Terms of Use

1. Welcome to Lumen Weekly

Lumen Weekly is a reflective writing platform designed to encourage introspection, thoughtful expression, personal growth, and learning through writing — both your own writing and the writing of others.

These Terms of Use explain the rules for using Lumen Weekly and the legal relationship between you and Lumen Weekly.

By creating an account or using Lumen Weekly, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree with them, it would not be possible for you to use this platform.

2. What Lumen Weekly Is

Lumen Weekly provides weekly writing themes and a quiet digital space where users can write personal reflections, read reflections written by others, and discover people whose thoughts resonate with them.

Lumen Weekly is not a traditional social media platform. It is intentionally designed to reduce performance, comparison, superficial self-presentation, and reactive public debate.

The purpose of Lumen Weekly is to support reflection, thoughtful writing, personal development, and meaningful connection through ideas.

3. Early Access and Product Evolution

Lumen Weekly may initially be offered as an early access, beta, or MVP-stage product.

This means that some features may still be evolving, changing, limited, experimental, or unavailable in some versions of the platform.

We reserve the right to add, modify, pause, restrict, or remove features as the platform develops.

We will do our best to maintain a reliable and respectful experience, but we do not guarantee that all features will always be available or remain unchanged.

4. Eligibility

You may use Lumen Weekly only if you are legally able to enter into these Terms.

Lumen Weekly is not intended for children under the age of 16. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under age of 16, we will delete such account and all related data.

5. Your Account

To use Lumen Weekly, you need to create an account.

You agree and accept to be responsible for providing accurate information when registering and to keep your account secure and protected from unauthorized usage from third parties. You are solely responsible for activity that happens through your account.

Lumen Weekly is designed around pseudonymous participation. You do not need to use your real name publicly. We encourage you to choose a pseudonym that allows you to express yourself freely while respecting others.

Your pseudonym must also comply with the Community Guidelines and Lumen Weekly values.

Your email address is used only for account access, authentication, security, and service-related communication. It is not publicly displayed by Lumen Weekly.

Your account may have different access states depending on platform rules, safety needs, operational needs, or moderation decisions. For example, an account may be active, inactive, restricted, suspended, or permanently terminated in accordance with the conditions stipulated under these Terms and Community Guidelines.

If your account is restricted, suspended, inactive, or terminated, you may lose access to some or all platform features, including writing, publishing, reading, following, inspiring, reporting, or accessing your account.

We may apply these measures when needed to protect the platform, other users, the integrity of the reflective space, or to enforce these Terms and the Community Guidelines.

6. Pseudonymous Participation

Lumen Weekly encourages pseudonymous writing and reading.

However, pseudonymity does not exempt users from responsibility. You remain solely and fully responsible for all content you write, publish, share, or otherwise make available on the platform, as well as for all activities conducted through your account. By accepting these Terms, you acknowledge and agree that you bear full responsibility for your conduct on the platform and for any and all losses, damages, liabilities, costs, or expenses arising out of or resulting from such conduct.

You cannot use pseudonymity to harass others, impersonate another person, manipulate the community, evade moderation, bypass account restrictions, or violate any provision of these Terms or the Community Guidelines.

7. Drafts, Published Reflections, and Sharing

When you write on Lumen Weekly, you may choose whether to keep your reflection as a draft or publish it on the platform.

8. Authorship, Moral Rights, and Economic Rights

You remain the author of your reflections, texts, highlights, and other content, and you retain any moral rights that cannot be transferred under applicable law.

By uploading, submitting, saving, publishing, translating, displaying, sharing, or otherwise making content available on or through Lumen Weekly, you irrevocably assign and transfer to Lumen Weekly, without remuneration, all transferable economic rights in such content to the extent necessary or useful for the operation, protection, moderation, development, improvement, promotion, and provision of Lumen Weekly and its related services, including platform-supported sharing features, limited public previews, technical processing, storage, backup, translation, display versions, moderation, safety review, and community protection.

These rights include, to the extent permitted by applicable law, the right to reproduce, store, host, process, publish, display, distribute, communicate to the public, make available to the public, translate, adapt for technical or display purposes, create previews, excerpts, highlights, translated versions, and other display versions of the content, and otherwise use the content in connection with Lumen Weekly and its related services.

For published reflections, this includes making the reflection available to logged-in Lumen Weekly users within the platform, and making limited parts of the content, such as the selected highlight, theme, author pseudonym, context, preview, and call to action, available outside the platform through Lumen Weekly-supported sharing features or links.

This does not give other users ownership of your writing. Other users may read and interact with your published reflections only within the intended Lumen Weekly experience and may share them only through Lumen Weekly-supported sharing features where available.

You are responsible for ensuring that you have the right to upload, submit, publish, or otherwise make available any content you provide, and that your content does not violate any third-party rights.

9. Respect for Other Users' Writing

Other users retain authorship of their reflections and writing.

You may read, engage with, and be inspired by published reflections within the intended Lumen Weekly experience.

You may not copy, reproduce, republish, distribute, publicly screenshot, present as your own, use commercially, or otherwise misuse another user's writing outside the platform.

If a reflection inspires you, you may use Lumen Weekly's available features such as Inspire, Follow, or platform-supported sharing links or previews for sharing limited part of the content outside the platform.

10. Community Standards

By using Lumen Weekly, you agree to follow our Community Guidelines.

You may not use Lumen Weekly to publish, promote, or distribute content that:

• contains hate speech, harassment, threats, or abuse;
• attacks, humiliates, or dehumanizes individuals or groups;
• promotes violence, extremism, self-harm, or illegal activity;
• contains political, ideological, religious, or commercial propaganda;
• attempts to mobilize users for political, ideological, extremist, commercial, or harmful activity;
• spreads intentionally misleading, manipulative, or deceptive content;
• contains explicit sexual content or graphic violence;
• violates another person's privacy or intellectual property rights;
• impersonates another person or misrepresents your identity;
• is spam, automated content, or promotional material unrelated to the purpose of the platform;
• undermines the reflective, respectful, and constructive nature of the Lumen Weekly community.

We have the right to remove content or restrict accounts that violate these standards.

11. Moderation, Rejected Reflections, and Publishing Limits

Lumen Weekly may review, moderate, approve, reject, hold for review, hide, remove, withdraw, or limit the visibility of submitted or published reflections if we believe they violate these Terms, the Community Guidelines, applicable law, or the spirit and purpose of the platform.

A reflection may be rejected before or after publication.

If a reflection is rejected, you may be given the opportunity to revise and resubmit it, depending on the nature of the issue and the current platform functionality.

Repeated rejected submissions, attempts to resubmit substantially similar violating content, attempts to bypass moderation, or patterns of misuse may result in temporary publishing limits, feature restrictions, account suspension, or account termination.

Lumen Weekly may apply rate limits, submission limits, or other protective limits and measures to preserve platform quality, reduce abuse, or protect the reflective space. These limits may change over time and may not always be publicly described in detail.

We are not obliged to publish, keep published, or distribute every submitted reflection.

Lumen Weekly may use human review, automated tools, AI-assisted tools, or a combination of these to help maintain platform safety, quality, and consistency with the platform's values.

Moderation decisions are made to protect the integrity of the space and the wellbeing of the community, and the compliance with the terms and conditions of these Terms of Use.

12. Reporting Content

Users may be given the ability to report content that appears inappropriate, harmful, abusive, or inconsistent with the Community Guidelines.

We may review reported content and decide what action, if any, is appropriate.

Reporting content does not guarantee that the content will be removed, but all reports may be considered in the context of platform safety and community standards.

13. No Traditional Social Media Mechanics

Lumen Weekly is intentionally designed differently from traditional social platforms.

Depending on the version of the product, Lumen Weekly may not include public comments, dislikes, public popularity rankings, real-name identity display, profile photos, or image-based self-presentation.

The Inspire feature on the platform is intended to signal that a reflection moved, helped, or inspired you. It is not intended as a popularity contest.

Following feature on the platform is intended to help users reconnect with voices they find meaningful. It must not be used for harassment, unwanted monitoring, pressure, or abuse.

14. Translation and Display Versions

Lumen Weekly may support multiple languages and may provide translated or display versions of user content.

Where translation features are available, translations may be generated automatically or with the assistance of third-party or AI-based tools. Translations may not always be perfect or complete. We are not liable for any inaccurate translations.

The original text remains the user's authored work. Translated or display versions are provided to help the platform operate across languages and improve reading accessibility.

15. Personal Growth, Not Professional Advice

Lumen Weekly is intended for reflection, writing, inspiration, and personal development.

Content on Lumen Weekly is not medical, psychological, psychiatric, legal, financial, spiritual, or other professional advice.

If you are dealing with a serious personal, emotional, medical, legal, or financial issue, you should seek help from a qualified professional.

If you are in immediate danger or crisis, please contact local emergency services or a crisis support service in your country.

16. Privacy

Your use of Lumen Weekly is also governed by our Privacy Policy.

The Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, how long we keep it, and what rights you may have.

Please read the Privacy Policy carefully before using the platform.

17. Intellectual Property of Lumen Weekly

The Lumen Weekly name, design, branding, interface, topics, prompts, visual identity, and platform materials are owned by Lumen Weekly or licensed to us.

You may not copy, reproduce, modify, distribute, or use Lumen Weekly's brand, design, or platform materials without our permission.

18. Platform Availability

We will do our best to keep Lumen Weekly available and reliable, but we cannot guarantee that the platform will always be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or available at all times. We are not liable for any technical failures, interruptions, errors, malfunctions, or any other issues that may occur in connection with the use of the platform.

We may update, suspend, modify, or discontinue parts of the platform as the product evolves.

19. Changes to These Terms

Lumen Weekly is an evolving product. We may update these Terms from time to time.

If we make material changes, we will take reasonable steps to notify users, such as by posting an updated version on the platform or sending an email notification.

Your continued use of Lumen Weekly after changes become effective means that you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree with the updated Terms, you may stop using the platform and delete your account, where available.

20. Termination

You may stop using Lumen Weekly at any time.

We may restrict, suspend, deactivate, terminate, or ban your account if you violate these Terms and/or Community Guidelines, misuse the platform, harm other users, attempt to bypass moderation, or act against the purpose and values of Lumen Weekly.

Where technically and legally possible, we may allow you to export or delete your data, subject to reasonable limitations.

21. Limitation of Liability

Lumen Weekly shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages or costs arising out of or in connection with your use of, or inability to use, the platform, or the use of the platform by other users. Furthermore, Lumen Weekly shall not be liable for any losses, damages, claims, liabilities, costs, or expenses suffered by any third party as a result of your use of the platform, your content, or your conduct on the platform.

The platform is provided "as is" and "as available."

We do not guarantee that using Lumen Weekly will produce any specific personal, emotional, social, creative, professional, or wellbeing outcome.

22. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Serbia.

If a dispute arises, we encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve it informally.

23. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, you can contact us at: support@lumenweekly.com