Terms of Service

Notes and briefings are written by a machine

Read this part even if you skip the rest. Alongside each item in your edition, Sift shows a short note of its own, and the spoken briefing introduces the day’s article picks in Sift’s voice. Both are produced automatically by a language model. No person writes or checks them before you see them.

They can be wrong. A note can misstate a fact, miss the point, attribute a claim to the wrong person, or describe something that isn’t in the original at all. Treat every note and briefing as a pointer to the source, never as the source. The article, video, or episode itself is the record, and it’s one tap away for exactly this reason.

So: don’t rely on Sift’s generated text for any decision that matters, whether medical, legal, or financial, and don’t quote it as the words of the publisher, the creator, or anyone it names. Generated text is not a statement by us or by the people it describes, and we make no promise that it is accurate, complete, or current.

Your account

Sift is for people 13 and older. You’re responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your sign-in secure. You can also use Sift without signing in with Google or Apple; that account lives only on the device or browser that created it, so losing that session loses the account and everything in it.

Acceptable use

While using Sift, don’t:

• break the law, or use Sift to harass, defame, or infringe on anyone;
• scrape, crawl, or bulk-export Sift’s content, or use any part of it to train a model;
• interfere with Sift by probing its security, evading rate limits, automating accounts, or overloading the service;
• republish or resell editions, notes, or briefings as your own; or
• present a Sift note or briefing as a publisher’s or a person’s own words, or as written by a human.

What your edition shows

The articles, videos, and podcast episodes in your edition belong to the publishers and creators who made them. Sift shows a headline and the image the source supplies. The full thing comes from the source: an article opens on the publisher’s own site, a podcast episode opens in the app or website you choose, and a video plays in YouTube’s embedded player inside Sift, or opens on YouTube if that player can’t load. We don’t own that material, don’t endorse it, and aren’t responsible for it. Watching a video in Sift is also use of YouTube, so YouTube’s own terms apply to it, and a podcast plays under the terms of the app you open it in.

Sift’s own software, design, name, and generated text stay ours. We give you a personal, revocable, non-transferable license to use Sift for your own reading and listening, and nothing more.

Ending it

You can delete your account at any time. See Delete Your Account. We can suspend or end your access, with or without notice, if you break these terms or if we need to protect Sift or the people using it. Sift is free, so there’s nothing to refund. We may also change, pause, or discontinue any part of Sift.

No warranty

Sift is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty about the accuracy, reliability, or availability of Sift or anything it generates. We don’t promise that Sift will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that an edition will arrive on any given day.

Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, arising out of or relating to Sift (including anything arising from automatically generated text), whether the claim is in contract, tort, or any other theory, and even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims relating to Sift will not exceed the greater of what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (Sift is free, so this is normally nothing) or US $100. Some places don’t allow these exclusions; where that’s true, they apply as far as the law allows.

If your use of Sift, or your breach of these terms, leads someone else to bring a claim against us, you agree to cover the reasonable costs of defending it.

If you got Sift from the App Store

Apple requires these extra terms for the iOS app. This agreement is between you and us only. Apple is not a party to it, and we, not Apple, are solely responsible for Sift and its content. Nothing here sets usage rules that conflict with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.

• Scope of the license. Your license to the iOS app is a non-transferable license to use it on Apple-branded products you own or control, as permitted by the usage rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions, except that other accounts associated with you through Family Sharing or volume purchasing may also access and use it.
• Maintenance and support. We alone provide any maintenance and support for Sift. Apple has no obligation to furnish either.
• Warranty. We alone are responsible for any product warranty, express or implied by law, that isn’t effectively disclaimed above. If Sift fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund its purchase price to you (Sift is free, so that is nothing). To the maximum extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for Sift, and any other claim, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty is ours alone.
• Claims about Sift. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim you or a third party brings relating to Sift or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that Sift fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar legislation. Nothing in these terms limits our liability to you beyond what applicable law permits.
• Intellectual property claims. If a third party claims that Sift, or your possession and use of it, infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of that claim.
• Legal compliance. You represent and warrant that you aren’t located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you aren’t listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Third-party terms. You must comply with any applicable third-party terms when you use Sift, such as your wireless data plan and the terms of YouTube or of the podcast app an episode opens in.
• Apple as third-party beneficiary. You and we agree that Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and that once you accept them Apple has the right (and is deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

Governing law and venue

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to Sift or these terms will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in California, and you and we each consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. When we do, we’ll revise the effective date above and, for material changes, provide notice in Sift. Using Sift after a change means you accept the updated terms.

The rest

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Not enforcing a term isn’t a waiver of it. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about Sift. You can’t transfer this agreement; we can, if Sift changes hands.

Contact

Sift is published by Yash Totale, 3186 Cortina Dr, Pittsburg, CA 94565, United States. Direct any question, complaint, or claim about Sift or these terms to support@totale.me.