’bout

Terms of service

Effective November 5, 2026

’bout is live chat for live TV and sports, made by bout llc, a Texas company (“we,” “us”). These terms are the deal between you and us when you use bout.chat, the ’bout web app at app.bout.chat, and the ’bout apps when they come (together, “’bout”). By making an account or using ’bout, you agree to them, and to the community guidelines, which are part of these terms. The privacy policy says what we collect and why.

We’ve written these in plain words on purpose. If a court ever has to read them, we mean what they plainly say.

• Who can use ’bout
• Your account
• Early access
• Your messages
• The rules, and what happens
• Teens
• What’s ours, and what isn’t
• Copyright complaints
• Leaving
• What we promise, and don’t
• Disagreements
• Changes and contact

Who can use ’bout

• You must be 13 or older. Setup asks your birth year to check, and an account that turns out to belong to someone under 13 is deleted.
• You must tell the truth about your age. Accounts for people 13 to 17 run under the teen rules below, which we can only apply if we know.
• You need an account, in your own name or a username of your choosing, and one account per person. There is no anonymous chat.
• You can’t use ’bout if we’ve banned you, or if the law where you are doesn’t allow it.

Your account

• You sign in with your email address or with Google. Keep that sign-in to yourself: what happens on your account is on you, and let us know at hello@bout.chat if you think someone else has it.
• Your username is 3 to 20 characters of letters, numbers and underscores, and everyone in a room sees it next to your messages. Don’t pick one that pretends to be someone else, ’bout staff included, or that breaks the guidelines. You can change it once every 30 days. A username you give up is kept out of use for a year, so nobody can take it over and look like you.
• We may change or take back a username that breaks these terms, or that we need to, and we’ll tell you if we do.

Early access

’bout is in early access. Things will break, change and disappear while we build it, sometimes without warning: rooms may go down mid-game, features may be reworked, and we may close sign-up or pause the whole thing when we need to. We’ll do our best to say so in the app, and we read every piece of feedback, but early access means no promises about what works tomorrow.

Your messages

• They’re yours. You own what you write. By posting it in ’bout you give us permission to show it to everyone in the room, hold it until each viewer’s screen catches up, keep it for chat replay, run it through our moderation checks, and copy it where a report or a moderator needs to see it. That permission covers nothing else: we don’t sell your messages, put them in ads or use them to train AI models.
• They’re public. Every message you send is seen by everyone in that room, and by anyone who replays that room’s chat later. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t say out loud in the stands.
• They’re kept for a year from when each was sent, so people can replay a game or a season later. Then they’re deleted. Deleting your account takes your messages out of replays from then on; they’re deleted at the year mark like everyone else’s.
• You’re responsible for them. Post only what you have the right to post. Don’t post other people’s private information, anything that breaks the law, or anything the guidelines rule out.

The rules, and what happens

The community guidelines say what’s welcome in a room (trash talk) and what isn’t (hate, threats, sexual content, spoilers from outside the broadcast, spam, and reaching out to minors, among other things). They’re part of these terms. When they’re broken:

• Messages that fail our checks are refused before the room sees them, and a message that gets through can be removed by a moderator.
• A moderator can remove you from a room for 5, 15 or 60 minutes, or for the rest of the event. The rest of ’bout keeps working for you.
• We can ban your account for 1 day, 7 days, 30 days or permanently, with a reason. A banned account can still sign in and delete itself, but can’t chat anywhere. Sexual content involving a minor, or trying to reach a minor, means a permanent ban and a report to the authorities.
• The room also slows down anyone who sends too fast, refuses repeats, and turns on slow mode when it’s busy. Those limits are part of the rules, and getting around them, with more accounts or otherwise, isn’t allowed.

Moderation is a judgment call made quickly during a live game, by people and by software, and it will sometimes be wrong. The guidelines say how to appeal; we read every one and reverse what was a mistake. We may also keep moderation records (reports, removed messages and bans) after your account is gone, to keep ’bout safe.

Teens

Accounts for people 13 to 17 work under extra rules, which we’ll keep adding to: no private messaging for anyone under 18, ever; events marked 18+ never appear for them; messages flagged for harassment, violence, self-harm or illegal activity are kept from them; and contact details aren’t accepted from a teen or shown to one. Teens can’t be searched for or suggested to anyone. If you’re an adult, don’t try to get around any of this. The rules lift on their own the month after the account’s 18th birthday. The privacy policy says what that means for a teen’s information.

What’s ours, and what isn’t

• ’bout, its name, its design and its code are ours. You may use ’bout as it’s offered; you may not copy it, scrape it, resell it, break into it, interfere with the rooms or the sync, or use automated accounts without our written okay.
• ’bout is not affiliated with any league, team, network, streaming service, studio or show. We don’t carry games or shows: you watch them wherever you already do, and ’bout is the chat beside your screen. Team names, show names and logos belong to their owners. Our schedules come from TVmaze, CollegeFootballData, CollegeBasketballData and balldontlie, and aren’t official league data.
• Anything you send us about ’bout itself (feedback, ideas, bug reports) we can use freely to make ’bout better, with our thanks and no obligation.

Copyright complaints

’bout chat is text only, so there’s little room for someone else’s work to show up in it, but if you believe something in ’bout infringes your copyright, email hello@bout.chat with the work, where in ’bout you saw it, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t allowed, and a statement under penalty of perjury that you’re the owner or acting for them. We’ll take it down while we look, and we may close the accounts of repeat infringers. We’ll list our registered copyright agent here once the registration is filed.

Leaving

• You can delete your account any time from the account panel in the app. It deletes your account and everything tied to it, as the privacy policy describes, and signs you out everywhere. It can’t be undone.
• We can suspend or close your account if you break these terms or the guidelines, if the law requires it, or if we stop offering ’bout. For anything short of serious abuse or a legal requirement, we’ll tell you why.
• The parts of these terms that by their nature should last (what you’ve given us permission to do with messages already posted, the promises and limits below, and the disputes section) last after your account is gone.

What we promise, and don’t

We promise to run ’bout honestly, to tell you what we collect and why, to keep chat spoiler-safe to the best of our ability, and to read what you send us.

We can’t promise ’bout will always be up, always be right about your delay, or always be free of things other people post. ’bout is provided as is, with no warranties of any kind beyond what the law won’t let us disclaim. We aren’t responsible for what other people say in a room, for a spoiler that got through, for a game or show you watched somewhere else, or for losses that follow from using ’bout or being unable to. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything connected with ’bout is limited to $100 or the amount you’ve paid us in the past year, whichever is more; today you’ve paid us nothing, because ’bout is free. Some places don’t allow some of these limits, and there they apply only as far as the law permits.

If someone brings a claim against us because of something you posted or did in ’bout in breach of these terms, you’ll cover the costs that causes us.

Disagreements

If you have a problem with ’bout, tell us first at hello@bout.chat; most things are fixed with an email. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas and of the United States. Anything that can’t be settled by talking goes to the state or federal courts in Texas, and you and we each agree to those courts, with each side free to bring an eligible claim in small claims court where they live instead. There is no arbitration clause here, and no class-action waiver.

Changes and contact

When we change these terms, we’ll update the effective date above. For significant changes, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before they take effect, and using ’bout after that means you agree to the new terms. If we change what we collect, that goes in the privacy policy the same way. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

Questions: hello@bout.chat. bout llc, Texas, United States.

See also the community guidelines and the privacy policy.