Terms of Service

1. Who can use Hottub

Hottub is strictly for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account or use Hottub. We confirm your age from the date of birth you provide at sign-up, and any account found to belong to someone under 18 is removed. You provide accurate information, keep your credentials secure, and are responsible for activity under your account. One account per person.

2. What Hottub is

Hottub helps people find belonging in small, host-led groups (Hottubs) and gatherings (Soaks). It is not a dating service, an anonymous chat app, or a marketplace for buying access to people. We may change features over time. Our Community Covenant, Safety rules, and Privacy Policy are part of these terms.

3. Communities and roles

Hottub creates Hottubs. A member who opens a subTub becomes its Owner; Owners appoint Hosts to run Soaks and Lifeguards to help keep rooms safe. Owners, Hosts, and Lifeguards are responsible for moderating their communities in line with our Community Covenant. Hottub may step in on safety matters at any time. If we appoint you to steward a Hottub or you host a paid Soak, any revenue share is governed by Section 7.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to harass, threaten, deceive, endanger, or exploit others; not to share others’ private information; not to spam, scrape, or circumvent safety features; and not to use Hottub for unlawful activity. We may warn, limit, suspend, or remove accounts that violate these terms or our Guidelines.

5. Consent & contact

Connection on Hottub is consent-based. There are no open direct messages; introductions happen by mutual agreement. You may decline, mute, block, or report at any time, and you may withdraw consent later. We do not require you to share contact details to participate.

6. Live & VR Soaks & recordings

Standard Soaks are live Audio sessions. When you join one, other participants may hear your voice if you unmute, see your chosen display name, and observe what you share in the room. Hottub does not currently offer live video in Soaks. Your microphone starts off, and you choose whether to turn it on. If Hottub enables live video or recording for a future Soak, we will indicate that clearly before you join. You agree not to record, screenshot, or redistribute a Soak, or another participant’s words or likeness, without their consent and the Host’s.

Some Soaks are immersive (VR) Soaks — a shared 3D room you can step into with a headset or view on screen. In a VR Soak you’re present as an avatar, voice is spatial (it sounds like it comes from where each person is), and your movement may animate your avatar for others in the room. Voice in a VR Soak runs over a peer-to-peer connection between participants rather than a central server (see our Privacy Policy). The same conduct, consent, mute, block, recording, and content rules above apply in VR, and you agree to respect others’ personal space — the room’s personal-space and mute controls are there for you to use.

VR carries its own physical risks. Headsets can cause motion discomfort, disorientation, eye strain, or, rarely, photosensitive seizures, and you can bump into people or objects while your vision is occupied. Before and during a VR Soak you agree to: follow your headset manufacturer’s safety and age guidance; clear enough physical space and use a guardian/boundary where your device offers one; take breaks; and stop immediately if you feel unwell. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you assume the risks of using VR hardware and participating in VR Soaks, and Hottub is not responsible for your headset, your physical surroundings, or injury or discomfort arising from VR use. Hottub does not guarantee that any particular headset or device is compatible.

7. Payments, payouts & taxes

Paid features — Host plans, paid Soaks, any member add-on, and business and sponsorship products — are billed through our third-party payment processor when those features are enabled. Billing is not live today and nothing is charged. The merchant of record (Hottub or our processor) is shown at checkout, and the applicable platform fees, payout terms, and refund policy are disclosed at the point of purchase.

• Subscriptions & renewals. Paid plans renew automatically each billing period until you cancel. You can cancel anytime; cancellation stops the next renewal and is not retroactive. We disclose the price and billing interval before you buy and give notice before any price change.
• Refunds. Refund terms are shown at purchase. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are generally non-refundable once a Soak or campaign has run.
• Taxes. Prices may exclude tax. You are responsible for any taxes that apply to your purchases; we collect or remit tax where we are required to.
• Earnings & payouts. If you earn money on Hottub — for example as the Host of a paid Soak or the steward of a sponsored Hottub — payouts are made through our payment processor on the terms shown when you enable earnings. Revenue splits are snapshotted at the time of each transaction so later policy changes don’t shrink an already-earned share. You are responsible for your own income taxes, and we or our processor may be required to collect tax information and issue tax forms (such as a US 1099) once reporting thresholds are met. Payouts may be held or reversed for suspected fraud or chargebacks.
• Tickets. Hottub does not sell, resell, or pool event tickets, does not act as a ticketing agent, and does not hold stored balances. Affiliate ticket links send you to the seller, who handles the sale.

8. Safety, real-world gatherings & assumption of risk

Hottub works hard to structure safety around in-person gatherings, but it cannot make them risk-free. Real-world (Local) Soaks stay disabled until our safety foundation is proven, and when enabled they carry additional requirements — for example: a Verified Host (no anonymous organizers), public venues only (never private residences), a visible host and attendee count, a minimum number of confirmed attendees, RSVP with check-in / check-out, a post-event Heat Check, and an incident-report workflow with staff escalation. These measures reduce risk; they do not eliminate it, and we do not guarantee anyone’s safety.

“Verified” means we have taken steps to confirm a Host’s identity so gatherings aren’t run by anonymous organizers. It does not mean we vet, endorse, or vouch for any person’s character, conduct, or fitness. Hottub does not conduct criminal background checks on Hosts, members, or venues, and verification is not a safety guarantee.

Hottub provides safety tools and sets rules, but it does not organize, host, supervise, attend, or control in-person gatherings, and it is not a party to them. Hosts, attendees, and venues are independent of Hottub. You alone are responsible for your safety and conduct, for deciding whom you meet and where, and for following all applicable laws, venue rules, and our safety rules. In an emergency, contact local emergency services (in the US, 911) first.

You attend or host any in-person gathering at your own risk. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you knowingly assume all risks arising from in-person gatherings — including personal injury, illness, death, emotional distress, and property damage or loss, as well as the acts or omissions of Hosts, attendees, venues, or other third parties — and you release Hottub, its staff, and its affiliates from any claims, demands, liabilities, and damages of every kind arising out of or relating to any in-person gathering. Nothing in this section waives any right or remedy that cannot be waived under applicable law.

9. Your content & data

You keep ownership of what you post. You grant Hottub a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and adapt your content as needed to operate, secure, and improve the service — for example, showing your prompt to a room, generating a recap, or backing up data. This license is sublicensable only to the service providers who help us run Hottub, and it ends when you delete the content or close your account, except that residual copies may persist for a reasonable time in backups and we may retain content where required for legal, safety, or audit reasons. If you send us feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, royalty-free license to use them without obligation to you.

We may also learn from the text you write on Hottub — such as the prompts and messages you choose to share — to improve the service and help people make better, more genuine connections. We do this in line with our principles and our Privacy Policy: we don’t use it to rank, score, or profile people, and where we offer choices about this use you’ll find them in your settings or our Privacy Policy.

We do not sell your personal data or your content — not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. We don’t share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Sponsorship on Hottub works by attaching a brand to a Hottub or a Soak (see Section 7) — never by selling or handing over your information. How we handle personal data, including your privacy rights, is described in our Privacy Policy.

Hottub Auth (authenticator) data. Two-factor (TOTP) codes you store in Hottub Auth are encrypted on your device, and any cloud backup is zero-knowledge — sealed with a passphrase only you hold, which Hottub never receives and therefore cannot reset, read, or recover. We take commercially reasonable measures to keep your stored authenticator data durable and redundant — including encrypted backups with version history, integrity verification on restore, and automated point-in-time database backups — so that a failure on Hottub’s side does not cause loss of your backed-up data. You remain responsible for safeguarding your backup passphrase and for keeping at least one independent copy of your codes (an active device or an encrypted export). Because the backup is zero-knowledge, if you lose your passphrase the cloud backup cannot be recovered by anyone, including Hottub. Except as expressly stated here, Hottub Auth and all stored data are provided subject to Section 14 (Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability & Indemnification), and nothing in this paragraph is a guarantee against all possible data loss.

10. Hottub Email

Hottub Email gives verified members a personal @hottub.surf email address, read and sent inside the Hottub Harmonic browser. One address per account. Your address is part of your Hottub account: it is not transferable, and when your account is deleted the address is permanently retired and never reissued. How email content is stored, processed automatically, and deleted is described in our Privacy Policy.

• Acceptable use. The rules in Section 4 apply to your @hottub.surf address. Do not send spam or bulk unsolicited mail, do not impersonate any person or organization, and do not send unlawful content. Sending limits apply, and Hottub may quarantine or refuse mail — inbound or outbound — that abuses the service or puts other people at risk.
• Mailbox & availability. Each mailbox includes 250 MB of storage. Hottub Email is part of the service and may change over time (Section 2); outbound sending may not be enabled for every account yet, and we do not guarantee delivery to or from outside email systems. Like the rest of the service, Hottub Email is provided subject to Section 14 (Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability & Indemnification).
• AI actor addresses. A member’s governed AI actor may hold its own @hottub.surf address. By default, an actor’s outgoing email requires the owner’s explicit approval before it sends, and the owner is responsible for their actor’s mail as if it were their own.

11. Copyright & the DMCA

We respect intellectual-property rights and expect you to do the same. If you believe content on Hottub infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at [email protected] that includes: identification of the work; identification of the infringing material and where it appears on Hottub; your contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn’t authorized; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We remove infringing material and, in appropriate cases, terminate repeat infringers. If you believe your content was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice.

12. Law-enforcement requests & reporting

We may access, preserve, and disclose information when we believe in good faith it is necessary to comply with the law or legal process, to enforce these terms, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person. We cooperate with valid legal requests and report illegal content as required by law — including mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse material to the appropriate authorities, notwithstanding our adults-only policy.

13. Suspension & termination

You may close your account anytime. We may suspend or terminate accounts for violations or to protect the community. We design for social repair — limits are recoverable where appropriate, not permanent shame — but serious safety violations may result in a permanent ban.

When an account ends, your access stops and your subTubs may be closed or, where appropriate, transferred so members aren’t stranded. We may retain or delete your content as described in Section 9 and our Privacy Policy. Any earnings already accrued and payable to you remain payable, subject to our payout terms and any holds for fraud or chargebacks.

14. Disclaimers, limitation of liability & indemnification

Hottub is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, and we are not responsible for the conduct of other users — in Audio, VR, or in person — or for the outcomes of any gathering.

To the fullest extent permitted by law: (a) Hottub and its staff and affiliates will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any personal injury, death, or property damage arising from in-person gatherings; and (b) our total liability for any claim relating to the service will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid Hottub in the twelve months before the claim or US $100.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Hottub, its staff, and its affiliates from claims, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the service, your participation in or hosting of any gathering, or your violation of these terms or the rights of others.

Some places do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so parts of the above may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law (such as for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud), or rights that cannot be waived.

15. Dispute resolution, arbitration & governing law

Please contact us first — most concerns are resolved informally, and we ask you to give us at least 30 days to make things right before starting a formal proceeding. Send your concern, and how you’d like it resolved, to [email protected]. These terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or to Hottub, are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware and, as to arbitration, by the Federal Arbitration Act, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. For any dispute not subject to arbitration below, or to enforce an arbitration award, the state and federal courts located in Delaware have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and Hottub consent to venue there.

PLEASE READ — THIS SECTION AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS. It requires most disputes to be resolved by binding individual arbitration instead of in court, waives your right to a jury trial, and waives your right to take part in a class action. You can opt out within 30 days (see below).

Agreement to arbitrate. If we can’t resolve a dispute informally, you and Hottub agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these terms or to Hottub — except those carved out below — will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court. The arbitrator decides all issues, except that a court decides whether the class-action waiver below is enforceable. Arbitration uses a neutral arbitrator, is less formal than a lawsuit, and allows the same individual remedies a court could award.

Class-action & jury-trial waiver. Disputes will be brought only in your or our individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims or preside over any form of a class proceeding. You and Hottub each waive the right to a jury trial.

Carve-outs. Either of us may still (1) bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, and (2) ask a court for injunctive or other equitable relief to stop actual or threatened infringement or misuse of intellectual property or confidential information. Nothing here stops you from reporting a concern to a government agency.

How to opt out. You can decline this arbitration agreement by emailing [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting these terms (or of this section being added to them), stating your name and the email on your account. Opting out affects only this Section 15; it won’t affect your account or any other part of these terms.

Process & costs. Arbitration will take place in Delaware or, at your election, by phone or video or on written submissions where the AAA rules allow. The AAA rules govern fees; where those rules or applicable law require, Hottub will pay arbitration costs. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Severability. If the class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or remedy, that claim or remedy (and only that one) will proceed in the courts identified above while the rest of this section still applies. If the entire arbitration agreement is found unenforceable, the parties’ disputes will be resolved by those courts.

16. Affiliate links

Some product or booking links on Hottub are affiliate links: if you click one and make a qualifying purchase, Hottub may earn a commission from the merchant at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, Hottub earns from qualifying purchases. Affiliate links are always labeled where they appear (for example, “Affiliate link”), they never affect how organic results are ranked, and they are never presented as Hottub’s endorsement unless we say so explicitly.

17. Changes

We may update these terms; we’ll note the date above and, for material changes, give notice. Continued use after changes means you accept the updated terms.

18. Accessibility

Hottub aims to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA across the service. Our Accessibility Statement describes what we test, the gaps we know about, and how to reach us if something gets in your way.

19. General terms

• Entire agreement. These terms, together with the Community Covenant, Safety rules, and Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Hottub about the service and replace any prior understanding on that subject.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect, and the unenforceable part is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a provision, that isn’t a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these terms or your account without our consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Notices & electronic communications. You agree we may give you notices and provide agreements, disclosures, and other communications electronically — by email, or by posting in the app or on our site — and that these satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing. We’ll send legal notices to the email on your account; please keep it current. You can reach us at [email protected].
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond reasonable control (for example, outages, natural disasters, or acts of government).
• Export & sanctions. You may not use Hottub if you’re barred under applicable export-control or sanctions laws, and you agree to comply with them.
• Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive — including Payments (earnings owed), Assumption of Risk, Content & Data, Disclaimers/Limitation of Liability/Indemnification, Dispute Resolution, and these General terms — survive termination of your account.
• Interpretation. Headings are for convenience only; “including” means “including without limitation.”

Questions? Contact [email protected].