Terms of use

1. Who we are

Ration is operated by Ration Media LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company ("Ration," "we," "us," "our").

82 Wendell Ave, Ste 100, Pittsfield, MA 01201, United States
Contact: support@rationmedia.com

2. What Ration is, and what it is not

Ration is a digital wellness tool. Our editors choose creators and videos from YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram against a written standard, and organize them so you can watch them in timed, intentional sessions instead of an open-ended feed.

Ration does not host, store, stream, cache, or own any video. Every video in Ration is a link to content hosted on a third-party platform. When you tap "Watch on [Platform]," you leave Ration and open that platform's app or website. This means:

• Every video belongs to its creator and is hosted by the platform they published it on. Ration has no rights in that content and claims none.
• Your use of a video is governed by that platform's terms, not ours. Watching on YouTube means YouTube's terms apply; the same is true for TikTok and Instagram.
• Creators keep their audience. Views, follows, engagement, and any revenue from a video happen on the creator's own platform. Ration sends traffic to creators; it does not take anything from them.
• We do not control availability. A link may stop working if a creator removes or restricts a video, or if a platform changes how links behave.
• What Ration provides is curation and structure: the selection, the classification, the recommendations, and the session experience. Not the videos.

Ration is not a content blocker and does not restrict your access to any app or website. It is not a medical, therapeutic, or clinical product (see section 12).

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 17 years old to use Ration. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use Ration only with the involvement and consent of a parent or guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

You must also meet the minimum age of any platform you open from Ration.

You may not use Ration if you have previously been banned from it, or if using it would violate any law that applies to you.

4. Your account

Anonymous by default. Ration works without a sign-up. When you first open the app, we create an anonymous account tied to your device so your Palate, history, and free-tier usage are saved. If you delete the app or lose your device without creating a full account, that anonymous account and its data may not be recoverable.

Creating a full account. You can add an email address and password, or Sign in with Apple, at any time. Your existing Palate and history carry over. A full account lets you sign in on another device and lets us restore a subscription to the right account.

Your responsibilities. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account. Provide accurate information and keep it current. Tell us at support@rationmedia.com immediately if you believe your account has been compromised.

One person, one account. Accounts are personal. Do not share your account or let anyone else use it.

5. Subscriptions and payment

Ration offers a free tier and a paid auto-renewing subscription called Ration Plus ("Plus").

5.1 What is free

The free tier includes the full curated library — every category, every creator page, every video — two guided sessions per day, the standard session lengths, your Palate, and eight of the app's twenty-four themes. Every video link in Ration is available to everyone. You can browse every category, open any video, and watch it on its platform without a subscription, and if you have used your free sessions for the day you can still open any video directly. Nothing you can watch is behind a paywall.

5.2 What Plus adds

Plus unlocks features of the app, not videos. As of the effective date, Plus includes:

• Unlimited guided sessions per day
• Custom session lengths
• Curated Plans (structured, multi-session journeys)
• Personalized discovery (a For You feed ranked by your Palate)
• All app themes

We may add, change, or retire Plus features over time. The features shown on the purchase screen at the time you subscribe are what you are buying.

5.3 Plans and prices

Prices vary by country and currency. The price shown on the purchase screen in the app, as set in the App Store, is the price that applies. If there is any difference between this table and the App Store price, the App Store price governs.

5.4 How billing works

Payment. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase. All purchases are processed by Apple. We never receive or store your payment details.

Automatic renewal. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period, at the price of the plan you selected, unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Apple charges your account for renewal within 24 hours before the current period ends.

Free trial. If your plan includes a free trial, the subscription begins as a trial. If you do not cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, the trial converts automatically to a paid subscription and you will be charged. Free trials are limited to one per Apple Account per subscription group; if you have used a trial before, you may not be offered one again. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited if you buy a subscription during the trial.

How to cancel. Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple Account settings: on your device, open Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions, choose Ration, and tap Cancel. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep Plus until then. Deleting the Ration app, or deleting your Ration account, does not cancel your subscription and does not stop billing.

Ask to Buy and pending purchases. If your purchase requires approval (for example, Family Sharing's Ask to Buy), Plus activates once Apple reports the purchase as approved.

Restoring purchases. If Plus does not appear after a purchase or on a new device, use Settings → Restore Purchases in the app while signed in to the same Apple Account. Your subscription is tied to the Ration account that was active at the time of purchase; see the Support page if you need help linking it.

Price changes. If we change the price of a subscription, Apple will notify you in advance and, where required, ask you to agree to the new price before it takes effect. If you do not agree, your subscription will end at the close of the current period.

Refunds. Purchases are handled by Apple and refunds are governed by Apple's policies. We cannot issue refunds directly. To request a refund, go to reportaproblem.apple.com. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are non-refundable and there are no refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused sessions, or unused features.

Taxes. Prices may or may not include applicable taxes depending on your location; Apple calculates and collects any tax due.

6. Acceptable use

You may use Ration only for your own personal, non-commercial use, and only as these Terms allow. You agree not to:

• Use Ration for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that violates these Terms or any platform's terms
• Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to extract the source code of the app, except where the law expressly permits it
• Scrape, crawl, harvest, copy, or systematically extract our catalog, curation, classifications, editorial descriptions, recommendations, or any data from Ration, whether by hand or with automated tools
• Bulk-export the library. You may not export, download, record, or compile the library or any substantial part of it — the list of videos or creators, the category or topic assignments, the approval status of any video, the Curated Plans, or the editorial descriptions — in any form, for any purpose, including personal archives, research datasets, other apps, or model training. Saving individual videos to your own Saved list inside Ration, and opening them on their platforms, is the intended use and is fine.
• Use bots, scripts, or other automated means to access Ration
• Interfere with, disrupt, overload, probe, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to Ration, our servers, or our providers
• Circumvent or attempt to circumvent free-tier limits, subscription checks, rate limits, or any other access control
• Resell, sublicense, rent, lend, or commercially exploit Ration or any part of it
• Use Ration to build a competing product or a dataset for training a model
• Impersonate any person, misrepresent your affiliation, or submit false reports or requests
• Submit content that is unlawful, infringing, hateful, harassing, or that violates anyone's rights

We may investigate suspected violations and may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms (section 11).

7. Content and ownership

This section sets out who owns what.

7.1 Third-party videos and creators

The videos linked from Ration, and the names, handles, channel images, thumbnails, and descriptions that identify them, belong to their creators and the platforms that host them. Ration displays creator names, handles, and (for YouTube) thumbnails and channel images solely to identify and attribute the content and to link you to it. Ration does not license this content to you, and nothing in these Terms gives you any right in it beyond what the hosting platform allows.

YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are trademarks of their respective owners. Ration is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google, ByteDance, or Meta.

If you are a creator and you would prefer that your work not appear in Ration, email creators@rationmedia.com with the channel or video links. We will remove them within seven days of your request — usually the same day — and add your channel to our exclusion list. You do not need to give a reason. Our full commitments to creators are in our Creator Policy.

7.2 Ration's intellectual property

The Ration app and service — including the name and logo, the design and interface, the software, the Palate taste model and its dimensions, our category and topic taxonomy, our editorial selection of videos, the way we classify, sequence, and recommend them, our Curated Plans, and the editorial descriptions we write — are owned by Ration Media LLC or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, database, and other laws.

Compilation rights notice. Ration's library is a compilation. We do not own the videos in it (section 7.1), but we do own the compilation itself: the selection of which videos and creators are included and which are excluded; the approval judgments our editors make about each one; the taxonomy of categories, topics, tags, tones, styles, and depth levels we classify them into; the assignment of each video within that taxonomy; the sequencing and grouping of videos into sessions, Curated Plans, collections, and daily selections; and the editorial descriptions and metadata we write. This selection, coordination, and arrangement is original work protected as a compilation under the United States Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 101 and § 103) and, where applicable, under database and unfair-competition laws of other countries. Ration Media LLC claims copyright in the compilation and in its taxonomy, selection, and approval judgments, and reserves all rights in them.

Individual facts about a video — its URL, its title, its creator's name — are not ours and remain free for anyone to use. What you may not do is take our compilation, or a substantial part of it, and reproduce, redistribute, or build on it (section 6).

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to install and use the app on Apple-branded devices you own or control, for your own personal, non-commercial use, in accordance with these Terms and the App Store's usage rules. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

Our editorial descriptions are written with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed under our editorial standards. They explain why a video may be worth watching. They are not a summary of the video, and they may contain errors. Judge each video on its own terms.

7.3 What you contribute

Ration collects a small amount of content from you: session intent notes, ratings, reactions, Palate adjustments, search queries, creator blocks, reports, and any messages you send us ("Your Input").

You own Your Input. By providing it, you grant Ration Media LLC a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, process, and use Your Input to operate Ration for you, to improve our curation and recommendations, and to produce aggregated or de-identified insights that do not identify you. This license lasts for as long as your account exists, and, for aggregated or de-identified data only, after that. We do not publish Your Input, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not sell it.

Feedback. If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback about Ration, you agree we may use them without restriction or compensation to you, and that you will not claim rights in any product or feature that results.

7.4 Your Palate

Your Palate is data about you, and the Privacy Policy governs it. You can view and adjust it in the app and delete it by deleting your account. You can ask us for a copy under the Privacy Policy. The taste model that produces the Palate — its dimensions, weights, and methods — is Ration's intellectual property under section 7.2.

8. Copyright complaints

Ration respects intellectual property rights. Because we link to videos rather than host them, a complaint about a video itself is best directed to the platform hosting it (YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram), each of which has its own takedown process.

If you believe that material within Ration — such as a link, thumbnail, description, or other content we display — infringes a copyright you own or control, send a notice to our designated agent:

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

Your notice must include:

1. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed
2. Identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it in Ration (for example, the video title, creator name, and platform link as shown in the app)
3. Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address
4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
5. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf
6. Your physical or electronic signature

We will remove or disable access to the identified material promptly. We may terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe. [CONFIRM — register the agent with the U.S. Copyright Office; see owner notes.]

9. Third-party platforms and links

Ration links to platforms and content we do not control. We do not endorse, guarantee, or take responsibility for any third-party content, and we make no promise about its accuracy, completeness, quality, legality, safety, or continued availability. Our editorial standards describe what we look for; they are not a warranty about any particular video.

Your use of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram — including whether you have an account there, what those platforms show you after you arrive, and what they collect about you — is solely between you and them. Ration has no control over what a platform's own recommendations show you once you leave the app.

10. Changes to the service

Ration is a young product and will change. We may add, modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of Ration — including features, categories, themes, Curated Plans, the library, and pricing — at any time, with or without notice. Where a change materially reduces what a current Plus subscription provides, we will tell you and you may cancel before the next renewal. We are not otherwise liable to you for any change to or discontinuation of the service.

11. Termination

By you. You may stop using Ration at any time. You can delete your account in the app under Settings → Account → Delete Account. Remember to cancel any active subscription separately through Apple (section 5.4).

By us. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, if we reasonably believe your use creates risk for us, other users, or third parties, or if we discontinue the service. If we terminate your account for a reason other than your breach while you have an active paid period, you may be entitled to a pro-rated refund through Apple to the extent Apple's policies allow.

Effect. On termination your license to use Ration ends. Sections that by their nature should survive — including sections 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 — survive.

12. Disclaimers

Ration is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

We do not warrant that Ration will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; that any link will remain functional; that any video will remain available or unchanged; that our recommendations will suit you; or that any defect will be corrected.

Ration is a tool for managing your own media consumption. It is not a medical, psychological, therapeutic, or clinical product, and it is not a treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of any condition, including compulsive device use or attention-related conditions. Nothing in Ration is medical or psychological advice. If you are concerned about your health, talk to a qualified professional.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ration Media LLC and its members, managers, employees, contractors, and providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or related to these Terms or your use of or inability to use Ration, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we have been told such damages are possible.

Our total liability for all claims arising out of or related to these Terms or Ration will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid us through the App Store in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty U.S. dollars ($50).

These limitations do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for our fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

14. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Ration Media LLC and its members, managers, employees, and contractors from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to your use of Ration in violation of these Terms, Your Input, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party. We may take over the defense of any matter for which you must indemnify us, and you agree to cooperate.

15. Governing law and disputes

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the federal laws of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If you are a consumer in a jurisdiction whose law gives you protections that cannot be waived by contract, you keep those protections.

Talk to us first. Before filing any claim against Ration, you agree to email support@rationmedia.com with a short description of the dispute and what you want, and to give us 30 days to try to resolve it with you informally. We agree to do the same before filing a claim against you.

Where disputes are heard. Any dispute that is not resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in [CONFIRM COUNTY — e.g., Berkshire County], Massachusetts, and you and we each consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Either party may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court where it qualifies.

Time limit. To the extent the law allows, any claim arising out of these Terms or Ration must be filed within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred.

[OPTIONAL — arbitration and class-action waiver. Not included in this draft. See owner notes for the trade-offs and the clause text if you decide to add it.]

16. Apple-specific terms

These Terms are between you and Ration Media LLC only, not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for Ration or its content.

• Your license to use Ration is limited to use on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store's usage rules, except that the app may be accessed and used by other accounts associated with you via Family Sharing or volume purchasing.
• Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for Ration.
• If Ration fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app to you (if any). To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to Ration, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty are our responsibility.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to Ration or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, claims that Ration fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and consumer protection or similar claims.
• If a third party claims that Ration or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for investigating, defending, settling, and discharging that claim.
• You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must comply with applicable third-party terms when using Ration (for example, your wireless carrier's terms and the terms of any platform you open).
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and, upon your acceptance, will have the right to enforce them against you.

17. General

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Ration Media LLC about Ration and replace any earlier agreements.

Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted and the rest of the Terms remain in effect.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets.

Export. You agree to comply with U.S. export laws that apply to the app.

Notices. We may give you notice in the app, by email to the address on your account, or by posting on our website. Notices to us go to support@rationmedia.com or our mailing address above.

Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms. If we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date and give you notice in the app or by email at least 14 days before the change takes effect, except where a change is needed immediately for legal or security reasons. If you keep using Ration after a change takes effect, you accept it. If you do not agree, stop using Ration and, if you subscribe, cancel through Apple.

Language. These Terms are written in English. Any translation is for convenience only.

Contact

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