PARALLAX — TERMS

Terms of Service

The agreement between you and Parallax when you read, save, or contribute.

Updated May 24, 2026

Terms of Service

Last updated: 24 May 2026

These terms (“Terms”) govern your use of Parallax Lens (“Parallax,” “we,” “us”) and the website at parallaxlens.com and the reader-account application at app.parallaxlens.com (together, the “Service”).

By using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use it. We’ve tried to keep these readable; where the law requires specific language, you’ll find it. Everywhere else, plain English wins.

1. About Parallax

Parallax Lens is a visual explainer publication that publishes long-form, fully-sourced issues across six topics: politics, space, earth, technology, travel, and sports. The publication is operated by an individual founder based in India.

What the Service is:

  • A reader can browse and read all published issues for free, without signing up.
  • A reader can optionally create an account to save issues, subscribe to the newsletter, leave annotations and Letters, and use AI-assisted reading features.
  • A reader can read AI-generated explainers and ask questions about specific issues using the Q&A sidebar (when it’s available).

What the Service is not:

  • It is not a real-time news service. We publish slowly and rebuild topics from the structure up.
  • It is not a comments forum or discussion board. We provide annotations and a Letters section, both of which are moderated.
  • It is not a financial-advice, legal-advice, or medical-advice service. Read everything we publish with that in mind.

2. Eligibility

To create an account or use authenticated features:

  • You must be at least 16 years old, or
  • If you are in India, you must be at least 18 years old (per the DPDP Act’s definition of “child”), or
  • You must have the verifiable consent of a parent or legal guardian.

By creating an account, you confirm that you meet these requirements.

You may read the publication anonymously at any age — but please don’t register accounts on behalf of minors.

3. Your account

If you create an account:

  • You’re responsible for keeping your login credentials secure. We use passwordless authentication (magic links to your email, or Google OAuth). Don’t share your magic links.
  • You can register only one personal account.
  • You’re responsible for everything that happens through your account. If you suspect unauthorised access, contact us immediately at privacy@parallaxlens.com.
  • You can delete your account at any time from your dashboard, or by emailing us. Deletion is final and irreversible after 30 days.
  • We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these Terms (see Section 8).

4. Free, for now

Parallax is free to read and free to use. We may introduce paid tiers or sponsored content in the future. If we do:

  • Existing free features will remain available to existing accounts for at least 90 days after any paywall is announced.
  • We will not retroactively gate any issue that was previously free.
  • We will notify all registered users by email at least 30 days before any pricing change takes effect.
  • Sponsored content (if ever introduced) will always be clearly labelled as such.

5. Acceptable use

When using Parallax, please don’t:

  • Use the Service for any unlawful purpose, including harassment, defamation, doxxing, or incitement.
  • Post or submit content that is hateful, threatening, or discriminatory based on protected characteristics.
  • Submit annotations or Letters that include personal information about identifiable third parties without consent.
  • Attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems, scrape data at scale, or interfere with the Service for other users.
  • Use the AI Q&A feature to attempt to extract training data, jailbreak the model, or impersonate the publication.
  • Use the Service to send spam, malware, or unsolicited promotional content.
  • Misrepresent yourself, your identity, or your affiliation with any organisation when interacting with editors or other readers.

We reserve the right to remove user-submitted content that violates these rules, and to suspend or terminate accounts of users who breach them.

6. Your content (annotations and Letters)

When you submit an annotation on a sentence, write a Letter to the editor, or interact via the Q&A sidebar in ways that produce stored content:

  • You keep ownership. Your content remains yours.
  • You grant Parallax a license. You give us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to display, host, distribute, and edit your submitted content within the Service. The license exists only so we can show your annotation or Letter to other readers if we approve it; it terminates when you delete the content or your account.
  • You are responsible. You confirm that your content does not violate anyone else’s copyright, privacy, or other rights. You indemnify Parallax against claims arising from your content (see Section 11).
  • Editorial discretion. We may, but are not obligated to, review, edit for clarity, or decline to publish any submitted content. Most annotations are private by default; we only display the ones we promote to “reader margin notes.” Letters enter a moderation queue and are published at editorial discretion.
  • Removal. You can delete your own content at any time from your account. If your account is deleted, your private annotations are deleted; published Letters and promoted margin notes may be retained in archived form (your name will be replaced with “Anonymous” if you request it).

7. AI features — important disclaimers

Parallax uses AI to power several features, including inline “explain this term” tooltips, per-issue TL;DR summaries, and a per-issue Q&A sidebar. Please read the Service with these limitations in mind:

  • AI output is best-effort, not authoritative. The AI is grounded in each issue’s own dossier and sources, but it may still misinterpret context, oversimplify, or make mistakes. Always defer to the issue’s primary sources for anything that matters.
  • Not a substitute for professional advice. AI responses are not legal, financial, medical, or investment advice.
  • Rate limits apply. AI features are free but rate-limited per account (see in-app limits). We may further restrict access to prevent abuse.
  • No model training on your inputs. Your questions and our responses are not used to train any external AI model. They are retained in your account for your own access and deleted when your account is deleted.
  • We do not guarantee AI uptime. If the underlying AI provider is unavailable, those features may degrade or pause until restored.

8. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your account if:

  • You materially breach these Terms.
  • We are required to do so by law.
  • Continued provision of the Service to you poses a security risk to other users.

We will try to give you notice and a chance to appeal before permanent termination, except in cases of serious abuse or legal requirement.

You may terminate your account at any time by deleting it from your dashboard or emailing us. Deletion is processed within 30 days. Some data may persist briefly in encrypted backups, which expire automatically per the retention schedule in our Privacy Policy.

9. Intellectual property

Our content. All issues published on parallaxlens.com — including text, layouts, typography, illustrations, OG cover art, code, and trademarks — are owned by Parallax Lens or licensed to us. You may read, link to, quote briefly, and share issues for personal, non-commercial purposes. You may not republish entire issues, scrape the archive, or use Parallax content to train AI models without our written permission.

Sources we cite. Primary sources we link to from issues are owned by their respective publishers and used under fair-dealing principles.

Your content. Covered in Section 6.

Trademarks. “Parallax” and “Parallax Lens” are trademarks of the operator, registered in India under Classes 16 and 41.

If you believe content on Parallax infringes a copyright you hold, please email privacy@parallaxlens.com with a description of the allegedly infringing content, where it appears, and your contact information. We respond within 14 days.

10. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

  • We make no warranties, express or implied, about the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or fitness for purpose of any content, including AI-generated content.
  • We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.
  • We do not guarantee that issues, sources, or AI responses are accurate at the time you read them.
  • We disclaim all implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

You use the Service at your own discretion and risk. You are solely responsible for any decisions you make based on content you read here.

Nothing in this section limits any consumer rights you have under applicable law that cannot be excluded by contract.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

  • Parallax (and its operator, contractors, and affiliates) will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including lost profits, lost data, or business interruption — arising from your use of the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
  • Our total liability to you for any direct damages arising from your use of the Service is capped at the greater of ₹1,000 (one thousand Indian Rupees) or the total amount you have paid us in the past 12 months. Since the Service is currently free, this typically resolves to ₹1,000.

Some jurisdictions do not allow exclusion or limitation of certain damages; in those jurisdictions, the limits above apply only to the extent permitted.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Parallax Lens, its operator, contractors, and affiliates from any claim, demand, loss, or damage (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

  • Your breach of these Terms.
  • Your violation of any law or third-party right.
  • Content you submit to the Service that infringes someone else’s rights or violates the law.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as Parallax evolves. When we do:

  • We update the “Last updated” date at the top.
  • For material changes, we email registered users at least 30 days before the change takes effect.
  • Continued use of the Service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. If you don’t agree, please delete your account before the effective date.

14. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of India, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of the Service will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.

If you are a consumer based in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer-protection rules, you may also bring proceedings in your country of residence as permitted by those local laws — this provision does not deprive you of that right.

15. Miscellaneous

  • Entire agreement. These Terms (with the Privacy Policy) are the full agreement between you and Parallax about your use of the Service.
  • Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect.
  • No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
  • Assignment. You cannot transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may assign these Terms in the event of a business sale, merger, or restructuring; in that case, we will notify you and the new owner will be bound to honour these Terms.
  • No employment / agency relationship. Using the Service does not create any employment, agency, partnership, or joint-venture relationship between you and Parallax.

16. Contact

For questions about these Terms, complaints, or notices required by law:

For privacy-specific questions, see our Privacy Policy.

Change log

  • 24 May 2026 — Initial version published.
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