Terms of Service
This is a translation of the German Nutzungsbedingungen. In case of doubt, the German version applies.
1. Provider and scope
These terms govern Published: the web app at app.published.social and the desktop plugins for Adobe Lightroom Classic and Eagle (together, “the service”). The service is provided by:
Cosmic Code GmbH
Ehrenbergstraße 44, 22767 Hamburg, Germany
legal@published.social
The terms apply to consumers and to businesses. Provisions that apply to businesses only are marked as such.
2. Account and registration
You need an account to use the service. Sign-in runs through our login provider, Kinde. You confirm that the details you give are accurate, and you keep your credentials secret. Whatever happens through your account is attributed to you, unless you are not responsible for the misuse.
Content is organised in brands. Whoever creates a brand is its owner and can invite others as admins or members. The owner makes sure that invited people hold the rights they exercise within the brand, and that the brand’s content complies with these terms.
The service is intended for adults. Minors may use it only with the consent of a parent or guardian.
3. Early access, free of charge
The service is in early access. Use is currently free of charge; you gain access through the waitlist or an invitation. During early access we may change the feature set, restrict or remove individual features, and limit the number of users.
We aim for reliable availability but do not guarantee it during early access. Maintenance, outages, and changes to the platforms’ interfaces can cause downtime.
We may end the early access with reasonable notice. Paid plans are offered only under separate terms that you must expressly accept; there is no automatic switch.
4. Your content and rights
The rights in the content you upload or create — images, videos, text, metadata — stay with you. You grant us the simple, non-exclusive right to store, process, render into variants, analyse, and transmit this content to the platforms you choose, as far as necessary to provide the service to you. This right ends when you delete the content or your account ends; statutory retention duties remain unaffected.
You confirm that you hold the rights needed to use and publish your content — including the rights of people shown in it — and that publishing it does not infringe the rights of third parties.
We do not train AI models on your content. The AI provider we use does not train on it either under its terms; details are in the privacy policy.
5. Rules of use
When using the service:
- You upload and publish only content you are entitled to.
- No unlawful or defamatory content, and nothing that infringes the rights of others.
- No use that circumvents the platforms’ rules — such as spam, bulk publishing, or automation beyond what the platform in question allows.
- No circumvention of the service’s technical limits, such as quotas or rate limits.
- You do not pass credentials or plugin tokens on to third parties.
- No attacks on the security of the service, and no reverse engineering beyond what the law permits.
6. Third-party platforms
The service publishes to social media platforms you connect to your account. The privacy policy names those platforms; the app shows which ones can be connected right now.
The connection runs on your instruction through the platform’s official interfaces (OAuth). The platform’s own terms and policies apply in addition; you are responsible for complying with them.
You can disconnect a platform in the app at any time, or remove Published on the platform. The deletion guide describes how.
Platforms change their interfaces, rules, and limits without our involvement. If a feature stops working or a post is rejected for that reason, that is outside our control.
7. AI features
The service generates suggestions with AI assistance — captions, hashtags, or the selection and arrangement of images, for instance. A suggestion is not a warranty: you review it before you publish, and you remain responsible for what is published.
Which providers are involved and what data they receive is set out in the privacy policy.
8. Data protection
How we process personal data is described in the privacy policy. The processors we use are listed on the subprocessors page; the way to delete your data is described in the deletion guide.
For businesses: where we process personal data of third parties on your behalf through the service, we conclude a data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR with you on request.
9. Term and termination
You can stop using the service at any time: disconnect platforms, delete brands, or request the deletion of your account. The deletion guide describes the steps.
We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these terms — in particular the rules of use — or if a platform obliges us to. For less serious breaches we give a warning first, where that is reasonable.
If the early access ends, we announce it with reasonable notice. What happens to your data after termination is described in the privacy policy under “Storage periods”.
10. Liability
We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body, or health, and under the German Product Liability Act.
For slight negligence we are liable only where an essential contractual duty is breached — a duty whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely — and then limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract.
The service is provided free of charge during early access. The statutory liability standards for services provided free of charge remain unaffected.
11. Changes to these terms
We may change these terms when the service, the legal situation, or the platforms’ requirements change. We announce changes at least four weeks before they take effect, by email or in the app. Material changes take effect only with your consent. All others are deemed accepted if you do not object within the notice period; the announcement will say so expressly.
The version published on this page, with its date, is the one that applies.
12. Final provisions
The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another state, the mandatory consumer protection provisions of that state remain unaffected.
For businesses: if you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law, or a special fund under public law, the courts at our registered seat have jurisdiction.
We are neither willing nor obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (Section 36 VSBG).
The German version of these terms is authoritative. The English version is provided for convenience; where they differ, the German text applies.