Data Ethics

DBaD and Decency Meter are supposed to be inspectable without becoming invasive. This page is the short-form statement of that constraint.

Collection scope

• The quick test does not require names or email addresses.
• Longer survey and intake flows may include optional free-text context that a user chooses to submit.
• Operational logs retain the minimum request metadata needed for abuse prevention, reliability checks, and audit trails.

Publication policy

• Only approved, anonymized excerpts are shown on public wall surfaces.
• Public dashboards, papers, and APIs are aggregate-first by design.
• Operational details that would increase abuse or expose private workflow state stay out of public pages.

Retention and governance

• Retention exists to support longitudinal analysis, quality auditing, and reproducibility of published aggregates.
• Access should follow least-privilege rules by tenant, role, and operational need.
• Automated checks are used to detect privacy regressions, broken public contracts, and schema drift.

What we are trying not to become

• Not an identity brokerage system.
• Not a surveillance-grade civility score.
• Not a black-box ethics authority that asks for trust without showing its workings.

For implementation details, see methodology and API docs.