Terms of Service

The Service is intended for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use any part of the Service, including chat rooms, private messaging, photo uploads, and the After Dark room. We ask for your date of birth at signup to verify this, and some areas (like After Dark) may require additional confirmation that you are 18 or older. You represent that all information you provide, including your birth date, is accurate.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will terminate that account and remove associated content as quickly as we reasonably can.

You can browse public rooms without an account, but creating one lets you save a nickname, earn and spend credits, post announcements, and use private messaging and photos. You’re responsible for keeping your login credentials (your email-based sign-in code, or a password if you set one) confidential, and for everything that happens under your account. Tell us right away if you believe your account has been compromised.

You may not create an account on behalf of someone else, impersonate another person, or maintain more than one account to evade a suspension or ban.

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Post, send, or upload content involving anyone under 18, in any context. We have zero tolerance for this and will report it to the relevant authorities, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), where applicable.
• Harass, threaten, stalk, or deliberately embarrass another person, including through repeated unwanted contact after being asked to stop.
• Post hate speech, or content that demeans people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or similar characteristics.
• Impersonate another person or organization, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.
• Solicit or advertise commercial escort services, or otherwise use the Service to facilitate transactions our team reasonably believes are for prostitution or trafficking.
• Share someone else’s private photos, messages, or personal information without their consent.
• Upload viruses, malware, or attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or gain unauthorized access to the Service or other users’ accounts.
• Scrape, crawl, or use automated tools to collect data from the Service, or use the Service to send spam, chain messages, or unsolicited advertising outside the announcements system.
• Violate any applicable law, including obscenity, harassment, and consumer-protection laws in your jurisdiction.

Public chat rooms and announcements are also filtered for certain flagged phrases and reviewed by our moderation team; the After Dark room is separated from other rooms specifically because it allows more sexually explicit conversation between consenting adults — the rules above still apply there in full.

You keep ownership of the messages, photos, and announcements you post (“your content”). By posting it, you grant TheGay.Chat a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, transmit, display, and reproduce your content solely to operate and improve the Service — for example, showing your profile photo to other users in a chat room, or your announcement to people browsing a zone.

Profile photos, private gallery photos, and announcement images go through a review queue before they become visible to others. We may also act on user reports and an automated word filter. We can remove any content, and suspend or terminate any account, that we reasonably believe violates these Terms, without prior notice.

Public chat messages are kept for 24 hours and private messages for 7 days before they’re automatically deleted from our active systems (see our Privacy Policy for details); we don’t promise to preserve, back up, or return your content after that.

Announcements are short local posts you or businesses can create, subject to the same content rules as the rest of the Service and to admin approval before they go live. We may reject an announcement for any reason, including but not limited to unclear or unrelated images, prohibited content, or being posted to the wrong room. If we reject an announcement that was paid for with credits (not your free daily slot), those credits are refunded to your account automatically.

Credits are a virtual currency used only within the Service — for example, to run a longer announcement or generate an AI-styled avatar. Credits have no cash value, can’t be transferred between accounts, redeemed for money, or used outside the Service, and may expire or be adjusted if your account is closed or terminated for a Terms violation.

Credit purchases are processed by Stripe; we don’t store your full card number. Purchases are generally final and non-refundable once credits are added to your account, except where required by law or at our discretion. Prices and credit costs shown in the app may change at any time; a change won’t affect credits you already hold.

We also give every account limited free credits for time spent active in a chat room, capped per day and per week as shown in the app; these limits may change.

The Service, including its design, graphics, and underlying software (but not your content), is owned by TheGay.Chat or its licensors and protected by intellectual-property laws. You may not copy, modify, or create derivative works of the Service itself outside of normal, permitted use.

We respect intellectual property rights and respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512). If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated agent that includes:

• A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or someone authorized to act on their behalf;
• Identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed;
• Identification of the material you claim is infringing and where it’s located on the Service;
• Your name, address, phone number, and email address;
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information is accurate and that you’re authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

Send notices to our registered DMCA agent: Fox Creative Boutique, email hello@thegay.chat (U.S. Copyright Office Designated Agent Registration No. DMCA-1076290).

If we receive a valid notice, we’ll remove or disable access to the reported content and notify the user who posted it. That user may submit a counter-notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) if they believe the content was removed by mistake or misidentification; if they do, we may restore the content unless the original complainant files a court action within the time required by law. We may terminate, at our discretion, the accounts of users who are repeat infringers.

Parts of the Service rely on third parties — for example, Stripe for payments, and an AI image service for the optional Roman-avatar feature (which sends your uploaded photo to that provider to generate the edited image). We aren’t responsible for those providers’ own acts, availability, or policies; your use of features backed by a third party may also be subject to that provider’s terms.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that content posted by other users is accurate or safe. You interact with other users, and arrange to meet them, entirely at your own risk — we don’t run background checks on users and can’t guarantee anyone’s identity, age, or intentions beyond the verification steps described in these Terms.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, TheGay.Chat and its owners, employees, and contractors won’t be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the Service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or $100 USD.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless TheGay.Chat and its owners, employees, and contractors from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your content, your use of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or applicable law.

We may suspend or terminate your account, with or without notice, for violating these Terms, at our discretion, or to comply with a legal requirement. You can stop using the Service and ask us to close your account at any time. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (like Sections 6, 10, 11, and 12) will continue to apply.

TheGay.Chat is operated by Fox Creative Boutique, based in Paterson, New Jersey. These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Informal resolution first. Before filing any claim against us, you agree to contact us at hello@thegay.chat and give us at least 30 days to try to resolve the dispute informally.

Binding arbitration. If we can’t resolve a dispute informally, you and TheGay.Chat agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration under the rules of the American Arbitration Association, rather than in court — except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to stop unauthorized use or infringement of intellectual property.

Class action waiver. Any arbitration or proceeding will be conducted only on an individual basis and not as a class, consolidated, or representative action, and neither party may participate in a class action against the other. If this class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular dispute, that dispute (and only that dispute) will instead be resolved in the courts located in New Jersey, to whose jurisdiction you consent.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we’ll update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, post a notice in the app. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

Questions about these Terms? Email us at hello@thegay.chat.