Privacy Policy

Who we are

playpotus.com is operated by Veronata, Inc., 2261 Market Street STE 22406, San Francisco, CA 94114 (“we”). Veronata is the data controller for the information described below.

What we collect

You can play without an account. For anonymous play we store: a random anonymous identifier kept in your browser’s localStorage (so your presidency can resume on this device), the policies you type and the game state they produce, anonymous gameplay events (e.g. “a policy was submitted”) tied to that random identifier along with coarse device context (device type, operating system, browser, screen size, language), any feedback you choose to send us, and standard server logs including IP address, which we use only for rate limiting and abuse prevention.

If you sign in with Google (optional — needed only to keep playing past the free term), we receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google, and link your game history to your account so it follows you across devices. We never see your Google password.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details; we keep a record of each purchase (amount, number of weeks, date) and each week you spend, for support and accounting.

Local voter guides

On our local voter guides (for example playpotus.com/ca/cupertino) the match quiz runs only in your browser and nothing you answer is stored. We record only that a quiz was started or finished and how many questions were answered, never which answers you chose. If you complete “Seat the Council,” we store the candidates you picked with your anonymous identifier, one pick per device, to show combined totals.

We also record how the guides are used, tied to that anonymous identifier and never to your name: which guide and candidate pages are opened, whether a page was read, which outside links and sections are tapped, shares, and the website you arrived from. We use this to see what is useful and what is not.

If you ask for a ballot cheat-sheet, we email it to you once and keep your address and the city; we email you again only if you tap the button in that email to get updates. If you ask for election results by email, we store your email address, the city you were reading, and when you confirmed. We send a confirmation link first and nothing else until you tap it. Emails are sent through Resend, which processes them on our behalf. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops all further email. We do not sell or rent the list. If you add an email address to an error report, we use it only to reply about that report.

Issue posting is currently switched off. If it is switched on, to post on an issues board you may verify that you live in the city by scanning the barcode on the back of your California driver’s license or ID card. The barcode is read on your device; the photo is never uploaded. Your device sends us the barcode’s text once; we use it only to check that the card is from California, unexpired, held by someone 18 or older, and shows an address in that city. We then keep only your ZIP code, the verification date, the card’s expiry date, and a keyed one-way code derived from the license number so one license maps to one account. We do not keep your name, date of birth, street address, license number, or any image of the card.

Issues, photos, comments, candidate replies and questionnaire answers are checked against our posting rules by an AI model (Anthropic’s Claude) before they appear; to do that we send the submitted text and photo to Anthropic, which processes it on our behalf. Published posts show a short resident code (such as R-1234), never your name. We re-encode photos on your device before upload, which removes location and camera data. Rejected photos are deleted.

Candidates may verify themselves the same way. For a candidate scan we also compare the name in the barcode with the candidate’s ballot name; the name is used only for that comparison and is not stored.

How your text is processed

The policies you type are sent to OpenAI’s API (with Anthropic’s Claude API as a backup) to generate the game’s fictional reactions, and are stored in our database (hosted on Convex) as part of your game history. Don’t type personal information about yourself or others into the game — treat the text box as public.

Share cards

If you tap Share, the resulting link contains the policy text and game results on the card. Anyone with the link can see it — share links are public by design.

What we don’t do

We don’t sell your data, run third-party advertising, or use tracking cookies. Analytics are anonymous and cookieless: first-party gameplay events plus Vercel Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and no cross-site tracking.

Data deletion

Clearing your browser’s site data removes the identifier that links your device to its game history. To request deletion of stored game data or your account, email hi@playpotus.com with your share-link or approximate play time and we’ll remove it.

Children

The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes

We’ll update this policy as the product evolves; the date above reflects the latest revision.