YOUR DATA. YOUR POWER.
What we collect (the minimum), what we never collect, how your activity becomes movement intelligence, and your rights to export or delete everything.
KARL: “They sell your data and call it 'personalization.' We aggregate it and call it ammunition. Big difference.”
WHO WE ARE
This policy covers mtcstw.com and related services operated by The Propaganda Factory (“we,” “us”) — including the site, the PWA, and the MTCSTW API platform. If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at mtcstw@gmail.com.
Our standing ethics: your activity powers the movement's intelligence — transparently (we tell you up front), aggregated by default, coarse location only, never sold, and never used for individual manipulation scoring.
Effective date: October 2026.
WHAT WE COLLECT
We collect only what the machine needs to function:
- Account info: your callsign (the pseudonymous username you choose) and your email address. Your real name is never required.
- Crowdsourced prices: price submissions you report through Price Detective and related tools — product, price, store, and the coarse location you report them in.
- Check-ins and activity: daily check-ins, XP-earning actions, streaks, and the missions you complete.
- Votes: fan votes, polls, and ratings you cast.
- Bounty submissions and photos: photos and evidence you submit to data bounties — including photo metadata you leave attached. Strip EXIF location data before submitting if you want zero location trace.
- API keys and usage: if you use the MTCSTW API, we log your API key, endpoints called, call volumes, and error rates to enforce quotas and keep the service alive.
- Coarse location: ZIP code or city level only. We never collect GPS or precise device location.
- Notification preferences: what you want to be told about, and how.
- Contact info you give us: if you email us, join a waitlist, or submit a form (for example, the Sick Left Radicals application), we keep what you sent so we can respond.
WHAT WE NEVER COLLECT
- Real names — not required, not asked for, not stored as part of your account.
- Precise location — no GPS, no device location tracking, ever.
- Payment information — payments are processed by Stripe on Stripe’s own checkout pages. We never see, touch, or store your card numbers. We do receive confirmation that a payment succeeded (and the pack or product it paid for) so we can provision your access.
- Anything for advertising — there are no ads on this site and never will be, so there is nothing to build an ad profile from.
WHAT WE NEVER DO
Non-negotiable. These don’t change with a policy update:
- We never sell your data — to anyone, for any price, ever.
- We never share individual data with advertisers — there are no advertisers, and there never will be.
- We never run precise location tracking — ZIP/city is the finest we ever know.
- We never do individual manipulation scoring — we don’t score people, we score corporations (see: the Ghoul Index).
HOW WE USE IT
Your activity powers the movement’s intelligence. Price submissions become regional pricing data. Votes become fan favorites. Bounty completions become verified records. API usage becomes quota and reliability data.
Aggregated, anonymized data may power public datasets and the API. We’re transparent about this: statistics derived from many users’ activity (“milk costs $X in Louisiana,” violation rates by sector) can appear on public dashboards and be served through the MTCSTW API. These datasets never identify individuals — they describe the economy, not you.
We do not:
- Share your personal activity with third parties except as required by law.
- Use individual-level data to personalize content, manipulate behavior, or score any person.
- Feed individual data into third-party AI training pipelines or data brokers.
WHERE IT LIVES
Our infrastructure runs on Cloudflare (Workers, D1 database, R2 storage). On your device, we use localStorage for app state (your callsign, session, preferences) and a service worker cache so the app works offline as a PWA. See the Cookie Policy for the full breakdown.
We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS) and access controls. API keys are stored hashed. No system is perfectly secure; if we ever suffer a breach that affects your data, we will tell you.
YOUR RIGHTS
Your data is yours. You can:
- Export it: request a copy of everything we hold about your callsign — including your activity history and API usage.
- Delete it: request full deletion of your account data. We will confirm when it’s gone. Deleting your account revokes your API keys; API usage logs older than 90 days roll off automatically.
- Correct it: tell us what’s wrong and we’ll fix it.
To exercise any of these rights, email mtcstw@gmail.com from the address associated with your account (or include your callsign). We respond to requests within 30 days.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.
CHANGES TO THIS POLICY
If we change this policy in a way that affects your rights, we’ll post the new version here with a new effective date and flag it in the feed. Continued use of the site after changes means you accept the updated policy.
TALK TO US
Privacy questions, export requests, deletion requests — all of it goes to mtcstw@gmail.com. A human reads it.
Last updated: October 2026.