What we collect, what we don't.

When you submit a story through our submission form, we save:

• Your role, industry, years of experience, and optional region
• The before/now/advice text you write
• Optional details about the type of change and AI tools involved
• Your display name preference (anonymous, pseudonym, or first name)
• Your email address, only if you choose to provide one
• The browser user agent string at submission time, used to detect spam

We do not ask for your name, employer, address, IP address, location, or any other identifying detail beyond what you voluntarily include.

If you sign up for the weekly digest, we save your email address and the date you subscribed. Nothing else.

When you click a reaction button (Seen, Hopeful, Concerned, Curious) on a story, your browser generates an anonymous random ID and stores it locally. We use that ID to remember your reactions across visits and to count reactions per story. The ID is not linked to your identity in any way and never leaves your browser except to record the reaction itself.

Our hosting providers keep technical logs that may include IP addresses, browser types, and request times for security and abuse prevention. We don't analyze these logs ourselves, and they're retained according to our providers' policies — typically 30 days. We can't promise these logs don't exist, only that we don't use them.

We are deliberate about absence. PlotGround does not use:

• Cookies for tracking. There are no third-party trackers, ad networks, or analytics scripts beyond a privacy-respecting analytics tool that doesn't use cookies and doesn't fingerprint visitors.
• Reader accounts. You don't sign in to read stories. There's nothing to sign into.
• Email harvesting. If you submit a story without providing an email, we have no way to contact you.
• Cross-site tracking. We do not embed pixels or scripts that report your visit to other companies.
• Behavioral profiling. We don't build profiles of who reads what, how long, or what they react to.

We use the data you provide to:

• Read, review, and edit your submission for clarity (we never change meaning without asking)
• Publish approved stories to plotground.com
• Email you (if you provided an address) to clarify questions, notify you when your story publishes, or — only if you opt in — send the weekly digest
• Detect and remove spam or abusive submissions

We do not use submission data for advertising, profiling, training AI models, or any commercial purpose beyond running this archive.

PlotGround uses third-party services for website hosting, database storage, and email forwarding. These providers process data only as necessary to operate the site, and have their own privacy policies and security practices. They do not have permission to use the data for their own purposes. The current list of providers is available on request from hello@plotground.com.

We do not sell, rent, license, or otherwise share any data with advertisers, data brokers, AI training companies, or third parties beyond what's required to operate the site. We have no incentive or interest in doing so — PlotGround is not a commercial enterprise.

If law enforcement compels disclosure with a valid legal order, we would comply, but we'd push back on overly broad requests, and we'd notify you directly when we can — unless legally barred from doing so.

You can, at any time:

• Request to see your data. Email us with the email address you used and we'll send you a copy.
• Request edits. If your published story needs changes — even a year later — we'll edit it within a week of your request.
• Request deletion. If you want your story removed from PlotGround, we'll take it down. Search engines may take longer to drop their cache; we can't control that.
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter. Every email has a one-click link.

To exercise any of these rights, email hello@plotground.com. We respond within seven days, usually sooner.

If we change how we collect or use data, we'll update this page and update the date at the top. For material changes, we'll also notify newsletter subscribers via email and post a note at the top of the homepage for at least two weeks.

We will never change this policy to expand data collection without affirmative consent from you for any data already submitted.