The rules of
the road.

1. Welcome to Tribes

Thank you for joining Tribes. These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and One Tribe Holding Company, a Delaware corporation doing business as Tribes, with its principal office in Houston, Texas (“Tribes,” “we,” “us”). They cover the Tribes mobile apps, trytribes.com, and related services (together, the “Service”). In these Terms, an “affiliate” of Tribes means any company that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with Tribes.

You accept these Terms when you tap “Agree and continue” in the Tribes app or when you use the Service. Your electronic acceptance counts as your signature under the Delaware Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and the federal E-SIGN Act. Our Privacy Policy explains how we care for your data and is part of these Terms.

We’ve tried to keep these Terms clear and friendly. A few sections affect your legal rights, so we’d ask you to read them with extra care: section 17 (Release of liability), 18 (Disclaimers), 19 (Limitation of liability), 21 (Resolving disputes), and 22 (Governing law, venue, and jury waiver). If you’d rather not agree to these Terms, we understand, but please don’t use the Service.

2. Who can use Tribes

You’re welcome to use Tribes if:

• You are at least 18 years old.
• You can form a binding contract under Delaware law and the law of the place where you live.
• You aren’t barred from using the Service under US law.
• You haven’t previously been removed from Tribes.

We ask that each person keep just one account, and that you keep your account information accurate and up to date.

Tribes is designed for adults. We may check your age, and where Apple or Google share an age category for your app store account, we use it only to confirm you’re 18 or older and to meet our legal duties. If we learn that a member is under 18, we’ll close the account and delete their data, except anything we need to keep for safety or legal reasons.

3. Open areas and the waitlist

We’re opening Tribes area by area. If your area isn’t open yet, you’re very welcome to create an account and join the waitlist. You’ll be able to use the marketplace once your area opens.

4. Your account

Please keep your login details safe, since you’re responsible for activity on your account. We recommend not sharing your password with anyone. If you think someone else has accessed your account, please email us at info@trytribes.com right away.

Messages from us

We’ll contact you about your account, matches, and messages by email, push notification, or other channels. If you give us your phone number, we may text you about your account, such as sign in codes or security alerts. We’ll send marketing texts only if you separately agree. Message and data rates may apply, and you can reply STOP to any text to stop receiving them. You can manage push notifications in your device settings and unsubscribe from marketing emails using the link in each email.

5. How Tribes works

Members list the goods and services they’re Offering and the ones they’re Seeking. Our matching engine, which may use automated tools including artificial intelligence, suggests matches with people nearby. Matches are suggestions to help you get started, so please use your own judgment about whether a trade is a good fit.

Once matched, members message each other in the app, agree on their own terms, and meet to make the exchange. Tribes isn’t a party to any trade. Unless we tell you otherwise for a specific feature, we don’t process payments, hold items in escrow, offer refunds or purchase protection, ship, inspect, or insure anything.

You’re responsible for any taxes that may apply to your trades.

6. My Tribe

My Tribes are invite only groups within Tribes. The member who creates a My Tribe (the “My Tribe Founder”) and any admins they appoint can invite, remove, and ban members and can transfer ownership. My Tribe Founders and admins are members acting on their own behalf, not Tribes employees or agents, so Tribes can’t be responsible for their decisions. If a My Tribe breaks these Terms, we may remove content, remove a My Tribe Founder or admin, or close the My Tribe.

7. Paid features

We may offer paid features, such as Tribes Premium. Before you buy anything, we’ll clearly show you the price, how billing and renewal work, and how to cancel, and we’ll ask you to agree to those terms. Purchases through Apple or Google also follow their payment and refund rules.

8. Identity verification (optional)

If you’d like, you can verify your identity to earn a verified badge. Our verification provider checks a scan of your government photo ID and a selfie, which involves biometric processing of your face. We’ll always ask for your consent before anything is captured. Verification is optional unless we tell you that a specific feature requires it. Our Privacy Policy explains what is kept and for how long.

A verified badge means a document check and selfie match passed when it was done. It isn’t a background check, so please keep using good judgment with every member, verified or not.

9. Your content

You own the photos, descriptions, messages, and other content you post (“Your Content”). By posting Your Content, you give us a worldwide, non exclusive, royalty free license to host, store, display, reproduce, and adapt it (for example, to resize or crop a photo) so we can run and improve the Service; to analyze it and create aggregated or deidentified data, which we may use, share, and sell as described in our Privacy Policy; and to show it in our marketing, such as screenshots of the app.

This license ends when you delete Your Content or your account, except for backup copies kept for a limited time, messages other members already received, marketing materials already published, and aggregated or deidentified data already created.

By posting, you confirm that Your Content is yours to share, that it respects other people’s rights, and that it follows these Terms. We may remove content that we reasonably believe breaks these Terms, including our Community Guidelines in section 10, or that seems unlawful or harmful.

10. Community Guidelines

This section is our Community Guidelines. Tribes works best when everyone looks out for one another. When you use the Service, we ask that you don’t:

• Harass, threaten, stalk, dox, or discriminate against anyone.
• Pressure anyone into a trade or a meeting.
• Post sexual content, nudity, hate speech, or violent or graphic material.
• Post fake, misleading, or duplicate listings.
• Spam other members or send commercial messages unrelated to trading.
• Ask for or share personal contact details (phone, address, social handles) before a match is made.
• Move trades off the platform to avoid our rating or reporting tools.
• Scrape, reverse engineer, or misuse the Service technically.
• Use bots, scripts, or automated tools to create accounts or post listings.
• Pretend to be someone else, including Tribes staff.
• Use the Service for anything unlawful.
• Do anything that would break Apple’s or Google’s app store rules.

Protecting our community’s data

Tribes owns the Service and the data it creates, including matches, trust scores, ratings, and the patterns of offers, needs, and connections across our community (“Tribes Data”). Your Content stays yours, as described in section 9. If you send us ideas or feedback, we’re grateful, and we may use them freely without owing you anything.

Scraping and misuse of member data harm our members and are hard to measure in money, so you agree not to do any of the following, and that if you do, you will owe Tribes these amounts as liquidated damages, which you agree are a reasonable estimate of our harm and not a penalty:

• Collecting or harvesting information about members, by automated means or otherwise, without our written permission: $5 for each member whose information is collected.
• Copying, scraping, aggregating, republishing, or selling listings or Tribes Data without our written permission: $3,000 for each day it continues.
• Using member information obtained through Tribes to send unsolicited messages, texts, or calls: $500 for each message, text, or call.
• Creating accounts with bots or automated tools, or buying or selling accounts: $50 for each account.

These amounts don’t apply to ordinary personal use of Tribes. We may also ask a court to stop the conduct.

11. Items and services we can’t allow

To keep everyone safe and within the law, please don’t offer, trade, or request:

• Illegal drugs, controlled substances, or drug paraphernalia.
• Weapons, firearms, ammunition, explosives, or tactical gear.
• Stolen goods or anything you don’t have the legal right to give away.
• Live animals, livestock, or animal products regulated by law.
• Alcohol, tobacco, vaping products, or any age restricted product.
• Prescription medications, medical devices requiring a prescription, or human biological material.
• Counterfeit, pirated, or knock off goods.
• Sexual services or anything that could reasonably be considered adult content.
• Financial products, investments, or money transfer services.
• Recalled products or anything unsafe.
• Anything else prohibited by US federal, state, or local law.

Please make sure anything you offer is legal and safe. If a listing breaks this section, we may remove it, suspend the account, or contact the authorities where needed. We may review listings from time to time, but we aren’t able to check every one, so we rely on members to help.

If you offer a service, you’re responsible for holding any license, permit, certification, or insurance the law requires for it, and for doing the work safely. Please don’t offer a service that requires a license you don’t hold.

12. Trades, exchanges, and meeting in person

Tribes helps you find each other. Everything after a match, including your conversation, your agreement, and your exchange, is between you and the other member.

Please know that we don’t run background checks, criminal record checks, or other screening of members. Apart from the optional document check in section 8, we don’t verify members’ identity, background, or character. We also can’t inspect or guarantee the condition, safety, or legality of items or services, or make sure a trade goes the way you expected.

Your safety matters to us. We recommend that you:

• Meet in a public, well lit place. Many police stations have designated “community exchange” spots.
• Bring a friend the first time you meet someone.
• Tell someone you trust where you’re going.
• Walk away from anything that feels off, and report it in the app.
• Never share financial information, government IDs, or passwords.
• Look at an item carefully before you trade or pay for it.
• Never pay with gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency, and don’t pay before you meet.
• Be wary of anyone who overpays and asks you to send money back, or who asks you to move the conversation off Tribes.
• For babysitting, pet sitting, elder care, or any work in your home, meet first, ask for references, and check the public sex offender registry for your state. For childcare, consider being home for the first visit.

These tips can help, but no place or plan is risk free. If you ever feel in danger, please call 911 first. When you use the Service or meet another member, you do so by your own choice and at your own risk.

13. Ratings, reputation, and trust score

After a trade you can rate the other member. Ratings reflect members’ opinions, not ours. We also calculate a trust score from activity on Tribes. It’s an automated estimate meant to help, not a guarantee about anyone. We may remove ratings that are fake, abusive, or made in bad faith, and we may suspend accounts that try to manipulate ratings or trust scores.

14. Reporting and moderation

If you see a listing, message, profile, or My Tribe that breaks these Terms, please let us know with the in app report tool. Thank you for helping. We review reports in good faith as our resources allow, and we may give warnings, remove content, or suspend or remove accounts. We can’t promise to review every report, act within a set time, or monitor everything on the Service. When safety or the law requires it, we may act without advance notice.

Intimate images shared without consent

We will remove intimate images or videos of a person that were shared on Tribes without their consent, including images created with AI. Anyone can ask for removal, whether or not they have a Tribes account, and an authorized person can ask on someone’s behalf. Please use the in app report tool, or email info@trytribes.com with the subject line “Intimate Image Removal Request,” and include:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Where the image or video appears on Tribes, with enough detail for us to find it.
• A brief statement that you believe in good faith that it shows you (or the person you act for) and was shared without consent, with any information that helps us confirm this.
• How we can contact you.

We will remove the content, and make reasonable efforts to remove any identical copies we know of, within 48 hours of receiving a valid request. Sharing intimate images of anyone without consent breaks these Terms and may be a crime, and we may close the accounts of those who do it.

15. Copyright (DMCA)

We respect creators’ rights. If you believe content on Tribes infringes your copyright, please send a notice to our designated agent that includes: (a) your physical or electronic signature; (b) identification of the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed; (c) identification of the material you’d like removed, with enough detail for us to find it; (d) your contact information; (e) a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use isn’t authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (f) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.

Designated agent: Copyright Agent, One Tribe Holding Company, 2023 McDuffie Street, Houston, Texas 77019. Phone: (832) 306-4428. Email: info@trytribes.com, subject line “DMCA Notice.”

If you believe content was removed by mistake, you’re welcome to send a counter notice to the same agent. It should include your signature, the material removed and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe it was removed by mistake, your name, address, and phone number, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you’re outside the US, any district where Tribes may be found). In appropriate circumstances, we will close the accounts of repeat infringers.

16. Suspension and termination

We hope it never comes to this, but we may suspend or close an account if it breaks these Terms, puts other members at risk, or exposes Tribes to legal liability. You’re free to delete your account at any time from inside the app. Some sections continue to apply after an account closes, including the licenses you’ve granted, our ownership of Tribes Data, liquidated damages, the release of liability, disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution.

18. Disclaimers

We work hard to make Tribes useful and reliable, but to the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non infringement. We can’t promise that the Service will always be available or error free, that it will meet every need, that any match, rating, trust score, or badge is accurate, or that any member is who they say they are, is safe, or will follow through on a trade. We don’t screen members or run background checks. Please use your own judgment with any content you find on the Service.

19. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tribes and its affiliates, and each of its and their owners, Daniel Hudson, officers, directors, employees, agents, contractors, insurers, underwriters, and service providers, will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to your use of the Service. The total liability of Tribes and all of the parties listed above, combined, to you for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100) or (b) the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

Nothing in this section limits liability for anything that cannot be limited under applicable law.

20. Indemnification

If someone brings a claim against Tribes because of your use of the Service, Your Content, your breach of these Terms, your violation of any law, or your dealings with other members, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Tribes and its affiliates, and each of its and their owners, Daniel Hudson, officers, directors, employees, agents, and contractors, from the resulting claims, losses, liabilities, and costs (including reasonable attorney’s fees). We may choose to handle the defense ourselves at our own cost, and we’d appreciate your cooperation.

23. Apple App Store additional terms

If you downloaded Tribes from the Apple App Store, these terms also apply:

• These Terms are between you and Tribes only, not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
• Your license to use the app on an Apple device is limited to the terms of the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.
• Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to the app.
• Tribes, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to any legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar laws.
• If a third party claims the app or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, Tribes (not Apple) is responsible for investigating, defending, settling, and discharging any such claim.
• You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You agree to follow any third party terms that apply when you use the app.
• Questions or concerns about the app can be sent to us at info@trytribes.com or 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958.
• Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance Apple has the right to enforce them against you as a third party beneficiary.

24. Google Play additional terms

If you downloaded Tribes from the Google Play Store, you also agree to Google Play’s Terms of Service. These Terms govern your relationship with Tribes; Google isn’t a party to them and isn’t responsible for the app.

25. Changes to these Terms

As Tribes grows, we may update these Terms. If a change is material, we’ll let you know by email and in the app at least 10 days before it takes effect. If you keep using the Service after that, it means you accept the updated Terms. Changes won’t apply to disputes you’ve already told us about. The “Last updated” date at the top always shows the current version.

26. General

No third party rights. Only you and Tribes have rights under these Terms, except that the people and companies these Terms protect in sections 17, 19, 20, 21, and 22 may enforce those sections, and Apple may enforce these Terms as described in section 23. No one else, including another member, may enforce these Terms.

Interpretation. In these Terms, “including” means including without limitation, and headings are for convenience only.

Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any additional terms you agree to for paid features are the complete agreement between you and Tribes about the Service.

Severability. If a court or arbitrator finds any part of these Terms unenforceable, that part will apply to the fullest extent allowed, and the rest will still apply.

No waiver. If we don’t enforce a right immediately, we still have that right.

Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may transfer ours, for example in a merger or sale of assets.

Events beyond our control. We aren’t responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.

Notices. We may send notices to the email address on your account or show them in the app. Please send legal notices to info@trytribes.com and to 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958.

Contact. We’re always happy to hear from you. If you have questions about these Terms, please email info@trytribes.com.

One Tribe Holding Company, doing business as Tribes · 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958, United States