Terms and Conditions

1. Agreement to these terms

By creating an account on Seloa, you agree to these Terms and Conditions and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not create an account.

Seloa is operated by Direct Intent Ltd, a company incorporated in England and Wales (company number 17192725) (“we”, “us”, “Seloa”). Registered office: 66 Paul Street, London, England, EC2A 4NA. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.

2. Eligibility

You must be 18 years of age or older to use Seloa. We verify age at signup by collecting your date of birth, confirmed at account creation. If we discover that an account belongs to a person under 18, it will be permanently deleted without notice and reported to the appropriate authority where legally required.

By creating an account you confirm that you are at least 18 years old and that the information you provide at signup is accurate.

Access to the Seloa beta is by invite only. You must have a valid invite code to create an account. Invite codes are single-use, non-transferable, and may have an expiry date. Circumventing the invite system by any means is a breach of these terms.

3. Your account and username

3.1 Username

Your username is your sole public identity on Seloa. It is displayed on your profile, in matches, in messages, in Signals posts, in Signal threads, and across all other parts of the app. Your legal name never appears anywhere in the app. That is how Seloa is built.

You are responsible for choosing a username that does not impersonate another person, include another person's real name, or contain offensive, discriminatory, or harmful language.

3.2 Account security

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account. Do not share your login credentials with anyone. If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately at hello@seloa.app.

3.3 One account per person

You may hold only one Seloa account. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent a moderation sanction, ban, suspension, or behaviour score consequence is a breach of these terms and will result in permanent removal.

4. Your content

You retain ownership of content you post on Seloa, including profile photos, bio text, Signals posts, and messages. By posting content, you grant Direct Intent Ltd a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, display, and transmit that content to other users as necessary to operate the service. We do not use your content for advertising.

You are responsible for all content you post. You must not post content that:

• is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, or discriminatory;
• outs another person's gender identity, sexual orientation, or other personal information without their consent;
• depicts or facilitates harm to any person, including minors;
• contains non-consensual intimate images or any sexual content involving a real identifiable person without their verified consent;
• constitutes spam, scams, solicitation, or commercial activity without our written permission;
• infringes third-party intellectual property rights;
• impersonates another person or organisation;
• violates the Online Safety Act 2023 or any other applicable law.

5. Dating mode: app mechanics

Seloa's Dating mode operates under specific mechanics designed to encourage intentional connection. By using the app you agree to operate within these mechanics and not attempt to circumvent them.

5.1 Daily swipe cap

You have a daily limit of 30 likes and passes, resetting at midnight UTC. The cap is a deliberate product feature and cannot be bypassed.

5.2 Match lock

When you have 3 active matches, Discovery pauses and you will not appear to new potential matches. A slot frees up when you unmatch, or when a match expires. A match expires if no reply is received within 48 hours of matching. Once a conversation has started, the match does not auto-expire. Only unmatching frees the slot. This mechanic cannot be disabled.

5.3 Unmatch friction

When you unmatch another user, a 10-minute window applies before the action completes. You may override this immediately by submitting a report. Reports filed for safety reasons bypass the delay and take effect immediately.

5.4 Image permission system

You may not send unsolicited images in chat. To share an image, you must request permission. The recipient may grant or deny the request before any image is transmitted. A 24-hour cooldown applies after a declined request in any given conversation. Repeated declined requests contribute negatively to your behaviour score. Bypassing the permission system by any means is a serious breach of these terms and will result in an immediate ban.

5.5 Bidirectional identity matching

A match is only created if your preferences intersect with the other user's gender identities, and vice versa. No assumptions are made from orientation alone. This operates automatically and cannot be overridden.

5.6 Profile completeness

To appear in other users' Discovery feed, your profile must have at least two filled slots. Slots are the profile sections you complete during onboarding (bio, interests, prompt answers, and similar). You will not appear in Discovery until this minimum is met.

6. Signals (Community mode)

Signals is Seloa's community noticeboard. It allows posts across a range of intents: dates, casual connection, friends, events, questions, mutual aid, and missed connections.

6.1 Posts

Signals posts are text-only in the initial version. You set an expiry when composing (12, 24, 72, or 168 hours). Posts include a coarse location label (city or area) only. No GPS coordinates are stored.

You must not use Signals to:

• out another user or any third party;
• post explicit content in public posts;
• facilitate unsafe meetups, coercion, or harassment;
• solicit money, financial information, or off-platform payments;
• post content involving minors in any sexual or romantic context;
• post non-consensual sexual content;
• post content that violates the Online Safety Act 2023 or any applicable law.

Seloa provides a content warning field when composing a post. If your post contains material that others may find distressing, even if it does not violate these terms, you are encouraged to add a content warning before posting.

6.2 Signal threads

When another user responds to your Signal, you receive a reply request. Accepting it opens a private Signal thread visible only to you and that user.

Signal threads are entirely independent of Dating mode. Opening or accepting a Signal thread does not create a Dating match, does not affect your match count or match-lock status, and does not share your Dating profile information with the other user.

6.3 Reactions

Other users may react to your Signals posts with emoji reactions. Reactions are visible to you in your activity view.

6.4 Standing

Your ability to compose and reply in Signals is gated by your standing tier, derived from your behaviour score band. Amber-standing users have daily compose and reply caps. Red-standing users have composing and replies paused. This is a safety and community health measure.

6.5 Expiry

Posts expire at the time you set and are removed from the feed. Expired post data may be retained for a limited period for moderation and safety purposes, as described in our Privacy Policy.

7. Behaviour scoring

Seloa operates a behaviour scoring system to promote safe and genuine engagement. Your score band is visible to you as a colour indicator in Settings and affects your visibility and access to certain features. Positive behaviour improves your standing; poor conduct or upheld reports reduces it. A recovery window allows your score to improve over time through positive engagement.

8. Reporting and moderation

8.1 Reporting

You can report any user or content in Seloa at any time. Reports capture an immutable snapshot of the content at time of submission. We will not share with the reported user that you filed a report or its contents.

Valid report reasons include: harassment, hate or discrimination, outing or doxxing, underage concern, scam or solicitation, non-consensual sexual content, spam, unsafe meetup pressure.

8.2 Report abuse

Filing reports in bad faith is a breach of these terms. A pattern of dismissed reports will trigger a temporary freeze on your reporting ability: 3 dismissed reports in a 30-day period results in a 7-day freeze; 5 dismissed reports in a 30-day period results in a 30-day freeze.

8.3 Moderation actions

We may issue a warning, apply a score impact, impose a temporary suspension, or permanently ban an account following a moderation review. Serious or immediate safety risks may result in immediate suspension pending review. We will notify you of actions against your account where safe and appropriate to do so.

8.4 Bans

A permanent ban means your account is removed and you may not create a new account. Creating a new account following a ban is a further breach of these terms. Serious offences including non-consensual intimate images, content involving minors, and coordinated harassment will result in an immediate permanent ban without warning and may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

8.5 Appeals

You may appeal a moderation decision by contacting hello@seloa.app. We will review appeals where the decision was made in error or where new information is available.

9. Online Safety Act 2023

Seloa is a user-to-user service subject to the Online Safety Act 2023. We take our obligations under this Act seriously, including our duty to prevent illegal content and our specific duties relating to cyberflashing and content harmful to children.

Our image permission system, behaviour scoring, report system, and moderation architecture are all designed in part to fulfil our obligations under this Act. Users who engage in conduct constituting illegal content under the Act will be permanently removed and reported to the relevant authorities where required.

10. Founding membership

Seloa's Oxford beta launches with a founding membership model. Access to the beta is by invite only. All users who join during the Oxford beta receive founding member status, the founding badge, and early-access features. Founding membership is granted automatically when you create an account using a valid invite code. No payment is required to obtain founding member status.

If you would like to make a voluntary financial contribution to support Seloa's development, you can do so via Ko-fi (ko-fi.com/supportseloa). Contributions are entirely voluntary and do not affect your founding member status or access to features. Ko-fi payments are processed via PayPal. To request a refund on a voluntary donation, contact us at hello@seloa.app within 180 days. Ko-fi and PayPal's own terms and conditions apply to the payment transaction.

Founding membership is tied to your account, non-transferable, and does not expire.

11. Supporter tier

Seloa offers an optional Supporter subscription. Supporter status grants cosmetic and convenience features only. The core mechanics of the app are never gated behind a paid tier. Subscriptions auto-renew unless cancelled before the renewal date.

12. Prohibited conduct

In addition to content rules in sections 4 and 6, the following conduct is prohibited:

• Attempting to circumvent the daily swipe cap, match lock, image permission system, or any other product mechanic by any means.
• Reverse engineering, scraping, or extracting data from the app.
• Using automated tools, bots, or scripts to interact with any part of the app.
• Sharing your account credentials with any other person.
• Creating accounts on behalf of another person without their explicit consent.
• Coordinating with other users to manipulate the behaviour scoring system.
• Using the app to facilitate off-platform harassment of another user.

13. Intellectual property

All intellectual property in the Seloa app, including its design, mechanics, code, and brand, belongs to Direct Intent Ltd. You may not reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from any part of the app without our written permission.

You retain ownership of the content you post on Seloa. By posting content you grant us a limited licence to display it to other users as part of the service.

14. Availability and changes

We may suspend the service for maintenance, security, or legal reasons. We may update these terms at any time. We will notify you of material changes via the app and by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Where a material change requires fresh consent, we will ask you to review and accept before continuing to use the app.

15. Limitation of liability

Seloa is provided as-is. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Direct Intent Ltd is not liable for: any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from your use of the app; any content posted by other users; any interruption or failure of the service.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

16. Law enforcement

We will only disclose personal data to law enforcement in response to a valid UK court order or production order. We do not voluntarily disclose personal data. Where the law permits, we will notify affected users of any such request.

16a. Account deletion

You can delete your account at any time from the Settings screen within the app. On deletion, your personal data will be removed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Certain data may be retained for legal compliance and safety purposes as set out in the Privacy Policy. Account deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.

If you have an active Supporter subscription at the time of deletion, you should cancel it via the App Store or Google Play beforehand. We are unable to cancel app store subscriptions on your behalf.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Any dispute will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

18. Contact

• General queries: hello@seloa.app
• Privacy queries: privacy@seloa.app

Direct Intent Ltd, 66 Paul Street, London, England, EC2A 4NA. Company number: 17192725.