how this site operates

in short:

we try to be as exhaustively compliant with our idea of an ideal "totally anonymous" experience as possible by default; all database entries that we store have at least one obvious, user-facing indication of storage, all of your data (and we mean all of it) can be deleted at any time, for any reason, and any and all deletions are user-facing, and tested. once you delete something, we and you forever lose access to it (the entire footprint) once the cache window rolls over (currently 5 minutes), as if you yourself were never present on the site. any and all required user information in any and all contexts is anonymous, both in isolation and in context, and we never store plain text passwords; only hashes, meaning we don't know your (decrypted) password.

what is public

uploaded posts, visible files, titles, descriptions, artist names, profile pictures, custom username colors, public profile pages, post counts, comment counts, and comments are visible to other people on the site

(if you post with a publish date, you can still see that post before that date while other people should not see it until it publishes)

what is stored

account usernames, password hashes, account creation times, profile picture references, upload records, upload metadata, uploaded files, publish dates, expiration dates, comments, and whether or not an account has already seen certain first-time notices

(uploaded files and profile pictures are stored in object storage, site records, users, posts, file references, comments, and settings are stored in the site's database)

passwords and logins

passwords are stored as hashes, never as plain text. login sessions are designed to persist until the user explicitly signs out, unless the browser, server, or site configuration clears the session earlier

files and downloads

uploaded files may be streamed from object storage or served through temporary signed links depending on the storage setup; people who can view a public post may be able to open or download the files attached to it

(the site tries to support large and miscellaneous files, but upload reliability can still depend on the browser, network, hosting provider, object storage, and server limits outside the page itself)

comments and usernames

registered usernames link to their profile pages; names that do not belong to registered accounts are displayed as plain text so that they do not pretend to be real accounts, and claimable by anyone

comments are public where they appear, and may also be shown on the commenter's profile page

moderation and administration

site administrators may need to view, edit, remove, or repair site content, files, comments, and account records to keep the site working, fix abuse, recover from errors, or handle maintenance

because the site is independently run, there may be downtime, manual maintenance, or emergency changes when something breaks

deleting things

when an account, post, profile picture, or file is deleted through the site, the site attempts to remove the matching database records and stored objects it controls

copies that were already downloaded, cached, archived, indexed, backed up, or shared outside the site may not be possible for the site to remove

tracking and third parties

the app itself does not include ad tracking or analytics code in its templates. the site still depends on normal infrastructure such as hosting, object storage, server logs, and browser requests, which may process technical data needed to deliver pages and files

in short; have common sense

(even though it is allowed as long as it is legal) generally do not upload private information, secrets, credentials, unreleased work you are not ready to share, or anything you would not want viewers or administrators to access