Terms of Service

Vaal News and Culture is a community video news platform for the Vaal Triangle, operated by [COMPANY NAME] (Pty) Ltd, registration number [COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER], of [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. You can reach us at [CONTACT EMAIL].

These Terms of Service are the agreement between you and us. They apply whenever you use the site or app, whether you are reading, commenting or publishing. If you do not accept them, please do not use the service. These details are also given to meet section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002.

• Anyone may read the site without an account.
• You must be at least 13 to hold an account, and if you are under 18 you need your parent or guardian's permission.
• You must be at least 18 to hold a creator account and publish stories or video.
• You may not use the service if we have previously suspended or terminated your account.

• Give us accurate details when you register, and keep them up to date.
• One person, one account. Do not share your password or let someone else use your account.
• You are responsible for everything done through your account. Tell us immediately at [CONTACT EMAIL] if you think someone else has access.
• Creator status is applied for and granted by our editorial desk. We may withdraw it.
• You may close your account at any time in Settings.

This is the most important clause in this agreement. Read it before you upload anything.

You keep ownership. You retain all copyright and other intellectual property rights in the stories, articles, video, audio, images, thumbnails and captions you upload. We do not take ownership of your work.

What you grant us. By submitting content, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, sub-licensable licence, for as long as the content remains published, to:

• store, host and back up your content;
• display, stream and distribute it on Vaal News and Culture, including in the feed, in Explore, on town pages and in newsletters;
• edit it for length, clarity, accuracy, legal risk and house style, including sub-editing your written text;
• TRIM YOUR VIDEO INTO A SHORT TEASER CLIP — cutting a section of up to 55 seconds out of your full video, re-encoding it, changing its aspect ratio (including to a vertical 9:16 crop or pad), adding a cover frame and adding a caption;
• REPUBLISH that teaser clip, a still image from it, your summary and a link to the full story on our own associated social media accounts, specifically Facebook Page, Instagram (Reels or feed video), TikTok and YouTube Shorts; and
• use your name, creator handle and profile picture to credit you wherever your content appears.

Be clear on what this means in practice: a video you upload may be cut down into a short clip you did not cut yourself, and posted to TikTok and YouTube Shorts, to Facebook and to Instagram, under our accounts, with your name attached. On Facebook and YouTube we add a clickable link back to your full story on our site. On Instagram and TikTok, where captions are not clickable, we put the link in the first comment or in our bio. If you are not comfortable with this, do not upload.

Attribution. We will credit you by name or creator handle wherever we publish your content, including in the social captions, and we credit accepted collaborators on a story too.

What happens when you delete. If you delete your content or close your account, the licence ends for future use: we stop publishing it on our site, we remove it from our feeds, and we will not create new teaser clips or new social posts from it. Three things survive: (a) copies in our routine backups until those backups expire; (b) copies we must keep for legal, regulatory, audit or dispute purposes; and (c) anything already posted to a social platform. For (c) we will attempt to delete the social post where we still hold a valid connection, and we will tell you the result, but we cannot guarantee removal and we cannot recover copies other people have downloaded or re-shared. Please treat a social post as permanent.

You may withdraw the social-republishing part of the licence for future posts by writing to us at [CONTACT EMAIL]. That does not undo posts already made.

Every time you upload, you promise that:

• the content is your own original work, or you hold all the rights and permissions needed to upload it and to grant us the licence in clause 4, including rights in any music, footage, images or fonts you used;
• every identifiable person you filmed, photographed or recorded has given you their consent to be filmed and published, and where a child is identifiable you have the written consent of a parent or guardian;
• nothing in it is defamatory, and where it makes a factual allegation about a person you have a reasonable basis for it and, where fairness requires, you sought their comment;
• it does not breach anyone's privacy, dignity or intellectual property rights, or any court order;
• it complies with South African law, including POPIA, the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996 and the Equality Act 4 of 2000; and
• it is accurate to the best of your knowledge and you have told us about any payment, sponsorship or conflict of interest connected to it.

You accept that you, not us, are the author and first publisher of your content, and that these promises are ones we rely on when we publish and when we republish to social media.

You may not upload, post or share:

• hate speech, or advocacy of hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, sex, religion, sexual orientation, disability or nationality, as prohibited by section 16(2) of the Constitution and the Equality Act;
• incitement to violence, or anything that encourages harm to a person or property;
• harassment, bullying, threats, doxxing or the sharing of someone's personal information without permission;
• misinformation presented as news, fabricated quotes, manipulated or AI-generated footage passed off as real, or a story you know to be false;
• material that infringes anyone's copyright, trade mark or other rights;
• child sexual abuse material, or any sexual content involving a minor, which we report to the authorities without notice;
• pornography, gratuitous gore, or graphic footage of a death or injury published without editorial justification and a warning;
• content that identifies a child who is a victim, witness or accused in a criminal matter, or that breaches a court order or the sub judice rule;
• spam, scams, malware, or automated scraping of the service; or
• anything else that breaches South African law.

We are a publisher with an editorial desk. We may review, edit, add context to, hold, decline, unpublish, remove or restore any submission or comment, at our discretion, with or without prior notice.

How moderation actually works here:

• A creator submits a story. It enters the editorial queue and is not public yet.
• An editor reviews it against these terms and our editorial standards, and may send it back with notes, edit it, approve and publish it, or decline it.
• Every decision is written to an audit trail with the editor's name and the time, and you are notified of the outcome.
• Readers can report a published story or a comment. Reports go to the same desk and are actioned by an editor.
• An editor cannot approve their own story. Another editor must review it.

Appeals. If your story is declined, unpublished or removed, or your account is suspended, you may appeal by replying to the notification or emailing [CONTACT EMAIL] within 30 days. State why you think the decision was wrong. A different editor or an administrator reviews the appeal and we respond within 14 days with reasons. Their decision is final within the service, which does not affect any legal rights you have.

If you believe something on Vaal News and Culture infringes your copyright, send a takedown notification to our designated agent: the Editorial Desk, [COMPANY NAME] (Pty) Ltd, [REGISTERED ADDRESS], email [CONTACT EMAIL], with "Copyright complaint" in the subject line.

Your notification should comply with section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 and include: your full names and address; your written or electronic signature; the exact URL of the material; a description of the right you hold and how it is infringed; the remedial action you want; your contact details; a statement that you are acting in good faith; and a statement that the information is true and correct to the best of your knowledge.

We will acknowledge your notice, assess it promptly, and remove or disable access to the material where the complaint is valid. We will tell the creator, who may submit a counter-notification. Knowingly making a false claim carries liability for damages under section 77(2).

• Argue with the story, not the person. No insults, slurs or pile-ons.
• No hate speech, threats or harassment. This is not negotiable.
• Do not post someone's address, phone number, ID number or workplace.
• Do not spread rumours as fact. If you are unsure, say so.
• Keep it relevant to the Vaal and to the story.
• No advertising or spam without our permission.
• Disclose it if you are commenting on behalf of a company, a political party or a candidate.

We remove comments that break these guidelines, and we may close comments on a story.

We may warn you, limit your account, withdraw creator status, suspend you or close your account if you break these terms, if you expose us to legal risk, or if we are required to by law. For a first, minor breach we will normally warn you first. For a serious breach, such as hate speech or abuse material, we act immediately.

You may close your account at any time. Clauses 4 (what survives deletion), 5, 8, 11, 12, 13 and 15 continue to apply after your account closes.

The service is provided "as is". We do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that every upload will succeed, and we do not promise any level of audience, reach or revenue.

Views expressed in stories, comments and community posts are those of their authors and not necessarily ours. We do not endorse content posted by members and we are not responsible for third-party websites or platforms we link to.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any right you have that cannot be excluded under South African law, including your rights under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 where it applies to you.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or loss arising from content posted by another member, from a social platform's handling of a post, or from an upload that failed.

Where we are liable, our total liability to you for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the amounts you paid us in that period, or R5,000.

This clause does not limit liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

You indemnify us against any claim, loss, damage, fine or reasonable legal cost we suffer because of content you uploaded, because of a promise in clause 5 that turns out not to be true, or because you used the service in breach of these terms or of the law. We will tell you promptly of any such claim and you may participate in the defence.

We may change these terms. For a material change we will give you at least 14 days notice in the app or by email before it takes effect, and we will ask you to accept the new version. If you do not accept it, you may close your account. The "Last updated" date above shows the current version, and we record which version each member accepted.

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa.

If we have a dispute, please write to us first at [CONTACT EMAIL] so we can try to resolve it informally within 30 days. If that fails, the dispute may be referred to mediation, and failing that to arbitration under the rules of the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa, seated in Gauteng and conducted in English. Nothing stops either of us from approaching a court for urgent relief, and you may bring a claim in the Magistrates' Court or, where applicable, to the National Consumer Commission, the Press Council of South Africa or the Information Regulator.

If a clause of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. Our failure to enforce a clause is not a waiver of it.

[COMPANY NAME] (Pty) Ltd, registration number [COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER], [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Email [CONTACT EMAIL].