Terms of Service

Last updated: May 29, 2026

Welcome to elsewhere.news ("we", "us", or "elsewhere"). These Terms are a legal agreement between you and elsewhere. Please read them carefully before you register or sign in. When you tick "I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy" on the signup page, you confirm that you have read, understood, and accepted these Terms in full.

This is the initial version of these Terms and will evolve with the product. We will mark material changes prominently at the top of this page.

1. About elsewhere

elsewhere (in Chinese, "别处发生") is a media platform that aggregates long-form journalism on China's tech and venture ecosystem, with articles, podcasts, knowledge-graph search, and AI Q&A. Content comes from independent creators and media organisations who have authorised us to publish.

elsewhere.news is operated by Elsewhere News Limited (留得旌山在科技（香港）有限公司), a company incorporated in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

2. Account and identity

2.1 Invite-only registration

elsewhere is currently invite-only. Signup requires a valid invite code; each code can be redeemed once.

2.2 One person, one account

You must register with a real, valid email address and only one account. You may not impersonate others, transfer your account to anyone else, or sell it.

2.3 Mutually exclusive roles

At the database level, elsewhere distinguishes three roles — reader, creator, superadmin — and a single email address can hold only one of them. If you want to act both as a reader and a creator, please register two accounts with different emails.

2.4 Account security

You are responsible for safeguarding your account credentials. We are not liable for losses caused by your password being compromised; if you notice any anomaly, contact us immediately so we can freeze the account.

3. What you can do

Once registered, you can:

  • Read articles and listen to podcasts on the site;
  • Use search and AI Q&A features;
  • Maintain your profile at /me (display name, handle, bio, avatar);
  • View your own consumption history at /me/context;
  • Participate in the topic community (proposing, voting, commenting — once that module ships);
  • Invite new users with invite codes and earn credits per the rules shown on-site.

4. What you may not do

While using elsewhere, you agree not to:

  • Post content that violates applicable law or generally accepted norms;
  • Post content that infringes others' copyright, trademark, privacy, reputation, or other lawful rights;
  • Post harassment, hate speech, discrimination, sexually explicit material, violence, spam, or malicious marketing;
  • Scrape the site at scale via crawlers or automation (lightweight personal use and well-behaved bots that respect robots.txt are excepted);
  • Attempt to reverse-engineer, attack, or otherwise compromise our infrastructure;
  • Use elsewhere for fraud, plagiarism laundering, false advertising, or any unlawful purpose.

Violations may lead to content removal and, depending on severity, suspension of your account.

5. AI-generated content disclaimer

The search AI overview (/search) and Q&A chat (/ask) features are generated by large language models. They may contain factual errors, omissions, or stale information. AI output should only be a starting point for your own research; final judgements and decisions must rest on sources you have independently verified. We make no express or implied warranties about the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of AI output.

6. Content ownership

6.1 Creator work

Copyright in articles and podcasts hosted on elsewhere belongs to their original creators. Personal browsing and bookmarking are fair use; you may not republish, adapt, commercialise, or copy our content at scale without permission from the original creator or elsewhere.

6.2 Your user-generated content

You retain copyright in content you post in topic discussions, comments, and similar surfaces. By posting, you grant elsewhere a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, reproduce, and quote your public content on the site and our official distribution channels, including bilingual translations and AI retrieval corpora. The licence terminates for further use once you delete that content or your account; copies that have already been distributed externally are not in scope.

7. Credits and invites

elsewhere uses a credits system to unlock parts of the product and the topic community. The applicable rules are those displayed on-site at the time. We may adjust the rules going forward but will not retroactively claw back credits you have already earned.

Credits cannot be converted into legal tender and cannot be transferred between users.

8. Service changes and discontinuation

We may adjust, add, or discontinue any feature at any time. We aim to notify you in advance of material changes via on-site announcement or email, except where urgent compliance or security action is required.

9. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to elsewhere if:

  • You breach any clause in section 4;
  • We receive a valid law-enforcement, administrative, or regulatory request;
  • Your account has been inactive for an extended period (we use 12 months as a reference) and you have not responded to our outreach.

If your account is suspended you may appeal via the email below. You may also delete your own account at any time via /me; the data handling after deletion is covered by our Privacy Policy.

10. Disclaimer

The site and its services are provided "as-is" and "as-available". To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we make no express or implied warranties regarding the accuracy of content, continuity of service, or fitness for any particular purpose.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, elsewhere and its team will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or punitive damages arising from your use of (or inability to use) the site, or from your reliance on any content on the site, including AI-generated content.

12. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.

Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms shall first be addressed by good-faith negotiation. If negotiation fails, the dispute shall be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration administered by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) under the HKIAC Administered Arbitration Rules in force when the Notice of Arbitration is submitted. The seat of arbitration shall be Hong Kong; the language of the arbitration shall be English; the tribunal shall consist of one arbitrator.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be brought to your attention via on-site notice or email. Your continued use of elsewhere after the changes take effect constitutes acceptance; if you disagree with the updated Terms, you may stop using the service and delete your account.

14. Contact

For questions about these Terms, please email info@elsewhere.news.