Privacy
This is short because there is not much to disclose. The interesting commitments here are negative ones: things a publication like this normally does that we do not.
What we do not do
- No third-party analytics scripts of any kind.
- No advertising technology, and therefore no ad cookies.
- No browser fingerprinting.
- No cross-site tracking pixels, share widgets, or embedded third-party players.
- No selling or brokering of anything about you.
Because there is no third-party script, there is no consent banner either. Nothing to dismiss.
What we do record
- A random identifier in a first-party cookie, so we can tell you which revision of a post you last read.
- Reading events — that you reached a point in a post, not who you are — used to tell authors where readers struggle.
- Your reading depth, density and theme preferences, which stay in your browser.
This telemetry is aggregate-only. It is never shown to a writer for a group smaller than twenty readers, and an individual reader is never surfaced to a writer in any form. We do not have a per-reader view of a post for authors to browse, because we think building that product is the wrong thing to do even if it is a good business.
Erase everything
One action, and it is a real database delete rather than a setting that hides things from you while we keep them. It removes your reading history and receipts, your highlights and reactions, and the link between your browser and any question you have asked.
Why this is a product decision
A publication that wants to show you more of what you read needs a memory of you. The temptation with that memory is to make it a behaviour-tracking instrument, because that is what the ad industry trained everyone to build. We are trying to build the other thing: a record of what you understood, held in a form you can read, correct and delete.
The way to hold us to that is to keep the delete button working. If it ever stops working, treat that as the most important bug on the site and tell us.