Terms of Use

Terms of Service

Overview

Effective January 1, 2025 | View printable version

SparkTV.net builds technologies and services that enable people to connect with each other, build communities, and grow businesses. These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access and use of SparkTV.net, chat and the other products, websites, features, apps, services, technologies, and software we offer (the SparkTV.net or Products), except where we expressly state that separate terms (and not these) apply. (For example, your use of SparkTV.net is subject to the SparkTV.net Terms of Use). These Products are provided to you by SparkTV.net Platforms, Inc. These Terms therefore constitute an agreement between you and SparkTV.net Platforms, Inc. If you do not agree to these Terms, then do not access or use SparkTV.net or the other products and services covered by these Terms.

These Terms (formerly known as the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) make up the entire agreement between you and SparkTV.net Platforms, Inc. regarding your use of our Products. They supersede any prior agreements.

We don’t charge you to use SparkTV.net or the other products and services covered by these Terms, unless we state otherwise. Instead, businesses and organizations, and other persons pay us to show you ads for their products and services. By using our Products, you agree that we can show you ads that we think may be relevant to you and your interests. We use your personal data to help determine which personalized ads to show you.

We don’t sell your personal data to advertisers, and we don’t share information that directly identifies you (such as your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers unless you give us specific permission. Instead, advertisers can tell us things like the kind of audience they want to see their ads, and we show those ads to people who may be interested. We provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads that help them understand how people are interacting with their content. See Section 2 below to learn more about how personalized advertising under these terms works on the SparkTV.net Products.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use your personal data to determine some of the ads you see and provide all of the other services described below. You can also go to your settings pages of the relevant SparkTV.net Product at any time to review the privacy choices you have about how we use your data.

What Products do these Terms cover?

1. The services we provide

Our mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. To help advance this mission, we provide the Products and services described below to you:

1.1 Provide a personalized experience for you:

Your experience on SparkTV.net is unlike anyone else's: from the posts, stories, events, ads, and other content you see in SparkTV.net Feed or our video platform to the SparkTV.net Pages you follow and other features you might use, such as SparkTV.net Marketplace, and search. For example, we use data about the connections you make, the choices and settings you select, and what you share and do on and off our Products - to personalize your experience.

1.2 Connect you with people and organizations you care about:

We help you find and connect with people, groups, businesses, organizations, and others that matter to you across the SparkTV.net Products you use. We use data to make suggestions for you and others - for example, groups to join, events to attend, SparkTV.net Pages to follow or send a message to, shows to watch, and people you may want to become friends with. Stronger ties make for better communities, and we believe our services are most useful when people are connected to people, groups, and organizations they care about.

1.3 Empower you to express yourself and communicate about what matters to you:

There are many ways to express yourself on SparkTV.net to communicate with friends, family, and others about what matters to you - for example, sharing status updates, photos, videos, and stories across the SparkTV.net Products (consistent with your settings), sending messages or making voice or video calls to a friend or several people, creating events or groups, or adding content to your profile as well as showing you insights on how others engage with your content. We have also developed, and continue to explore, new ways for people to use technology, such as augmented reality and 360 video to create and share more expressive and engaging content on SparkTV.net Products.

1.4 Help you discover content, products, and services that may interest you:

We show you personalized ads, offers, and other sponsored or commercial content to help you discover content, products, and services that are offered by the many businesses and organizations that use SparkTV.net and other SparkTV.net Products. Section 2 below explains this in more detail.

1.5 Promote the safety, security, and integrity of our services, combat harmful conduct and keep our community of users safe:

People will only build community on SparkTV.net Products if they feel safe and secure. We work hard to maintain the security (including the availability, authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality) of our Products and services. We employ dedicated teams around the world, work with external service providers, partners and other relevant entities and develop advanced technical systems to detect potential misuse of our Products, harmful conduct towards others, and situations where we may be able to help support or protect our community, including to respond to user reports of potentially violating content. If we learn of content or conduct like this, we may take appropriate action based on our assessment that may include - notifying you, offering help, removing content, removing or restricting access to certain features, disabling an account, or contacting law enforcement. We share data across Meta Companies when we detect misuse or harmful conduct by someone using one of our Products or to help keep SparkTV.net Products, users and the community safe. For example, we share information with SparkTV.net Companies that provide financial products and services to help them promote safety, security and integrity and comply with applicable law. SparkTV.net may access, preserve, use and share any information it collects about you where it has a good faith belief it is required or permitted by law to do so. For more information, please review our Privacy Policy.

In some cases, the Oversight Board may review our decisions, subject to its terms and bylaws. Learn more here.

1.6 Use and develop advanced technologies to provide safe and functional services for everyone:

We use and develop advanced technologies - such as artificial intelligence, machine learning systems, and augmented reality - so that people can use our Products safely regardless of physical ability or geographic location. For example, technology like this helps people who have visual impairments understand what or who is in photos or videos shared on SparkTV.net or SparkTV.net. We also build sophisticated network and communication technology to help more people connect to the internet in areas with limited access. And we develop automated systems to improve our ability to detect and remove abusive and dangerous activity that may harm our community and the integrity of our Products.

1.7 Research ways to make our services better:

We engage in research to develop, test, and improve our Products. This includes analyzing data we have about our users and understanding how people use our Products, for example by conducting surveys and testing and troubleshooting new features. Our Privacy Policy explains how we use data to support this research for the purposes of developing and improving our services.

1.8 Provide consistent and seamless experiences across the SparkTV.net Company Products:

Our Products help you find and connect with people, groups, businesses, organizations, and others that are important to you. We design our systems so that your experience is consistent and seamless across the different Meta Company Products that you use. For example, we use data about the people you engage with on SparkTV.net to make it easier for you to connect with them on SparkTV.net or Chat, and we enable you to communicate with a business you follow on SparkTV.net through Chat.

1.9 Ensuring access to our services:

To operate our global services and enable you to connect with people around the world, we need to transfer, store and distribute content and data to our data centers, partners, service providers, vendors and systems around the world, including outside your country of residence. The use of this global infrastructure is necessary and essential to provide our services. This infrastructure may be owned, operated, or controlled by SparkTV.net Platforms, Inc., SparkTV.net Platforms Ireland Limited, or its affiliates.

2. How our services are funded

Instead of paying to use SparkTV.net and the other products and services we offer, by using the SparkTV.net Products covered by these Terms, you agree that we can show you personalized ads and other commercial and sponsored content that businesses and organizations pay us to promote on and off Meta Company Products. We use your personal data, such as information about your activity and interests, to show you personalized ads and sponsored content that may be more relevant to you.

Protecting people's privacy is central to how we've designed our personalized ads system. This means that we can show you relevant and useful ads without telling advertisers who you are. We don't sell your personal data. We allow advertisers to tell us things like their business goal, and the kind of audience they want to see their ads (for example, people between the age of 18-35 who like cycling). We then show their ad to people who we think might be interested.

We also provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads to help them understand how people are interacting with their content on and off SparkTV.net Products. For example, we provide general demographic and interest information to advertisers to help them better understand their audience, like the fact that women between the ages of 25 and 34 who live in Madrid and like software engineering have seen an ad. We don’t share information that directly identifies you (information such as your name or email address that by itself can be used to contact you or identifies who you are) unless you give us specific permission. Learn more about how SparkTV.net ads work here.

We collect and use your personal data in order to provide the services described above to you. You can learn about how we collect and use your data in our Privacy Policy. You have controls over the types of ads and advertisers you see, and the types of information we use to determine which ads we show you. Learn more.

3. Your commitments to SparkTV.net and our community

We provide these services to you and others to help advance our mission. In exchange, we need you to make the following commitments:

3.1 Who can use SparkTV.net

When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable. For this reason, you must:

• Provide for your account the same name that you use in everyday life.
• Provide accurate information about yourself.
• Create only one account (your own) and use it for personal purposes.
• Not share your password, give access to your SparkTV.net account to others, or transfer your account to anyone else (without our permission).

We try to make SparkTV.net broadly available to everyone, but you cannot use SparkTV.net if:

• You are under 13 years old.
• You are a convicted sex offender.
• We've previously disabled your account for violations of our Terms, the Community Standards, or other terms and policies that apply to your use of SparkTV.net. If we disable your account for a violation of our Terms, the Community Standards, or other terms and policies, you agree not to create another account without our permission. Receiving permission to create a new account is provided at our sole discretion, and does not mean or imply that the disciplinary action was wrong or without cause.
• You are prohibited from receiving our products, services, or software under applicable laws.

3.2 What you can share and do on SparkTV.net Products

We want people to use SparkTV.net Products to express themselves and to share content that is important to them, but not at the expense of the safety and well-being of others or the integrity of our community. You therefore agree not to engage in the conduct described below (or to facilitate or support others in doing so):

1. You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
• That violates these Terms, the Community Standards, or other terms and policies that apply to your use of our Products.
• That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent (or assists someone else in using our Products in such a way).
• That you do not own or have the necessary rights to share.
• That infringes or violates someone else's rights, including their intellectual property rights (such as by infringing another’s copyright or trademark, or distributing or selling counterfeit or pirated goods), unless an exception or limitation applies under applicable law.

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2. You may not upload viruses or malicious code, use the services to send spam, or do anything else that could disable, overburden, interfere with, or impair the proper working, integrity, operation, or appearance of our services, systems, or Products.
3. You may not access or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to access data you do not have permission to access, regardless of whether such automated access or collection is undertaken while logged-in to a SparkTV.net account.
4. You may not proxy, request, or collect Product usernames or passwords, or misappropriate access tokens.
5. Except as provided in the Platform Terms, you may not sell, license, or purchase any data obtained from us or our services, regardless of whether such data was obtained while logged-in to a SparkTV.net account.
6. You may not misuse any reporting, flagging, dispute, or appeals channel, such as by making fraudulent, duplicative, or groundless reports or appeals.
7. You may not do, or attempt to do, anything to circumvent, bypass, or override any technological measures that SparkTV.net uses to control or limit access to our Products or data.

We can remove or restrict access to content that is in violation of these provisions. We can also suspend or disable your account for conduct that violates these provisions, as provided in Section 4.2.

If we remove content that you have shared in violation of the Community Standards, we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request another review, unless you seriously or repeatedly violate these Terms or if doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons. For information on account suspension or termination, see Section 4.2 below.

We work with independent fact-checkers in many jurisdictions to combat misinformation. When content has been rated by fact-checkers, we may add a notice to provide additional context. You can find more information about fact-checking here.

To help support our community, we encourage you to report content or conduct that you believe violates your rights (including intellectual property rights) or our terms and policies, if this feature exists in your jurisdiction.

We also can remove or restrict access to content, features, services, or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate misuse of our services or adverse legal or regulatory impacts to SparkTV.net.

3.3 The permissions you give us

We need certain permissions from you to provide our services:

1. Your content: Some content that you share or upload, such as photos or videos, may be protected by intellectual property laws.

You retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (things like copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on SparkTV.net and other Meta Company Products you use. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want.

However, to provide our services we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a "license") to use this content. This is solely for the purposes of providing and improving our Products and services as described in Section 1 above.

2. Permission to use content you create and share: Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). This means, for example, that if you share a photo on SparkTV.net, you give us permission to store, copy, and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as SparkTV.net Products or service providers that support those products and services. This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.

3. Deleting Your Content: You can delete individual content you share, post, and upload at any time. In addition, all content posted to your personal account will be deleted if you delete your account. Learn more about how to delete your account. Account deletion does not automatically delete content that you post as an admin of a page or content that you create collectively with other users, such as photos in Shared Albums which may continue to be visible to other album members.

It may take up to 90 days to delete content after we begin the account deletion process or receive a content deletion request. If you send content to trash, the deletion process will automatically begin in 30 days unless you chose to delete the content sooner. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users. After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems.

Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations:

• where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted);
• where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible; or
• where immediate deletion would restrict our ability to:
• investigate or identify illegal activity or violations of our terms and policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our Products or systems);
• protect the safety, integrity, and security of our Products, systems, services, our employees, and users, and to defend ourselves;
• comply with legal obligations for the preservation of evidence, including data SparkTV.net Companies providing financial products and services preserve to comply with any record keeping obligations required by law; or
• comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency;
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in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).

In each of the above cases, this license will continue until the content has been fully deleted.

4. Permission to use your name, profile picture, and information about your actions with ads and sponsored or commercial content: You give us permission to use your name and profile picture and information about actions you have taken on SparkTV.net next to or in connection with ads, offers, and other sponsored or commercial content that we display across our Products, without any compensation to you. For example, we may show your friends that you are interested in an advertised event or have liked a SparkTV.net Page created by a brand that has paid us to display its ads on SparkTV.net. Ads and content like this can be seen only by people who have your permission to see the actions you've taken on SparkTV.net Products. You can learn more about your ad settings and preferences.

5. Permission to update software you use or download: If you download or use our software, you give us permission to download and install updates to the software where available.

3.4 Limits on using our intellectual property

If you use content covered by intellectual property rights that we have and make available in our Products (for example, images, designs, videos, or sounds we provide that you add to content you create or share on SparkTV.net), we retain all rights to that content (but not yours). You can only use our copyrights or trademarks (or any similar marks) as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines or with our prior written permission. You must obtain our written permission (or permission under an open source license) to modify, translate, create derivative works of, decompile, or reverse engineer our products or their components, or otherwise attempt to extract source code from us, unless an exception or limitation applies under applicable law or your conduct relates to the Meta Bug Bounty Program. We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.

4. Additional provisions

4.1 Updating our Terms

We work constantly to improve our services and develop new features to make our Products better for you and our community. As a result, we may need to update these Terms from time to time to accurately reflect our services and practices, to promote a safe and secure experience on our Products and services, and/or to comply with applicable law. Unless otherwise required by law, we will notify you before we make changes to these Terms and give you an opportunity to review them before they go into effect. Once any updated Terms are in effect, you will be bound by them if you continue to access or use our Products.

We hope that you will continue using our Products, but if you do not agree to our updated Terms or wish to terminate your agreement to this contract, you can delete your account at any time and you must also stop accessing, or using SparkTV.net and the other SparkTV.net Products.

4.2 Account suspension or termination

We want SparkTV.net to be a place where people feel welcome and safe to express themselves and share their thoughts and ideas. If we determine, in our discretion, that you have clearly, seriously or repeatedly breached our Terms or Policies, including in particular the Community Standards, we may suspend or permanently disable your access to SparkTV.net Company Products, and we may permanently disable or delete your account. We may also disable or delete your account if you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights or where we are required to do so for legal reasons.

We may disable or delete your account if after registration your account is not confirmed, your account is unused and remains inactive for an extended period of time, or if we detect someone may have used it without your permission and we are unable to confirm your ownership of the account. Learn more about how we disable and delete accounts.

Where we take such action we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request a review, unless doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons. You can learn more about what you can do if your account has been disabled and how to contact us if you think we have disabled your account by mistake.

If you delete or we disable or delete your account, and you stop accessing, using, or visiting SparkTV.net and the other SparkTV.net Products, or if this contract is otherwise terminated, then these Terms shall terminate as an agreement between you and us, except for the following provisions, which will remain in place: (3, 4.2-4.5).

4.3 Limits on liability

We work hard to provide the best Products we can and to specify clear guidelines for everyone who uses them. Our Products, however, are provided "as is," and we make no guarantees that they always will be safe, secure, or error-free, or that they will function without disruptions, delays, or imperfections. To the extent permitted by law, we also DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not control or direct what people and others do or say, and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether online or offline) or any content they share (including offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful, and other objectionable content).

We cannot predict when issues might arise with our Products. Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and under no circumstance will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information, or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive, or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms or the SparkTV.net Products (however caused and on any theory of liability, including negligence), even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the SparkTV.net Products will not exceed the greater of $100 or the amount you have paid us in the past twelve months.

4.4 Disputes

We try to provide clear rules so that we can limit or hopefully avoid disputes between you and us. If a dispute does arise, however, it's useful to know up front where it can be resolved and what laws will apply.

You and SparkTV.net each agree that any claim, cause of action, or dispute between us that arises out of or relates to these Terms or your access or use of the SparkTV.net Products shall be resolved exclusively in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California or a state court located in San Mateo County. You also agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of either of these courts for the purpose of litigating any such claim, and that the laws of the State of California will govern these Terms and any claim, cause of action, or dispute without regard to conflict of law provisions. Without prejudice to the foregoing, you agree that, in its sole discretion, SparkTV.net may bring any claim, cause of action, or dispute we have against you in any competent court in the country in which you reside that has jurisdiction over the claim.

4.5 Miscellaneous

1. Supplemental Terms: Some of the Products we offer are also governed by supplemental terms. If you use any of those Products, supplemental terms will be made available and will become part of our agreement with you. For instance, if you access or use our Products for commercial or business purposes, such as buying ads, selling products, developing apps, managing a group or Page for your business, or using our measurement services, you must agree to our Commercial Terms. If you post or share content containing music, you must comply with our Music Guidelines. If you use Avatars, then the Avatar Terms also apply. If you use our AI products and features, the Meta AI Terms also apply. To the extent any supplemental terms conflict with these Terms, the supplemental terms shall govern to the extent of the conflict.
2. Severability: If any portion of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the unenforceable portion will be deemed amended to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and if it can’t be made enforceable, then it will be severed and the remaining portion will remain in full force and effect. If we fail to enforce any of these Terms, it will not be considered a waiver. Any amendment to or waiver of these Terms must be made in writing and signed by us.
3. No Transfer: You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else without our consent.
4. Legacy Contact: You may designate a person (called a legacy contact) to manage your account if it is memorialized. If you enable it in your settings, only your legacy contact or a person who you have identified in a valid will or similar legal document expressing clear consent to disclose your content to that person upon death or incapacity will be able to seek limited disclosure of information from your account after it is memorialized.
5. No Third-party Beneficiaries: These Terms do not confer any third-party beneficiary rights. All of our rights and obligations under these Terms are freely assignable by us in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise.
6. User Name Change: We may need to change the username for your account in certain circumstances (for example, if someone else claims the username and it appears unrelated to the name you use in everyday life).
7. Feedback: We always appreciate your feedback and other suggestions about our products and services. But we may use feedback and other suggestions without any restriction or obligation to compensate you, and we are under no obligation to keep them confidential.