism; or interfere with the proper operation of the Service.
• Reverse-engineering. Except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law (for example, certain interoperability rights under EU law), you may not reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Lumesce app or any server-side component.
• Commercial use of others’ content. You may not download, redistribute, or otherwise commercially exploit photographs posted by other users without the explicit permission of the photographer. Content on Lumesce is shared by photographers for appreciation; it is not made available for unrestricted commercial re-use.
• Ban evasion. If we have removed an account, you may not create a new account to continue the conduct that led to the removal.
• Resale or transfer of access. You may not sell, rent, lease, or otherwise transfer access to your account or any part of the Service.

Lumesce provides in-app tools to flag content and isolate yourself from other users. You are expected to use them.

• Report a photo or comment.Tap the overflow (…) menu on any photo or comment and choose Report. Reports are reviewed by our moderation team. We will act on credible reports in a reasonable timeframe; we do not commit to acting on every report and we do not generally disclose the outcome to the reporter except where required by law (for example, EU Digital Services Act Article 16 notice-and-action acknowledgements where applicable).
• Block a user.Tap the overflow menu on any user’s profile and choose Block. Blocking is mutual: neither party will see the other’s photos, comments, or profile in any feed, search result, or notification.
• Contact us directly at hi@lumesce.app for anything that the in-app tools do not cover, including reports of intellectual-property infringement (see section 12).

You retain all rights you already have in the photographs, captions, comments, profile information, and any other content you submit to the Service (your “User Content”). Lumesce does not claim ownership of your User Content.

The licence you grant us. To run the Service for you and for other users, you grant Futurenative Limited a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable licence (with the right to grant further sub-licences to our service providers strictly for the purposes below) to:

• host, store, cache, transmit, reformat, resize, transcode, watermark for technical purposes, and display your User Content within the Service, in the manner reasonably required to run feeds, search, profiles, comments, and the data-export tool;
• show your User Content to other users consistent with the visibility model the Service implements at the time you posted it (public posts are visible to authenticated users; your follows and likes are subject to the visibility rules in the Privacy Policy);
• use a limited subset of your User Content in marketing and promotional materials for the Service itself (for example, screenshots of the app or editorial features of recently posted work) with attribution to your Lumesce username, and only while your User Content remains visible on the Service or until you object — see below.

What this licence does not authorise. We do not, under this licence, sell your User Content to third parties, licence it to advertisers, or use it to train machine-learning models (other than the narrow, content-moderation use of automated detection described in our Privacy Policy, which classifies individual uploads shortly after upload and does not retain training-grade copies of your content). If we ever propose to use User Content for any purpose beyond the scope of this licence — for example, a paid licensing programme or AI-training use — we will request your explicit opt-in consent.

How the licence ends.The licence terminates automatically when you remove the relevant User Content from the Service or close your account, except that (a) reasonable backup and log copies may persist for a short period before they cycle out, (b) copies cached by users’ devices and our content delivery network may persist briefly, and (c) where you posted content publicly and other users have already seen it, those users’ memories and any independent copies they may have made are not subject to your removal request (we have no control over them).

Marketing use opt-out. You may opt out of the limited marketing use described above at any time by emailing hi@lumesce.app. The opt-out applies prospectively — we will not start new marketing uses of your User Content, but materials already published may take a reasonable time to be updated or withdrawn.

Your representations. By posting User Content, you represent and warrant that (i) the User Content is your own original work, or that you have all necessary rights and permissions (including from any identifiable individuals depicted, where required by applicable law) to grant the licence above; (ii) the User Content does not infringe the intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights of any third party; and (iii) the User Content does not violate these Terms.

The Service itself — including the Lumesce app, the admin web app, the Lumesce name, the “lumesce” wordmark, the visual design, the underlying source code, the editorial copy, the icon set, and all other materials created by us (the “Lumesce Materials”) — is owned by Futurenative Limited or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-commercial, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service and the Lumesce Materials solely as the Service is intended to be used and only while these Terms are in effect. No other rights are granted by implication, estoppel, or otherwise.

We respect intellectual-property rights and expect users to do the same. If you believe that User Content on Lumesce infringes a copyright you own or control, please send a notice that includes:

• identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
• identification of the material on the Service that you claim is infringing, with sufficient detail (including the URL or a unique identifier) for us to locate it;
• your contact information (name, address, email, telephone);
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorised to act on the owner’s behalf;
• your physical or electronic signature.

Send notices to hi@lumesce.app (subject line: Copyright notice). We will review credible notices in a reasonable timeframe, and where appropriate we will remove the material, terminate repeat infringers, and notify the user who posted the content. If you believe content of yours was removed in error you may send a counter-notice to the same address. False or bad-faith notices may result in liability for damages and costs under applicable law (including the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §512(f), where applicable).

We moderate User Content using a combination of in-app user reports, automated detection (including AWS Rekognition to flag content that may violate our guidelines — see the Privacy Policy), and human review by our moderation team. We may, in our sole discretion:

• remove or restrict the visibility of User Content that we believe violates these Terms or applicable law;
• warn, restrict, suspend, or terminate accounts responsible for repeated or serious violations;
• report violations to law-enforcement or other authorities where required or appropriate;
• decline to act on a report where, in our judgement, the reported content does not violate these Terms.

Notice and appeals. Where we remove User Content that you posted, or restrict or suspend your account, we will, where reasonably possible, notify you and provide a brief statement of reasons consistent with our obligations under the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). You may appeal a decision by replying to that notice or by emailing hi@lumesce.app with the subject line Appeal. We will review appeals in good faith and respond in a reasonable timeframe. We do not commit to a specific service-level response time for appeals; volume may affect speed of response.

Out-of-court dispute settlement. If you are a recipient of the Service in the European Union and you disagree with the outcome of an appeal, you may have the right to refer the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute-settlement body under Article 21 of the EU Digital Services Act. We do not waive any such right but we are not bound to refer disputes ourselves; you may contact a certified body of your choice.

You may end your use of the Service at any time by deleting your account from inside the app (Profile → Settings → Delete account). Account deletion cascades your personal data through our database as described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your access — with or without notice and with or without cause — in our sole discretion, including (without limitation) if we believe you have violated these Terms, if continued access would expose us or another user to legal liability or material risk of harm, if a court or authority requires us to do so, or if your account has been inactive for an extended period. Where reasonably possible we will notify you and provide a brief statement of reasons.

On termination, the licence you granted us in section 10 ends as described there, our licence to you to use the Service ends, and the sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including sections 10 (residual licence terms), 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22) will continue to apply.

The Service is distributed through Apple’s App Store. The following clauses are required by Apple and apply if you obtained the Lumesce app from the App Store.

• Acknowledgement.These Terms are concluded between you and Futurenative Limited only, and not with Apple Inc. or its subsidiaries (“Apple”). Futurenative Limited, not Apple, is solely responsible for the Lumesce app and its content.
• Scope of licence.The licence granted to you for the Lumesce app is limited to a non-transferable licence to use the app on any Apple device that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules set out in Apple’s Media Services Terms.
• Maintenance and support. Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance and support services with respect to the Lumesce app.
• Warranty. Futurenative Limited, not Apple, is solely responsible for any product warranties, whether express or implied by law, to the extent not effectively disclaimed. In the event of any failure of the Lumesce app to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any) you paid for the app to you (the app is currently free, so this provision has no practical effect); to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app.
• Product claims. Futurenative Limited, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the Lumesce app or your possession and use of it, including (i) product liability claims; (ii) any claim that the app fails to conform to any applicable legal or regulatory requirement; and (iii) claims arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar legislation.
• Intellectual-property claims.In the event of any third-party claim that the Lumesce app or your possession and use of it infringes that third party’s intellectual-property rights, Futurenative Limited, not Apple, will be solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement, and discharge of any such intellectual-property infringement claim.
• Legal compliance.You represent and warrant that (i) you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo, or that has been designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and (ii) you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Third-party terms. You must comply with applicable third-party terms of agreement when using the Lumesce app (for example, your wireless data-service agreement).
• Third-party beneficiary.Apple, and Apple’s subsidiaries, are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance of these Terms, Apple will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce these Terms against you as a third-party beneficiary thereof.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Futurenative Limited disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, free of viruses or other harmful components, or that defects will be corrected. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any User Content or any other material accessible through the Service.

EU consumer rights preserved. Nothing in this section excludes or limits any warranty or right that you have under the law of your country of residence as a consumer, where that warranty or right cannot be excluded or limited by contract. In particular, nothing in these Terms affects any non-waivable rights you may have under the laws of an EU member state (including the statutory conformity warranty under Directive (EU) 2019/770 on digital content and digital services, as transposed in your country).

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• Futurenative Limited will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages; or for any loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, data, opportunity, or use, in each case whether arising from contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages;
• our aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to one hundred euros (€100) or the total amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to liability, whichever is greater (the Service is currently free, so the €100 figure controls in practice).

Carve-outs. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability of Futurenative Limited that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including (where relevant) non-waivable rights you have as a consumer under Irish or EU consumer-protection law.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you will indemnify and hold harmless Futurenative Limited and its officers, directors, employees, agents, and service providers from and against any claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your User Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your breach of these Terms; or (d) your violation of any law or of the rights of any third party. This indemnity does not apply to the extent that the claim arises from our wilful misconduct or our gross negligence, and does not affect any non-waivable rights you have as a consumer under the laws of your country of residence.

Futurenative Limited will not be liable for any failure or delay in performing under these Terms to the extent caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, riots, embargoes, acts of civil or military authorities, fire, floods, earthquakes, pandemics, disruption to power or telecommunications networks, or interruption of services by upstream providers (including the App Store, the hosting provider, or content-delivery networks).

Changes to the Service. Lumesce is our product, and we may, in our sole discretion, add features, modify how existing features work, remove features, redesign the user interface, or discontinue the Service in whole or in part — for any reason, including to improve the Service, to respond to legal or regulatory requirements, to address security or operational concerns, or for any other commercial reason we consider appropriate. Where a change materially and adversely affects your existing use of the Service, we will give reasonable advance notice by in-app announcement or by email; if you do not wish to continue under the changed Service, you may end your use of the Service at any time by deleting your account (see section 14). Nothing in these Terms entitles you to the continued availability of any specific feature, design, or capability.

Changes to these Terms.We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. The “Last updated” date at the top of the page reflects the most recent change.

For material changes to these Terms — for example, changes that meaningfully reduce your rights, change the licence you grant us, or introduce new categories of charges — we will give you reasonable advance notice by email at the address on your account, and (where the change affects account holders) we will require you to re-affirm acceptance the next time you sign in. Continued use of the Service after a material change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept the updated Terms, your remedy is to stop using the Service and delete your account.

Non-material changes (typo fixes, formatting, clarifications that do not change the substance of any obligation) may be made without notice.

These Terms and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the laws of Ireland, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles.

Subject to the EU consumer-protection carve-out below, the courts of Ireland have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms (including disputes regarding the existence, validity, or termination of these Terms).

EU consumer carve-out. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another EU member state, you have the benefit of any mandatory provisions of the law of that member state, and Article 18 of Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 (Brussels I bis) allows you to bring proceedings against us either in the Irish courts or in the courts of the member state where you are domiciled. Nothing in these Terms deprives you of that right.

The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply to these Terms.

• Entire agreement. These Terms (together with our Privacy Policy and any other policy expressly incorporated by reference) constitute the entire agreement between you and Futurenative Limited regarding the Service and supersede any prior or contemporaneous understanding on the same subject.
• Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that right or provision.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, corporate reorganisation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets, provided that we give you reasonable notice of any such assignment.
• Notices. We may give notice under these Terms by email to the address on your account or by posting in-app. You may give notice to us at hi@lumesce.app.
• No third-party beneficiaries except as expressly stated (Apple is a designated third-party beneficiary under section 15).
• Language. These Terms are provided in English. If we provide a translation as a convenience, the English version controls.

For any question about these Terms, to report content, to send a copyright notice, to file an appeal, or for any other matter relating to your use of the Service, contact:

Futurenative Limited
Email: hi@lumesce.app
Registered in Ireland (European Union), company number 817038
Registered office: 2 Park View, Clane, Co. Kildare