You can read everything here, use every room, and post a text truth without an account, an email, or a name — signed out, it goes up as Anonymous. Photos, videos, choosing who sees a post, replying, voting and following need an account, and even then the only name anyone sees is a handle you pick. This page says exactly what happens to what you say — in plain sentences, because a promise you have to decode is not a promise.
What we keep
Your rounds and your record. Transcripts of what you argued, your ballots, your streak, your rating. That is the product — a record you can look back at.
A device id. A random number in your browser. It is not a name, an email, or an address, and it is how your history finds you before you ever sign in.
A divergence reading on every comment you post. Its score, the phrase of yours it quotes back, and the step it moved your Divergence rating.
If you sign in with Google or Apple: your email (with Apple, the private relay address if you chose to hide yours), your name, and — with Google — your profile picture. Nothing else — we cannot read your inbox, contacts, or files.
Your contrarian truths and what you do with them. Every truth you post (including the anonymous ones, tied to your account so you can edit or delete them), your votes, your replies, who you follow, and any truth you report.
Photos and videos you post, and who you chose to show each post to. Photos are redrawn in your browser before they upload, so their location and camera details never reach us. Deleting the post deletes the files.
Your profile, if you fill it in. A display name, a profile photo, a bio and one link — all optional, all public on your profile and beside your named posts. We never copy your Google name or picture into them. Replacing or removing the photo deletes the old file. If someone reports your profile, we keep the report so a person can review it.
Which pages got used. Page views and a fixed list of moments (a round started, a microphone was refused, a ballot came back), so we can fix what breaks.
What we never do
No ad networks, no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel. We use one analytics tool, PostHog, to see how Diverge is used — exactly what it sees.
Nothing goes into the dataset unless you put it there. Every comment is out by default, and nothing you say out loud in a round is ever in it. How the dataset works.
Never your email or your Google name in our analytics, and never what you type into a box — recordings mask every field.
Nothing you say is public unless you post it. Speaking on the floor is private by default. The shelf is opt-in, one tap, every time.
Analytics: what PostHog sees
We use PostHog (US cloud) to learn how long people stay, what they read and what they post, so we can make Diverge better. It sees the pages you open, what you click, how long you stay, your browser and rough location (from your IP address), and — on the website, if you’re signed in and have pressed OK — your account number and your handle. In the iOS app it stays anonymous: never tied to your account, and no screen replays — and nothing about how you use the app is sent at all until you tap Allow. It never gets your email, your Google name or the text of what you post, and every field you type in is masked.
Until you press OK on the cookie line, PostHog stores nothing on your device and records no screen replays — each visit counts on its own. OK lets it remember you between visits and record masked replays of a session. No thanks keeps it the first way. To change your answer, use the Usage analytics switch on the support page.
Who else sees your words
The judge, the opponent and the transcription are OpenAI. When you speak in a live round, your audio goes from your browser to OpenAI directly to be heard and answered; when you finish, the transcript goes to OpenAI to be judged. We pay for that under an API agreement where your content is not used to train their models.
Posts, replies, messages and photos are checked by OpenAI for safety before they appear: OpenAI’s moderation model looks for harassment, hate, sexual content, violence and self-harm, and anything it flags is not published. Before a truth or a reply goes up, its text also goes to OpenAI to check it isn’t spam or generic AI filler, and each post’s text (with any words in its photo) goes to OpenAI to score its divergence. All of it is under the same no-training agreement.
Photos are stored privately with Vercel (Vercel Blob) and only ever shown through links that expire, to people allowed to see the post. Videos go to Mux, which converts them so they play on every device and streams them; the copy viewers get carries none of your phone’s location data. Both store and serve the files on Diverge’s behalf. Profile photos live in the same private store and are shown through a link that works only while the photo is someone’s current profile photo.
The only other way a word of yours leaves this app is a comment you put in the dataset yourself — below. Only posts shared with Everyone from a public account can go in it.
Every company that handles your data for us
Vercel — hosts Diverge and runs its servers and database connections.
Vercel Blob — stores the photos you post and your profile photo, privately.
Mux — stores, converts and streams the videos you post.
PostHog — product analytics: which pages are used and for how long. On the website it records masked session replays only after you press OK on the cookie line; the iOS app never records replays.
OpenAI — safety checks of posts, replies, messages and photos; the AI-filler check on posts and replies; the debate opponent’s replies and the judging of a round; and transcription when you speak your answer. Not used to train its models.
Apple Push Notification service — delivers notifications to the iOS app (a reply, a follow) if you allowed them. It receives the notification text and a device token.
Rough location from your IP address — PostHog estimates a country and city from the IP address of each visit for analytics. Diverge itself never stores your IP address; where it limits uploads or posting per network it keeps only a salted one-way hash of it.
None of them may use your data for their own purposes, and none of them sells it.
The dataset — only what you put in it
Diverge is building a dataset of human reasoning to license to companies that build AI models. A comment goes into it only when all three are true: you are signed in, you have told us you are 18 or older, and you switched on Add to the dataset for that comment. Nothing is in it by default. Nothing written before 25 September 2026 is in it. Nothing you said out loud in a round is in it.
What goes in: the text of the comment, its divergence reading, and the votes and replies it got. What never goes in: your name, your email, your account, your device id, or anything an AI model wrote.
You can take a comment back out at any time from its thread, and it is left out of every export after that. A copy already delivered before you took it out can’t be recalled — the terms say so in the same words.
Content created in the iOS app is never added to the AI dataset — nor is anything from an account that has ever posted from the app.
Contrarian truths: your handle, or Anonymous
Reading the feed never needs an account, and neither does posting a text truth — signed out, it goes up as Anonymous. Replying, voting, reporting, following, posting photos or videos and choosing who sees a post all need one — one account is one voice, which is the only way one vote each and one report each can mean anything. Before your first truth you pick a handle; we suggest a random one. Your Google name and email are never shown on a truth, a reply, a profile or the leaderboard — only @handle.
Every truth has a switch: post as @handle, or Anonymous. Anonymous hides your handle on that truth — on the card, its page, the image a shared link shows, your public profile, and the Following tab. It stays tied to your account so you can edit or delete it, but it earns no points: your total is public on your profile and the leaderboard, and a total that moved when an anonymous truth got votes would give you away. Your display name and profile photo never appear on an anonymous truth either. Photos on anonymous posts are stored under random names, so they can’t be matched to your other posts either. Sharing your own anonymous truth never adds your handle to the link.
Who sees your posts
Every post picks its audience: Everyone, Followers, Selected people (only the people you name — they never see who else you picked), or Only me. You can change it later from the post’s menu, and it applies at once. Anonymous posts always go to everyone, because an audience would tell that audience who wrote it.
A private account works like Instagram: your profile header stays visible, people ask to follow you, and only the followers you approve see your posts — including the ones marked Everyone. Posts that aren’t shared with everyone never appear in search previews, link images, the divergence comparison other people see, or the dataset. Blocking someone hides each of you from the other and ends any follow.
Everywhere else, anonymous is one empty field away
The other rooms — a minute off the floor, a take in the Ideas orbit, a reply to the morning brief — each have an anonymous route that is not a lesser one. Leave the name field empty and it posts as Anonymous, even while you’re signed in; your account keeps the XP, the shelf keeps no name. There, an account is required only for voting.
How long we keep it
Your posts, replies, messages, photos and videos stay until you delete them or delete your account. A deleted post’s photos and videos are deleted with it. Reports are kept while the reported item exists, so a person can review them. When an account is deleted, its PostHog analytics profile is queued for deletion too.
Getting your data out, or getting rid of it
Delete your account yourself, at any time: Profile → Edit profile → Delete account. It deletes your account, every post and reply you made (named and anonymous), your messages, photos, videos and profile, at once and for good. If you signed in with Apple, we also revoke Diverge’s access to your Apple ID.
Ask and we will send you everything attached to your account. Use Send feedback in the menu, the support page, or write to niemannmaude+privacy@gmail.com. Signed out, clearing your browser storage ends the device id and the history it carried — nothing follows you after that, because there was never anything else to follow you with.
