Terms of Service

Last updated: on deployment. Operated by Nicholas Finefter.

Plain English throughout. If you want the same rules explained less formally, read the FAQ.

1. What you are buying

A specific set of pixels, for as long as nobody outbids you on them.

You are buying the right to set the colour, image, label and link of a specific set of pixels on the board — from the moment your payment is applied until someone else buys those pixels from under you.

Every pixel carries its own price. Taking a pixel someone else holds costs more than they paid for it. That is the entire mechanic, and it applies to you exactly as it applies to everyone else, including the people who bought before you.

There is no chance element. Your payment buys a specific, deterministic outcome: those pixels, at that price, immediately. There is no prize pool, no draw, no random allocation, and no contest. You know exactly what you get before you pay, and you get it.

2. Being painted over

You keep what is left. Below a floor, the claim retires.

When another buyer purchases pixels you hold, those pixels leave your claim and join theirs. Your claim keeps its remaining pixels, its label and its link, and carries on.

A claim is retired once it can no longer function as an ad — that is, when it falls:

• below 20% of the pixels it originally bought, or
• below 16 pixels, however large it started.

When that happens the link is switched off and the pixels the claim still holds become unowned paint: they keep their colour and their price, but nobody owns them and hovering them shows nothing.

We do not notify you when your pixels are painted over. There are no emails and no alerts. The board is the only record, and a claim can be taken at any moment without warning — if it matters to you, check back.

3. Payment, refunds and chargebacks

Non-refundable, with three exceptions we apply ourselves.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see your card details.

Purchases are non-refundable. There are exactly three exceptions, and we apply all three automatically, without you having to ask:

• Your payment landed after your hold expired. We still honour it in full, at the price you were quoted, as long as every pixel in your selection is untouched and it is within 24 hours. If someone else has taken part of that area in the meantime, or the window has passed, you get a full refund instead — never a partial claim, never a price you did not agree to.
• A moderator cleared the region while your payment was in flight. The clearing stands and you get a full refund.
• We removed your claim because of our own error. Our mistake, your money back in full.

We do not refund because someone painted over you. That is the product, and you agreed to it at checkout.

If a purchase is refunded or charged back, the pixels it painted revert to their previous state — with one carve-out: pixels a third party has since bought in good faith stay with the person who paid for them. They paid the escalated price fairly, and taking their paint away to unwind someone else’s chargeback would be the greater wrong.

4. Images you upload

You keep ownership. We need a licence to display it. Some things you may never upload.

Image uploads are not currently enabled — claims are colour, label and link only. This section is here so the terms are settled before the first image is ever accepted, not written afterwards to fit what already happened.

You keep ownership of your image. By uploading it you grant Nicholas Finefter a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, re-encode, resize, composite, display and distribute it on the board and in screenshots, previews and social images of the board — for as long as your claim exists, and for a reasonable period afterwards in archival records such as the timelapse.

You confirm you have the right to grant that licence. You may not upload:

• Child sexual abuse material. Every upload is scanned, and matches are reported to NCMEC as federal law requires.
• Sexual content, gore, or content promoting violence.
• Hate speech, slurs, or symbols of hate movements.
• Content that infringes someone else’s copyright, trademark, or likeness.
• Malware, phishing, or links to either.
• Anything illegal where you are or where we are.

Every image is reviewed by a person before it appears. Until then your pixels are yours and show your chosen colour with a “pending review” marker. We keep the email address, IP address, timestamp and payment record associated with every upload.

We may remove any claim, image, label or link at our discretion, at any time, without refund.

5. Links

https only, nobody is endorsed, nothing auto-redirects.

Links must be https, and must go to a page you control or are authorised to promote. Every outbound link is marked nofollow noopener noreferrer ugc and passes through an interstitial page that shows you the real destination before you commit to going there.

We do not vet, endorse, or take responsibility for what is on the other side of anyone’s link. Advertisers buy pixels; they do not buy our opinion of them.

6. Copyright

Report it and it comes down.

Buyers set a colour and a link. They do not upload artwork here.

If you nonetheless believe something on the board infringes your copyright, email nfinefter@gmail.com and tell us what the material is and where it sits on the board — pixel coordinates are ideal. We will remove it. Repeat infringers are banned.

7. Reporting anything else

Same button, same queue.

Every claim on the board has a report button on its hover card. Reports go to a moderation queue that is reviewed daily. Urgent matters: nfinefter@gmail.com.

8. What we do not promise

No traffic claims we cannot show you the measurement for.

We make no representation about how many people will see the board, how long your claim will last, or what it is worth. Any figure we publish about traffic will be a real, measured figure, and we will say how we measured it.

The board is provided as-is. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the previous 30 days.

9. Changes

We may change these terms. Material changes will be posted here before they take effect. Continuing to buy pixels after that is acceptance.

10. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules.