Version: October 2, 2026. [OWNER TO CONFIRM: lawyer review and effective date]
In danger, or thinking about suicide or hurting someone? Call or text 988 (24/7) or call 911. Do not wait for a reply in this app.
Draft. Words in [square brackets] are decisions the SidexSide owner still has to make. This page is not legal advice.
1. What SidexSide is
SidexSide is a peer-support community for people coming home from incarceration. It is a non-commercial project run by [OWNER TO CONFIRM: legal name of the organization or the co-creators] (“SidexSide”, “we”, “us”). It is free. There are no ads.
SidexSide is not a crisis service, an emergency service, or a medical, mental-health, legal or counseling provider. The people here are peers with lived experience, not trained professionals. We don’t watch conversations as they happen. We can’t send help to you or anyone else.
2. Who can join
You must be 18 or older. [OWNER TO CONFIRM: minimum age, after lawyer review]
A co-creator lets each person in. Until then you can use your own journal and plan, but you can’t see or reach anyone.
An invite code from someone who knows you helps. A co-creator’s own code lets you in right away.
One account per person. It must be your own.
3. Parole, probation and supervised release
SidexSide is not connected to parole, probation, courts, police or immigration. We don’t work for them or report to them.
Your conditions may limit who you can be in contact with, including other people with a record. Some cover phones and the internet. Only your officer or your paperwork can tell you what applies to you. We can’t check this for you. If you are not sure, ask your officer or a lawyer before you connect with people here. Following your conditions is your responsibility.
Your own copy. You can download your data in You > Settings.
5. Case teams (Steady Ground)
You can choose to share a few answers with a case manager or reentry coordinator: housing, work, income, how often you check in, and how your plan is going. Nothing else. Not your name, messages, mood, journal, posts, or whether you use the app.
Sharing is always your choice. It is off until you turn it on. Turning it off removes their access right away. You don’t have to tell them.
A case team gets nothing more from us. We don’t answer case teams’ questions about members.
Every case team signs an agreement first. Sharing can’t be a condition of services, housing or a program. They won’t pressure you. They won’t ask you to open the app in front of them, hand over your phone, or tell them your password.
If a case worker pressures you, stop sharing and tell a co-creator. A case worker who breaks the agreement loses access.
6. How to treat people here
You agree not to:
threaten, harass, stalk or scare anyone, or share anyone’s private information (address, phone number, case number, record, or who they are) without their permission;
sell or arrange drugs, weapons, or anything illegal, or ask anyone to break the conditions of their release;
use anyone for money, sex or work, or contact anyone for sex;
attack anyone for their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or record;
pretend to be someone else, including a co-creator, a case worker or an officer;
scam anyone, or ask for money, passwords, recovery codes or ID numbers;
try to break into, overload or get around the app’s security, or collect information about other members.
7. Moderation
Help out posts and group chat messages are checked for safety. First by automatic rules. Then by an AI check (a moderation service from OpenAI, or Claude from Anthropic). The AI sees only the words, not who wrote them. Only text is sent. A post or message that seems to break section 6 is held until a co-creator looks. People make the final decision.
Three reports hide a post until a co-creator reviews it.
Private messages and journals are never checked this way. They are locked, so nobody here can read them. The one exception is a message someone reports, which comes as a copy from the reporter’s phone.
What co-creators can do: hide or remove posts, and suspend or remove accounts that break these terms.
Emergencies. If a post threatens someone’s life or harms a child, a co-creator may report it to emergency services.
Blocking works both ways. Neither of you can see or reach the other.
8. Your account and password
Keep your password and recovery code to yourself. Nobody from SidexSide will ever ask for them.
If you lose both your password and your recovery code, we can’t get your locked profile or messages back. That is the price of nobody else being able to open them.
If a co-creator helps you back in with a temporary password, you pick your own before anything opens.
You can delete your account any time from the You tab.
9. No guarantees
SidexSide is provided “as is”. We do our best to keep it running and safe. We can’t promise it will always work, that messages will arrive or be answered, or that other members will act as they should.
As far as the law allows, SidexSide, its team and its volunteers are not responsible for anything you or another member does, including self-harm or suicide, or for any loss from using the app. [OWNER TO CONFIRM: lawyer to check this wording for a free service run by volunteers]
10. Changes
If these terms change in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect. [OWNER TO CONFIRM: the app records the date you agreed, but does not yet ask you to agree again when the terms change]