Terms of Service

Draft — not yet legally reviewed. This document is a working draft written to match how the product actually behaves. Given the health-adjacent and crisis-adjacent content on this platform, it must be reviewed by a lawyer in the operating jurisdiction before real users sign up.

1. What Alongside is

Alongside matches adults who share a lived experience so they can talk privately, one to one. It is a peer matching service and nothing more.

2. What Alongside is not

It is not medical, psychological, legal or financial advice. It is not therapy. It is not a crisis or emergency service. It does not employ, endorse or vouch for the accuracy of anything another member tells you. Decisions you take after a conversation are your own.

3. Eligibility

You must be 18 or older. Accounts must be your own. Members offering support must complete an identity check before their offer becomes visible to anyone.

4. What verification means

Identity verification confirms that a member is a real, accountable adult. You submit a government-issued document, a reviewer on our team checks it, and the file is deleted once they decide either way. Submitting a document that is not yours, or that has been altered, ends the account. Verification does not verify that a claimed experience is true. You should read anything a peer tells you with that in mind.

5. Monitoring

All messages are automatically screened for crisis language and abusive or predatory patterns. Screening is automated by default; content may be reviewed by a person when it is flagged or reported.

6. Conduct

No harassment, sexual content, solicitation, commercial promotion, impersonation, or attempts to move a conversation off-platform to avoid safety measures. No sharing of another member's information outside Alongside.

7. Crisis situations

If our screening identifies clinical risk, matching stops and crisis resources are shown. This is not a penalty and does not restrict your account. Alongside cannot and does not respond to emergencies.

8. Suspension

Accounts may be warned, suspended or removed following human review of a flag or report. Reviews always end in a recorded decision.

9. Deletion and retention

You may delete your account at any time. Your account is then marked deleted and your identity is stripped from messages you sent, but those messages remain visible to the person you were speaking with, because they are part of that person's own history. Content connected to an open flag or report is retained for a defined review and legal-defence period regardless of a deletion request. Aggregate feedback totals persist detached from your identity.

10. Changes

Material changes will be notified in-app before they take effect.