Terms of Service

Effective date: September 24, 2026
Last updated: October 15, 2026

1. Introduction & Acceptance of Terms

Welcome to Iris, a closed network for real people. These Terms of Service (these "Terms") are a binding legal agreement between you and Iris Social ("Iris," "we," "us," or "our"), governing your application to, and your use of, the Iris mobile application, website, and related services (collectively, the "Service").

Iris is not a general-audience social platform, and these Terms are written with that difference in mind. Access to Iris is not automatic. It is not granted by simply downloading an app or filling out a signup form. It is extended, one applicant at a time, at Iris's discretion, to people who complete our application process and are approved by a human reviewer. Because membership works this way, portions of these Terms describe not just what you may do once you are a member, but the conditions under which you are permitted to become one, and the conditions under which that permission can be withdrawn.

By creating an account, submitting an application, or using any part of the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms, by our Privacy Policy, and by any Community Guidelines we publish from time to time, each of which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account, do not submit an application, and do not use the Service. If you are accessing the Service on behalf of an organization, you may not do so — Iris accounts are for individual, real, identified natural persons only, as described in Section 3.

We may update these Terms as described in Section 11. Continued use of the Service after an update takes effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

2. Eligibility & Membership Application

Iris is a curated community, not an open platform. We built it this way on purpose, and this section describes what that means in practice.

2.1 Age requirement

You must be at least 18 years old to apply for or hold an Iris account. Iris is an adult community, and we do not knowingly permit anyone under 18 to hold an account, submit an application, or otherwise access the Service. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will terminate it.

2.2 Membership is by application, not by signup

Creating login credentials does not make you a member of Iris. It makes you an applicant. Becoming a member requires you to:

Create an account using a valid email address and password;
Provide your name, choose a unique username, provide a phone number, and select a self-described role from a preset list of options (such as Photographer, Writer, Founder, Athlete, and similar categories) that will be shown on your profile;
Enroll two-factor authentication using an authenticator application that supports the TOTP standard (such as Google Authenticator, Authy, or 1Password) — Iris does not use SMS-based two-factor authentication for account security, and enrollment is a required step of the application process, not an optional one;
Submit a written application consisting of three short-answer questions (each with a limit of up to 300 words), addressing what you value about real human expression on social media, what you believe humanity may have lost in its pursuit of convenience, and what you consider to be timeless; and
Wait for a human reviewer — not an algorithm — to read your application and decide whether to approve or reject it.

Your phone number is collected solely for account security and contact purposes. It is never used as a sign-in credential, and it is never shown to other members.

2.3 Approval is discretionary, and rejection does not require an explanation

Submitting a complete application does not entitle you to approval. Review and approval of applications is performed by human members of the Iris team, and every decision to approve or reject an application is made in Iris's sole and complete discretion. There is no guaranteed review timeline, no queue position we will disclose, and no appeal process we are obligated to provide. If your application is rejected, we are not obligated to tell you why, and we may decline to respond to inquiries about a specific rejection decision.

Until your application is approved, your account is not usable in any functional sense. You will not have access to a feed, will not be able to post content, and will not be able to send or receive messages. This restriction is enforced at the infrastructure level of the Service, not merely hidden behind an interface, and it cannot be bypassed by any means we make available to you.

2.4 Membership is a revocable privilege

Approval to join Iris is a privilege we extend, not a right you accrue. Membership does not vest, is not transferable, and does not entitle you to any guarantee of continued access. As described further in Section 8, Iris may suspend or terminate a member's access at any time, for the reasons described in these Terms, at our discretion, and consistent with maintaining Iris as the kind of community it is designed to be.

You may not attempt to circumvent, automate, or manipulate the application or review process in any way. Doing so is a violation of these Terms, described further in Section 5.

3. Your Account

3.1 Real identity, not a handle

Iris is built on the premise that everyone on it is a real, identifiable person. There are no anonymous handles and no aliases. You agree to register and maintain your account using your actual legal or generally-known real name, and to keep the name, username, role, and other profile information associated with your account accurate and current. You may not impersonate any other person, misrepresent your identity or affiliation, or create a profile that is designed to obscure who you actually are.

3.2 Accuracy of registration information

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide when applying for and maintaining your account, including your name, username, phone number, and role. Providing false, misleading, or fraudulent information during the application process is grounds for rejection of your application or termination of your account if discovered afterward.

3.3 Password and two-factor authentication security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account password and your two-factor authentication enrollment, and for all activity that occurs under your account. You agree to:

Use a strong, unique password for your Iris account;
Keep your TOTP authenticator app and the device it is installed on secure;
Never share your password, authentication codes, or account access with any other person; and
Notify us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised or accessed without your authorization.

Iris is not liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to safeguard your account credentials or two-factor authentication method.

3.4 One account per person; no account sharing

You may hold only one Iris account. Creating multiple accounts, creating an account on behalf of another person, or allowing another person to use your account is prohibited. Because membership on Iris is granted to a specific, verified individual through our application process, an account is not a seat that can be shared, lent, sold, or transferred to anyone else, under any circumstance.

4. Content You Post

4.1 What you can post

Iris supports the following content types, subject to the limits below:

Photo posts, containing up to 10 photos, with an optional caption;
Video posts, containing one video up to one minute in length, with an optional caption; and
Notes, a styled, sticky-note-style text post of up to 500 characters.

On any caption or note, you may designate up to 3 "keywords" — words you choose to highlight, which also make your post findable in search. Notes may not contain links or URLs; the Service blocks link-like text from being submitted in a note. Members may publish up to 3 posts per day, across any combination of the content types above. These limits exist to keep Iris a considered, unhurried space rather than a high-volume feed, and we may adjust them from time to time as described in Section 11.

4.2 You own what you post

You retain ownership of the photos, videos, text, and other content you submit to the Service ("User Content"). Iris does not claim ownership of your User Content.

4.3 The license you grant Iris

To operate the Service — including displaying your posts to other members, delivering your messages, generating notifications, and performing the moderation functions described in Section 6 — you grant Iris a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable (solely to our infrastructure and service providers, such as those described in our Privacy Policy) license to host, store, reproduce, distribute, and display your User Content, solely for the purpose of operating, maintaining, and improving the Service. This license ends when you delete a specific piece of content or delete your account, except to the extent copies persist for a limited period in backups, logs, or as required by law, or to the extent content was already visible to, saved by, or shared with another member before deletion.

This license does not give Iris any right to sell your User Content, license it to third parties for their own use, or use it for advertising — Iris does not run advertising and does not sell member data or content to advertisers, as described further in our Privacy Policy.

4.4 You are responsible for what you post

You are solely responsible for your User Content and the consequences of posting it. By posting content to Iris, you represent that you have all rights necessary to post it, that it does not infringe or violate the rights of any third party, and that it complies with these Terms, our Community Guidelines, and applicable law. Iris does not pre-screen content for accuracy or endorse any opinion expressed by a member, and the presence of content on the Service does not mean Iris agrees with, verifies, or vouches for it.

5. Prohibited Conduct

Because Iris is a small, curated, real-identity community, conduct that might be treated as a minor issue elsewhere can be grounds for immediate enforcement here. In using the Service, you agree that you will not:

Harass or abuse others, including through threats, hate speech, sustained unwanted contact, doxxing, or content intended to demean, intimidate, or degrade another member;
Impersonate any person, including by claiming to be someone you are not, creating a profile for another real person without authorization, or falsely implying an affiliation, endorsement, or relationship;
Misrepresent your identity in your name, role, application answers, or any other profile or account information;
Send spam or use the Service for unsolicited commercial messaging, promotion, or bulk/automated outreach to other members;
Post illegal content, or content that promotes, facilitates, or instructs on illegal activity, including content involving minors in any sexualized context, which is strictly and absolutely prohibited;
Infringe intellectual property rights, including posting photos, videos, text, music, or other material you do not have the rights to post, or that infringes another person's copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights;
Scrape, crawl, or use automated means to access, collect data from, or interact with the Service, including automated account creation, automated posting, bots, or scripts that interact with the application programming interfaces underlying Iris without our express written permission;
Attempt to circumvent the application and review process, including by submitting fraudulent application answers, attempting to have someone else complete your application on your behalf, attempting to bypass two-factor enrollment, or attempting to access member-only functionality before approval;
Create or maintain multiple accounts, or create an account for another person or on their behalf;
Circumvent moderation or enforcement, including by creating a new account after suspension or termination, or by attempting to interfere with, disable, or manipulate the content moderation systems described in Section 6;
Interfere with the Service, including by introducing malware, attempting unauthorized access to other members' accounts or to Iris's systems, or disrupting the Service's normal operation; and
Violate applicable law in connection with your use of the Service.

This list is illustrative, not exhaustive. Conduct that undermines the trust, authenticity, or safety of the Iris community may be treated as a violation of these Terms even if not specifically enumerated above.

6. Content Moderation & Enforcement

Moderation on Iris is an active, ongoing part of how the Service operates, and it combines member reports, AI-assisted assessment, and human judgment. No enforcement action is ever taken by an algorithm acting alone.

6.1 No automatic scanning

Iris does not automatically scan posts as they are published, and your posts are not sent to any outside AI service unless a member reports them as described in Section 6.2. Moderation begins when a member reports a post, or when the Iris team comes across content that may violate these Terms.

6.2 Member-initiated "Report as AI-generated"

Any member may report a specific post as AI-generated if they suspect it was not authentically created. Doing so triggers an on-demand analysis of that post — its image and its caption or note — using an Anthropic Claude AI model, and generates a report that is routed for human review.

6.3 General reporting

Members may also report any post by choosing a reason: spam, harassment, inappropriate content, AI-generated content, or something else. Reports of this kind, like reports of AI-generated content, are placed into a queue for human review.

6.4 Human review before enforcement

Every member report — regardless of category, and whatever the AI assessment of a reported post — is reviewed by a human member of the Iris team before any enforcement action is taken. Iris does not permit content to be automatically removed, labeled, or otherwise acted upon by an algorithm alone; AI assessment informs human review, it does not replace it.

6.5 Consequences

Depending on the outcome of that review, and at Iris's discretion, consequences for a violation of these Terms or our Community Guidelines may include, without limitation:

Removal of the specific content at issue;
A warning to the member;
Temporary suspension of the account; or
Permanent termination of the account.

Iris has sole discretion in determining the appropriate response to a given violation, and is not obligated to apply the same response to similar situations. We are also not obligated to disclose the specific basis for an enforcement decision, consistent with Section 2's description of our discretion over membership generally.

6.6 Notice and dispute

If a moderator removes your content, we will tell you privately in the app and, if you have notifications turned on, by push notification. You may dispute a removal once. A moderator will review the dispute and may restore the content. Our decision on a dispute is final.

6.7 Blocking

Members may block another member at any time, from a post's menu or from that member's profile, and may unblock them later in Settings. While a block is in place, neither member sees the other's posts or appears in the other's search, and neither can message, follow, mention, or comment on or like the other's posts; any existing follow between them is removed. If you are experiencing harassment or unwanted contact, please also use the reporting tools described above or contact us using the information in Section 12.

6.8 Feedback

Members may send free-form feedback directly to the Iris team, including bug reports and suggestions. We appreciate this feedback and may use it to improve the Service, but submitting feedback does not obligate us to take any particular action, and does not transfer any ownership interest in the feedback itself beyond what is necessary for us to consider and act on it.

7. Intellectual Property

The Iris name, logo, app design, interface, and underlying software are the property of Iris Social and its licensors, and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. Except for the limited license granted to you to use the Service for its intended personal purpose, nothing in these Terms transfers any right, title, or interest in Iris's trademarks, branding, software, or other intellectual property to you.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works based on the Service, its software, or its branding, except to the extent such restriction is prohibited by applicable law. Any feedback, suggestion, or idea you voluntarily submit to Iris regarding the Service may be used by us without obligation to you, as described in Section 6.8.

8. Termination

8.1 Termination by you

You may permanently delete your account at any time from the Settings menu within the app. Deleting your account deletes your profile, your posts, and content associated with your account from the Service. Account deletion is irreversible — once you confirm deletion, we cannot restore your profile, posts, messages, or other account data, so you should be certain before proceeding.

8.2 Termination by Iris

Because membership in Iris is a curated privilege rather than an entitlement, we may suspend or terminate your account, at any time, with or without notice, including (without limitation) if we determine, in our discretion, that you have:

Violated these Terms, our Community Guidelines, or applicable law;
Provided false or misleading information during the application process or afterward;
Engaged in conduct described in Section 5;
Created risk or possible legal exposure for Iris, other members, or any third party; or
No longer fit the kind of community Iris is designed to be, in Iris's good-faith and reasonable judgment.

We may also terminate accounts for extended inactivity, or discontinue the Service in whole or in part, subject to any notice we elect to provide.

8.3 Effect of termination

Upon termination of your account, whether by you or by Iris, your right to access and use the Service ends immediately. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including Sections 4.3 (to the extent content has already been shared or saved by others), 5, 7, 9, 10, and 12 — will survive. Iris is not obligated to provide you with a copy of your data after termination, except as required by applicable law or as described in our Privacy Policy.

9. Disclaimers & Limitation of Liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. Iris disclaims all implied warranties, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. Iris does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that any content moderation process described in Section 6 will catch every instance of prohibited content or AI-generated material, or that defects will be corrected.

You acknowledge that human review, third-party AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude models, and any other moderation system Iris uses are aids to enforcement, not guarantees, and that content on the Service may include material that violates these Terms despite our efforts to prevent it. Your interactions with other members, including through direct messages, are your own responsibility, and Iris is not responsible for the conduct of any member, whether online or offline.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Iris and its officers, employees, and service providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to your use of, or inability to use, the Service, even if Iris has been advised of the possibility of such damages. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Iris's total aggregate liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid Iris in the twelve months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (USD $100). Because Iris currently charges no fees, no subscriptions, and offers no in-app purchases, this cap is expected to be nominal in practice.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you in full. In such jurisdictions, Iris's liability will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

10. Dispute Resolution & Governing Law

10.1 Governing law

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service, will be governed by the laws of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.

10.2 Agreement to arbitrate

You and Iris agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service — except disputes properly brought in small claims court, and except claims for injunctive relief relating to intellectual property or unauthorized access to the Service — will be resolved through final and binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that either party may bring an individual action in small claims court. The arbitration will be conducted by a single arbitrator under the Consumer Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"), and will take place in, or be otherwise connected to, Texas, unless you and Iris agree otherwise.

10.3 Class action waiver

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you and Iris agree that any arbitration or proceeding will be conducted only on an individual basis, and not as part of a class, consolidated, or representative action. If this class action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or dispute, that claim or dispute (and only that claim or dispute) will be resolved in a court of competent jurisdiction, and the remainder of this Section 10 will remain in effect.

10.4 Opt-out

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice to contact@join-iris.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating clearly that you decline to be bound by Section 10. If you opt out, all other parts of these Terms remain in effect, and any dispute between you and Iris will instead be resolved in the courts described in Section 10.1. Opting out of arbitration does not affect the class action waiver in Section 10.3, which remains in effect to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law even for a dispute resolved in court rather than arbitration.

11. Changes to These Terms

Iris may modify these Terms from time to time as the Service, our moderation practices, or applicable law evolve. If we make a material change, we will provide notice through the Service, by email, or by another reasonable means before the change takes effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of these Terms reflects the most recent revision. Your continued use of the Service after a change becomes effective constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to a revised version of these Terms, your remedy is to stop using the Service and, if you wish, delete your account as described in Section 8.1.

12. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, wish to report a concern, or need to contact us for any other reason related to the Service, you can reach us at:

Iris Social
Email: contact@join-iris.com