Relationship Terms

Relationship Agreement

• 10 min readtime

About this agreement

Let’s kick this off by getting something out of the way. Contracts suck. They’re long, incomprehensible and haven’t been ‘designed’ to actually help you. We want to change that. In fact, it’s the very reason we created Better Disclosure. We believe that Better Disclosure is possible. We believe that Better Disclosure results in better relationships. We believe that Better Disclosure has the potential to positively impact society by eating away at systemic information asymmetry and the power imbalances that it creates and reinforces.

So, this isn’t a Terms and Conditions the way you’ve traditionally experienced it. This is a Relationship Agreement.

Let’s begin.

When we refer to “Us”, “Our” in this document we mean Fiducio Holdings Pty Ltd trading as ‘Tethix’, formerly ‘Greater Than Learning’. This is the company that powers the Tethix Platform. When we refer to “You”, “Your” we mean you as a website visitor, customer and/or community member.

Why we exist and what we stand for

Every organisation needs a reason for being. The organisation also needs to have values that underpin what they do. We share ours here because it matters that you understand this to enter into a relationship. If there is alignment, progress, if not, reach out or just ignore what we are doing.

Our purpose

We exist to help people learn to design and make more ethical technologies aligned to the public interest. To follow through on the ethical intent they have. To close the ethical intent to action gap in tech.

Our values

Although we have many, our four community values are what matter most right here, right now.

Connection

Connection is about connecting as people. It’s about sharing ideas and supporting one another through the challenges we might face as we seek to create more ethical technology for current and future generations.

Collaboration

Collaboration is about designing for ethical change in tech, together. It’s about learning together, supporting one another and finding ways to do more as a collective unit.

Commitment

True commitment is powerful, particularly when the commitment is shared by many. We need to commit to doing what matters on a daily basis. And we need to stick to it, even when the going gets tough.

Consequence

There are consequences of our actions both positive and negative. This about follow through, accountability and recognition. When we take action we own the consequences. We take it in our stride, we respond, we learn and we grow together.

Our principle

For today, there’s only one principle that matters; Preference is greater than Acceptance.

What do we mean by this?

We hold the position that ethics is the process of making a decision that best aligns to our purpose, values and principles. It’s about optimising for the most socially preferable outcomes. It’s not about justifying social acceptance or what we can get away with. A process of becoming. Like us as humans.

This is our north star. It helps us define what we should and shouldn’t do. It’s the way we go about determining right from wrong.

It’s important to note that we don’t intend to make these decisions in a silo. We intend to execute social preferability testing. Involving you, our community, in the process as we evolve.

Designing our relationship

We’ve entered into a new relationship. There are lots of different things that might encourage you to join this community. Regardless of your motivation, what we are trying to achieve as a group of values aligned people cannot be achieved unless we connect, collaborate, commit to and own consequences. This means we all have roles and responsibilities. 

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

There are things the community overwhelmingly supports. This is the stuff we and/or you “can” do.
There are things the community does not support. These are the things we and/or you “can’t” do.

Roles and responsibilities

We and you have a role to play in this community and as part of the shared creation of the Tethix platform. With this comes responsibilities. 

Our responsibilities

As a service provider

Our responsibility is to design a service that meets the needs of our community members. It’s also our responsibility to own the consequences of our actions.

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

• Collect and process personal data to help deliver this service to you. Full details of these activities are documented in our Data Protection Notice.
• Alter our pricing for paid memberships and/or courses to meet market, community and business needs
• Select a new technology vendor to support minor feature and functionally enhancement
• Restructure our business to enable us to adapt to changing market conditions. This will be done in a highly participatory manner. You’ll learn about our intent to act – and have the opportunity to contribute – before the action takes place
• Support community growth and diversity through external funding sources. These parties will be vetted by the community to ensure they are values aligned
• Issue you a refund for a course you paid for but have not yet started.

• Change major infrastructure including our or platform architecture without doing a social preferability experiment with at least 10 randomly chosen community members
• Change the pricing for membership and/or courses after you have paid and then charge you
• Use a technology vendor that has been deemed as socially unacceptable (less than 4 on the social preferability scale we use)
• Confirm and secure external investment without discussing this openly with our community members and doing social preferability testing
• Refund a payment you’ve made for a course that you have already started

As a community facilitator

Our responsibility is to help to uphold our community values.

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

• Provide feedback to community members when they share their progress
• Suspend your membership in the community if:

• • you repeatedly contradict the community guidelines through your actions
  • you behave in an offensive manner to any community member or one of our staff
• Issue you with a warning that you are breaking our community guidelines by:
  • Sending an explicit warning to your registered email within 36hrs of us observing or being informed of your actions

• Suspend your membership without warning.
• Give you immediate feedback on your learning progress unless:
  • We are in a live session or video call with you

As a creator of learning experiences

Our responsibility is to create learning experiences that help community members expand their knowledge, improve their skills and make the world a little better as a result.

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

• Work our butts off to produce high quality learning experiences
• Reference external sources of empirical evidence in our work to demonstrate its relevance and validity. However, we will not always provide links to this external content as we cannot control the data protection practices of the external party
• Update our learning and course content as new empirical research becomes available

• Knowingly publish learning content that has been proven to be ineffective in achieving the outcomes proposed
  • If we have and/or you make us aware of it for the first time, we will update the course content
• Be across every possible aspect of research that has been done in the subjects and fields we cover in the learning experiences we create. We are flawed homo sapiens. But we are willing to learn, evolve and attempt to better ourselves.

Your responsibilities

As a community member

Your responsibility is to commit to the learning journey and engage thoughtfully with the experience and your fellow community members.

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

• Connect with other community members, build relationships with those members and collaborate on projects together.
• Share your thoughts and ideas openly about how to improve our service, courses, learning experiences, and overall platform.
• Take what you’ve learned and put it to the test in your own business or personal projects. In fact, this is what we really want people to do.

• Expect us to refund your membership payment after a trial period. You are, however, able to cancel your membership at any time.
• Use the community as a way to market and sell your services unless people explicitly ask you to.
• Be abusive to other community members or use racist, sexist or otherwise derogatory language towards them.
• Invite people via built-in platform features that you believe might knowingly try to undermine our community values.
• Take models, methods and tools you’ve learnt from content creators and claim them as your own for commercial purposes. There’s a bit more on this in the Intellectual Property and Copyrights section below.

As a website visitor

Your responsibility when browsing our publicly available website content is to learn more about our services and community, and decide if you want to join us on this journey.

• 
  Can do
• 
  Can’t do

• Browse our website and learn about what our platform offers.
• Share links to our website with your peers via a method of your choosing. In fact, we’d love you to.

• Duplicate our website content and claim it as your own.
• Try to engage in malicious behaviour to compromise the security of our website with the intent to harm our business, customers or community members.

Let’s put it bluntly, if you’re acting like a f@#!wit, you’ll get kicked out. The rule of thumb here is simple, do what is preferable and follow our community guidelines.

On the flip-side, if you think we are acting in misalignment to our purpose, values and principles, call us on it.

Let’s keep going and cover a few specific areas.

Our business model

Our business model is pretty simple. You can pay to become a community member. Once you’re a member, you also gain access to the learning experiences, some that come part of membership and some you pay for. These can be designed by us, a member that is also a content creator, or they could be co-branded and co-designed with our partners. When this is the case, we share revenue with the creator.

That’s it for now.

We hope this goes without saying, but we will never sell your data. Your individual agency and right to privacy is not just important to us, it is critical to everything we believe.

Intellectual property and copyrights

Here’s the simplest way to explain it. We have content we created for the specific purpose of helping people learn. This content is owned by us and/or our partners. Basically, don’t try to copy it and claim it as your own. Some of the content we share is creative commons licensed. If it states this please follow the license terms as stated.

As part of engaging in learning experiences you will also create content. This is in the form of community discussion and community challenges.

This Platform is designed to get you to share your ideas, thoughts, experiences and concepts with your peers in the community. This is your content, you own it, simple. As part of being a community member, you are also granting us the right to use the content you publish on our platform for the benefit of other members. 

We will never use your content outside of the Platform without your explicit consent.

Your rights

When you sign up and become a member, your rights are protected under whatever Consumer Protection Law is relevant to your jurisdiction.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of regulators that can help you if you feel we can’t.

We acknowledge the above list is Anglo-centric so please help us by letting us know what else to add.

How we’re governed

Right now we operate as a Proprietary Limited company governed by the laws of Australia. The thing is, for this type of ‘entity’, we’re doing this differently. We’re operating more like a B-Corp or Social Enterprise. It’s actually our intent to transition away from this traditional corporate structure towards a cooperative that’s better aligned to our values and fit for our shared purposes as a community. This is referenced in our public roadmap.

Once we kick start this transition, our community will be asked to participate in Social Preferability testing. This will help us work together to define a governance structure that really works for all stakeholders.

Watch this space. Or don’t. You can always get back to learning 😄

Disclaimers

Due to the current state of our world, we need to put something in here about this. We hope it will change over time, but for now, here it is:

1. Tethix is a learning platform

It’s designed to help you acquire new knowledge and practice new skills, all within a welcoming and vibrant social environment. If you take what you’ve learned, apply it, and something bad happens (like your customers leave because of it), we aren’t liable. You have to own the consequence of your actions and the resulting outcome.

2. The Tethix platform will evolve

This is ‘normal’. It is also going to evolve in a participatory way with our community members’ involvement. It’s deliberate and it’s the only way we will keep learning and growing together. So, if you wake up one day and notice a change you didn’t expect or participate in, check out our Key Decision Log. This will help you understand what we did, why and how we did it.

3. We’re mere mortals

As above, this platform and our business will change. We cannot possibly anticipate every scenario. We are human and are unable to predict the future. This Relationship Agreement covers what we think is most important right now. If we’ve missed something, let us know.

If you got this far…Thank you! It means a lot 👏😃. We trust it helps you understand where we are now, where we’re going and why.

If you have any questions in relation to this notice please contact us via email

Data Protection

Data protection notice

• 11 min readtime

What we believe

We believe most legal disclosures are not designed. We believe we can change that by helping people learn how to make better disclosure more widespread. We believe that the data we collect and process should be stewarded. By us as an organisation and by the community we serve.

How the data is collected and used via this platform, how it is managed and governed will also evolve with your involvement. If you are interested in Data Coops and Data Trusts and want to collaborate, reach out.

Why we collect and process personal data

We collect and process personal data to be able to provide the services offered via the Tethix platform.

Purpose of processing

We collect and process personal data for the following purposes:

• To market new and unique learning experiences to those that have consented to receive this type of communications from us.
• To provide the Tethix platform infrastructure such as this website and to design learning experiences that help people in creating more ethical technology.
• To continuously improve and enhance the Tethix platform and the services we offer.
• To provide secure access to your account as a Tethix community member.

Legal basis for processing

This is the basis in law under which we collect and process personal data:

Consent

When you choose to receive marketing communications about learning experiences offered, we use Consent as the legal basis for collection and processing.

Contract

When you sign up as a community member and pay for membership and courses, we use Contract as the legal basis for collection and processing.

When and what we collect and process

There are different situations when we collect and process data about you. Below we describe these situations, what data we collect and who else is involved.

When you browse the website

We have done our best to collect no personal data when you just browse as a visitor. Aligning to the principle of data minimisation. We use Plausible privacy preserving web analytics. There are no cookies or tracking pixels used so no personal data is collected.

To learn more view Plausible’s Data Policy

When you create an account

When you decide to register an account and become a Tethix community member we will be collecting and processing data.

What we collect and process

• Username
• Email address
• Password (never stored in plain text)
• Data and time of registration

When you pay for a membership or a course

We provide learning experiences that you can pay for with a Credit or Debit Card. This can be for one-off courses, learning programs or a subscription membership for the platform.

What we collect and process

• First and last name
• Email address
• Card number
• Expiry date
• CVV code
• Product name(s)
• Purchase amount
• Customer company name (optional)
• Billing address (optional)
• Product quantity
• Order number
• Product SKU (Stock Keeping Number)
• Data and time of purchase

We do not store any of your Credit/Debit card details. Payments are securely processed by Stripe.

When you engage in learning activities

We provide courses and learning programs and encourage people to share ideas and their progress as part of the courses and/or learning programs they do. This means that the data generated in those interactions is being processed by us.

What we collect and process

• First and last name
• Course(s) enrolled in
• Courses completed
• Lessons completed in a course
• Quizzes taken (date and time) and the score achieved
• Lessons completed (name of lesson and date of completion)
• Activities points (and point type) awarded for
• Activities points (and point type) deducted for
• Achievements (and types) received and when
• Course certificates received and when
• Topics posted in the forum and when
• Content of topic post in the forum
• Comment/reply in the forum and when
• Content of comment/reply in the forum
• Any images and video shared in forum and when
• Likes given to topic(s), discussions and member replies in forums and when
• Favourites given to topics in the forums

When you add content to your profile or timeline

We have features that enable you to create a social profile, build a reputation, connect with other community members and make better, together. This means that when you add content (data) to your profile we collect and process it.

What we collect and process

• Profile images you add
• Content (text, images and video) you add to your profile bio
• Content you share in the additional bio (Your WHY) form field (optional)
• Date and time when you add this content
• Community member nicknames you tag in your timeline posts

This is only stored within our WordPress environment hosted via GreenGeeks. It is not shared with any other parties.

When you choose to be notified of a new course or learning program

When you want to be notified of an upcoming course we ask for your email so we can notify you when this course launches.

What we collect and process

When you consent to be notified of an upcoming course we’re launching we collect your email address. When that course is launched we send you an email to let you know it is available. This automated email is done through our WordPress plugins and handled by Amazon Simple Email Sending.

The data we collect and process is detailed below:

• Your email address
• If you opened the email or clicked on a link
• The date and approximate time you opened the email or clicked on a link
• The email client you use (e.g. gmail, outlook, apple mail)

When you receive an email notification or community update

There are a few different reasons you will receive an email from us. These include:

• Letting you know a community member has interact with you
• Receipts for when you buy a course
• Emails to enhance the learning experience, and;
• Updates on platform progress or scheduled downtime

What we collect and process

Emails are set up through our WordPress plugins. Then sent via Amazon Simple Email Sending.

The data we collect and process is detailed below:

• Your email address
• If you opened the email or clicked on a link
• The date and approximate time you opened the email or clicked on a link
• The email client you use (e.g. gmail, outlook, apple mail)

When you register and attend a community video call or live workshop

We run video calls for community members to support learning outcomes and direct community involvement. These can be for specific learning experiences we provide or for community sense-making, governance and decision making.

What we collect and process

When you join a video call you are asked to enter a name. We don’t retain this. But in situations where you provide input on decisions we make as a community the details of this are recorded. This may be in the form of notes and associated with the profile name you use in the community. In some cases we record community calls to Zoom cloud and make them available for you and other community members to view later.

The data we collect and process is detailed below:

• Name you enter when you join the call
• Your audio/visual content from the call to provide a recording to the community
• Notes attributed to your input in a community decision

Registering for these events is done via Zoom. This means you will need to provide some information. To register you’ll need to provide:

• First and last name (realistically you can put anything in here. E.g. First name: Gandalf – Last name: The Grey)
• Your email address (used to send you the event confirmation email with Zoom call details)

You can find more information on Zoom’s Privacy Policy.

Tools for enhancing the community and learning experience

When you decide to register an account and become a Tethix community member we will be collecting and processing data.

Surveys and forms

We use surveys for understanding community preferences and perspectives. The current tool we use for this is Typeform. Surveys might not request any personal data at all. In some cases we’ll ask for an email address. This data you choose to submit in a survey or form is processed by Typeform.

You can learn more on Tyeform’s Terms & Conditions

Visual collaboration

We regularly use a visual collaboration tool called Mural. We also use this to share templates to improve your learning experiences or ethical decision making processes in your professional life. These may be embedded in pages on our site and in micro-learning experiences for you to use in enhancing your skill set.

You can find more details on Mural’s data collection and processing activities in the company’s Privacy Policy.

Community chat

We use a community chat network called Matrix. It’s like Slack but open source and decentralised. When you choose to join our community chat you’ll be registered on servers managed by Matrix.

You can learn more about data privacy on the Matrix Privacy Notice.

Involvement in community workstreams

We are open with the plans we have and also encourage community members to get actively involved in the evolution of the platform. To do this we have a Trello board that covers what we are working on and have planned. If you choose to join you are acknowledging that registering for this service is your choice. Registration data and content you add is processed by Trello as a company. You can learn about Trello’s data privacy here.

If you want to contribute in other ways, reach out via our community chat or email us.

How and where we store data

We securely store your data with our hosting provider GreenGeeks. They are based in the US. We’ve chosen Europe as a region for this sustainable cloud infrastructure. We also have a Content Delivery Network provided by Cloudflare. This means that the network of servers will temporarily (this is called caching) store some of your data in locations closest to you (Geographical Proximity). They will change where the data is stored based on the IP address of the computer you are accessing our website from. So as you can tell it’s kinda complicated.

Data retention

We retain the data we process about your account and learning experience only whilst you are an active member. If you choose to cancel your membership, we will enable you to export the data we have about you. We will then delete this data.

Approach to data security

We use a range of practices to keep your data secure.

• We use password management with randomly generated passwords
• Two Factor Authentication is used on all our administrator accounts
• Daily backups are maintained to mitigate data loss

Core service providers we use that process your data

Website hosting

Our website is hosted by GreenGeeks.

This service providers’ main business is located in Wilmington, United States and the server region we use is Europe.

There’s more information available from GreenGeeks in the company’s Data Processing Agreement

Email provider

Emails we receive are managed by ProtonMail.

The message content is encrypted but there is some metadata they process.

• Sender and recipient email addresses
• The IP address incoming messages originated from
• Message subject line
• Message sent and received times

You can learn more in ProtonMail’s Privacy Policy

Payment processing

When you pay using a Credit or Debit card

When you make a purchase using our platform we use Stripe to process the payment. We do not store any Credit/Debit Card details anywhere.

Here’s more information on Stripe’s privacy policy.

Video conferencing

We use Zoom to host our community video calls and live virtual workshops to deliver high quality calls and make cloud based recordings available. When you choose to join a workshop or community call Zoom does collect and retain some personal data. This can be the name you enter to use when you join a call or data associated with an account you have with them. It can also be things like your IP address to connect you to the call.

Here’s more information about Zoom’s approach to privacy and data protection.

• GDPR Compliance
• Privacy Statement

If you have any questions in relation to this notice please contact us via email