Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Ration Media LLC ("Ration," "we," "us," "our") is the data controller for the information described in this policy.

Ration Media LLC
82 Wendell Ave, Ste 100, Pittsfield, MA 01201, United States

Privacy questions and requests: support@rationmedia.com

2. What we collect

2.1 An account is created the first time you open Ration

Ration works without a sign-up. When you first open the app, we create an anonymous account for you on our backend and assign it a random account identifier. That identifier is how we save your taste profile, session history, and free-tier usage on our servers. It is not your name, your email, your phone number, or an advertising identifier, and it is not shared with anyone for advertising.

If you later create a full account, that same identifier becomes your account. Nothing is lost.

2.2 Information you give us

Account information. If you choose to create a full account, we collect:

• Email and password. We store your email address and a hashed version of your password. We send you a confirmation email when you sign up or change your email, and a reset email if you forget your password.
• Sign in with Apple. If you sign in with Apple, we receive the identifier Apple assigns to you for Ration and the email address you choose to share. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email" option, we receive Apple's private relay address instead of your real address.

Session intent. When you start a session, you may type a short note about what you want out of it (for example, "learn something about the ocean"). We store that text with the session so we can pick videos that match it and show it back to you in your history.

Palate adjustments. Your Palate (see 2.3) has sliders and topic controls you can set by hand. We store those settings.

Ratings, reactions, saves, follows, and blocks. We store your post-session ratings, thumbs-up or thumbs-down reactions on videos, videos you save, creators you follow, and creators you block.

Search queries. When you search inside Ration, the text you type is sent to our servers to run the search. See section 4 for how semantic search is processed.

Support correspondence. If you email us, we keep your message, your email address, and our reply so we can help you and keep a record of the request.

2.3 Information created as you use Ration

Your Palate (taste profile). Ration builds a private profile of what you like so it can recommend better videos. The Palate is a set of numeric scores across a small number of taste dimensions (for example, how much you lean toward wonder, craft, or depth), plus category, topic, and creator affinities. It is computed from what you watch, save, skip, react to, search for, and adjust by hand. It is kept in two windows: a longer-term profile and a short-term "recent activity" profile that fades over time. Your Palate is used only to personalize Ration for you.

Session activity. For each session we record when it started and ended, the planned and actual length, which videos we served, which you opened, whether you used the "return to good content" escape route, and whether the session completed.

Video activity. We record which videos you opened from Ration, skipped, or reacted to, and which platform you opened them on. This is what your Palate learns from.

Platform affinity. We keep a score of how often you choose YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, so we can serve videos from the platforms you prefer.

Subscription status. If you subscribe, Apple processes the payment and tells us whether your subscription is active, which plan you chose, when it renews or expires, and whether you are in a free trial or grace period. We store that status together with Apple's transaction identifier for your subscription. We attach your Ration account identifier to the purchase so we can restore it later.

Free-tier usage. We count how many free sessions you have started today. This counter is kept on our servers with your account identifier, so it stays the same if you reinstall the app or change devices.

Notification settings. If you allow notifications, Ration schedules reminders on your device (for example, a daily reminder or a nudge near the end of a session). These are local notifications. We do not send push notifications from our servers and we do not collect a push token.

Technical information. When your device talks to our servers, our backend provider's logs record standard technical data such as your IP address, request timestamps, and your app version. We use this for security, debugging, and to keep the service running. We do not use it to profile you or to work out your precise location.

2.4 What we do not collect

We do not collect your name, phone number, physical address, contacts, photos, camera or microphone input, precise location, health or fitness data, advertising identifiers, or your browsing history outside Ration.

We never receive your payment details. All purchases go through Apple's App Store. We never see your card number, billing address, or payment credentials.

We do not use any third-party analytics, advertising, attribution, or crash-reporting software in the app. If you have opted in to share diagnostics with app developers in your iOS settings, Apple may share anonymized crash reports with us under Apple's own privacy terms.

3. How watching a video works

Ration does not host, store, stream, or cache video. Every video in Ration is a link to content hosted on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. When you tap "Watch on [Platform]," you leave Ration and open that platform's app or website.

Once you open a video, you are on that platform. That platform's own privacy policy and tracking apply, not ours. We have no visibility into what you do there, and those platforms do not send us information about your viewing.

Two things happen inside Ration that involve those platforms directly:

• YouTube thumbnails and creator images. Ration displays YouTube video thumbnails and channel images by loading them from YouTube's own image servers. When the app does this, your device makes a request to Google's servers, and Google receives your IP address and standard request data. TikTok and Instagram videos are shown with a Ration-designed card, not with images from those platforms.
• Session overlay. During a session, Ration may show a Live Activity on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island with your session timer and controls. This runs on your device.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of YouTube (Google), TikTok, and Instagram (Meta).

YouTube API Services. Ration uses YouTube API Services to retrieve public information about YouTube channels and videos that our editors have selected (for example, channel names, channel images, and video titles). By using Ration you also agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service (https://www.youtube.com/t/terms). Google's Privacy Policy is at https://policies.google.com/privacy. Ration does not ask you to sign in to YouTube and does not access any information from your YouTube account.

4. Why we use your information

We use the information above to:

• Create and maintain your account and keep you signed in
• Deliver timed sessions and choose which videos to serve
• Build and update your Palate so recommendations improve over time
• Run searches, including semantic ("meaning-based") search
• Enforce free-tier limits and provide the features you have paid for
• Provide, restore, and manage your subscription, including trial and renewal status
• Send the account emails you need (confirmation, password reset, and important notices about the service)
• Respond to your support requests, creator requests, and content reports
• Diagnose problems, secure the service, and prevent abuse
• Understand, in aggregate, how the app is used so we can improve curation
• Meet legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Use

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not build profiles of you for anyone else's benefit.

Automated personalization. Ration's recommendations are automated: your Palate is computed by software and used to rank videos for you. This affects only which curated videos you see and in what order. It has no legal or similarly significant effect on you. You can view and adjust your Palate at any time under Your Palate in the app.

AI processing. Our editors use AI tools to help classify and describe the videos in our library. That processing is applied to the videos and their public metadata, not to your personal information. Separately, when you use semantic search, the text of your search query is sent to a third-party embedding provider (see section 5) to be converted into a numeric form our search can use. We do not send your name, email, account identifier, or Palate to that provider.

5. Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share it only with the service providers we need to operate Ration, each of whom is bound by contract to use it only to provide their service to us:

We may also disclose information:

• To comply with the law — in response to a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process, or when we believe disclosure is required by law.
• To protect rights and safety — to enforce our Terms of Use, investigate fraud or abuse, or protect the rights, property, or safety of Ration, our users, or others.
• In a business transfer — if Ration Media LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.

Aggregated information. We may use and share information that has been aggregated or de-identified so that it no longer identifies you (for example, "40% of sessions are started in the evening"). We will not try to re-identify it.

6. How long we keep your information

7. Deleting your account

You can delete your account and its data at any time from inside the app: Settings → Account → Delete Account. You will be asked to confirm.

Deleting your account removes your login, your Palate, your session history, your saves, follows, blocks, reactions, search records, and every other record tied to your account from our production database. The only thing that survives is the anonymized subscription record described in section 6.

Deleting your account does not cancel your subscription. Subscriptions are managed by Apple. Cancel it in your Apple Account settings before or after you delete, or it will continue to renew. See the Terms of Use and our Support page for the steps.

You may also email support@rationmedia.com from the address on your account and we will process the deletion for you.

8. Your rights and choices

Choices inside the app

• Palate. View and adjust your taste profile under Your Palate.
• Blocks. Block a creator and you will not be served their videos.
• Notifications. Turn them on or off in iOS Settings → Notifications → Ration.
• Live Activities. Turn them on or off in iOS Settings → Ration → Live Activities.
• Account. Change your email, password, or linked sign-in methods under Settings → Account.
• Delete. See section 7.

Rights under privacy law. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate information
• Delete your information
• Receive a copy of your information in a portable, machine-readable format
• Object to or restrict certain processing
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
• Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights

To exercise a right, email support@rationmedia.com from the email address on your account, or, if you use an anonymous account, from inside the app so we can identify the account. We may ask you to verify your identity. We will respond within the time required by the law that applies to you, and in any case within 45 days. You may authorize an agent to make a request for you; we will ask the agent for proof of authorization.

If you are in California. You have the rights described above under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA, including the right to know what we collect and why, the right to delete, the right to correct, and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of, and we do not respond to browser "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signals because we do not do the tracking those signals address. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for any purpose other than providing the service. We have not sold or shared personal information in the preceding 12 months. The categories of information we collect, their sources, and our purposes are described in sections 2, 4, and 5.

If you are in another U.S. state with a privacy law (for example Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, or Oregon), you have similar rights of access, correction, deletion, portability, and opting out of targeted advertising and profiling with legal or similarly significant effects. We do not do targeted advertising, and our profiling has no such effects. If we deny a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision email with "Appeal" in the subject line; we will respond within the time your state's law requires.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland. Our legal bases for processing are:

• Performance of a contract — running your account, sessions, Palate, and subscription (the Terms of Use are the contract)
• Legitimate interests — securing and improving the service, preventing abuse, and understanding aggregate usage; we have balanced these interests against your rights
• Consent — notifications and any optional feature that asks first; you can withdraw consent at any time
• Legal obligation — keeping financial records and responding to lawful requests

You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. Ration Media LLC is established in the United States and has not appointed a representative in the EEA or UK.

If you are in Canada. You may ask to access or correct the personal information we hold about you, and you may withdraw your consent to our use of it, subject to legal limits. Our privacy officer is responsible for this policy and for how we handle personal information, and can be reached at support@rationmedia.com. You may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or the privacy regulator in your province.

9. Children

Ration is not directed to children and is not intended for anyone under 17. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 17, and never from children under 13. If you believe someone under 17 has an account, contact support@rationmedia.com and we will delete it.

The platforms Ration links to have their own minimum age requirements, which you must also meet.

10. Security

We protect your information with encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest, hashed passwords, and access controls. Our database enforces row-level security so that your records can be read and written only by your account. Our server-side secrets are never included in the app. Only Ration Media LLC personnel with a need to operate the service have administrative access.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law.

11. International users

Ration is operated from the United States, and your information is processed and stored in the United States. If you use Ration from outside the U.S., you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S., where data protection laws may differ from those in your country. Where the law requires a transfer mechanism (for example, for users in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland), we rely on our providers' standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date and notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect. Your continued use of Ration after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy. Previous versions are available on request.

13. Contact

Ration Media LLC
82 Wendell Ave, Ste 100, Pittsfield, MA 01201, United States
support@rationmedia.com