Palaver

Effective 26 August 2026

Privacy Policy

Palaver is a web application that moderates group discussion by auctioning speaking time. It is provided free of charge by Disagree Wisely, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which is the controller of the information described here.

This policy applies to palaverbeta.com and to the Palaver application at app.palaverbeta.com.

1. Information we collect

Account information. Palaver uses Google Sign-In. When you sign in, we receive and store:

  • your Google account identifier;
  • your email address;
  • your display name.

We do not receive or store any other information from your Google account.

Discussion activity. When you take part in a discussion, we store:

  • bids you place — the amount and the time;
  • speaking turns — that you held the floor, when, for how long, the rate charged, and the points deducted;
  • survey responses — your answers to the questions a room asks at the end of a discussion, and an optional free-text comment if you choose to provide one;
  • notes typed by the person running the room.

Room information. Each room stores its name, join code, settings, membership list, and the title of each discussion.

Guest access. The live demonstration and one-off group discussions do not require an account. No email address is collected. Participants provide a first name only, and are issued a temporary credential valid for that room alone.

Technical information. Our hosting providers process IP addresses and standard request logs to deliver the service and protect it from abuse.

2. Information we do not collect

  • No audio, video, or transcript. Palaver does not record, transmit, or store the content of any discussion. It has no access to what participants say.
  • No grades or academic records. Palaver does not collect, calculate, or store grades, assessments, or attendance.
  • No photographs. No profile image is requested or retained.
  • No location data, contacts, calendars, or files.
  • No advertising identifiers and no cross-site tracking.
  • No special categories of personal data (such as health, biometric, or demographic information).
  • No artificial intelligence processing. Palaver contains no machine-learning model. No information is used to train, fine-tune, or prompt any model, and none is sent to a third-party model provider.

3. How we use information

  • To operate the discussion market: to run the auction, order the queue, meter speaking time, and maintain point balances.
  • To provide participation data to the instructor of a class, for their own classes only.
  • To maintain and secure the service, including preventing automated abuse of the public demonstration.
  • For research into how people value speaking time, using pseudonymous and aggregate data as described in Section 5.

We do not use information for advertising, profiling, or automated decision-making.

4. How information is shared

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information, and we do not share it for advertising or marketing purposes.

Within a room. Access is enforced by database security rules, not only by the interface:

  • Participants in a room can see the queue for that room — the names of people waiting and the amounts they have bid. This is the core function of the product.
  • The person or people running a room can see its membership list, its record of settled turns, its participation figures, and its survey responses.
  • Survey responses are visible to the respondent and to the people running that room, and to no one else.
  • Notes typed by a room's moderators are visible only to that room's moderators, and never to participants.
  • Your account record is readable only by you. The user collection cannot be listed or searched by any user.

Service providers. The following process information on our behalf. There are no others:

  • Google LLC — Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Functions host the application and store its data. Google Analytics provides the measurement described in Section 5.
  • Cloudflare, Inc. — serves this website and the application, and provides the challenge that protects the public demonstration from automated access.

Legal disclosure. We may disclose information if required to do so by law, or where necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of Palaver, our users, or the public.

5. Analytics

We use Google Analytics to study how discussion markets are used. Events are limited to a fixed, predefined list of approximately fifty parameters describing market activity, such as a bid being adjusted or a turn ending.

Google Analytics does not receive:

  • names or email addresses;
  • room names, discussion titles, or question text;
  • survey comments or moderator notes.

No free-text content of any kind is transmitted. A survey comment is recorded only by its character count. These restrictions are enforced in software: the parameter list is fixed at compile time, a validator rejects any value resembling an email address, and the automated test suite verifies every event a real discussion produces.

The only identifier attached to an event is the pseudonymous account identifier, which is meaningless outside our database. Google Signals is disabled, no advertising features are enabled, and the application's Content-Security-Policy blocks Google's advertising domains.

6. Cookies and local storage

  • Authentication. Your browser stores your sign-in session so that you are not asked to sign in on every page.
  • Analytics. Google Analytics sets a first-party cookie so that repeat visits are counted as one visitor.
  • Security. Cloudflare's challenge on the public demonstration page sets what it requires to distinguish a person from an automated script.

No other cookies are set. Palaver uses no third-party tracking cookies.

7. Data retention

  • Live demonstrations are deleted in full three hours after they are opened, including all temporary participant identities.
  • One-off group discussions are deleted in full twelve hours after they are opened, including all temporary participant identities.
  • Classes are retained for as long as the instructor retains them, because a term's record is the purpose of the class. Archiving a class stops it accepting new members and new discussions; it does not delete anything.
  • Account records are retained while the account exists.

You may leave a class at any time from within it, which removes you from its membership list. On request, we will delete all information associated with you.

8. Security

All traffic is encrypted in transit using TLS. Data is encrypted at rest by Google Cloud. Access to stored information is controlled by database security rules that are enforced server-side and covered by an automated test suite. All privileged operations are performed by server-side functions; client applications cannot write to balances, bids, or the record of settled turns.

9. Your rights and choices

You may request:

  • a copy of the information we hold about you;
  • correction of inaccurate information;
  • deletion of your information.

To make a request, contact us at the address in Section 13. We will respond within 30 days. You may also change your display name at any time from your profile page. Instructors may export a complete copy of their own class data at any time from within the application.

10. International users

Information is stored in the United States, in Google Cloud's us-east1 region. If you access Palaver from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be processed there. We honor access, correction, and deletion requests regardless of where you are located.

11. Children's privacy

Palaver is designed for use in higher education and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided information to us, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the effective date at the top of this page will change with it. We will not use information already collected in a manner materially different from what this policy described at the time it was collected.

13. Contact

Disagree Wisely, Inc.
Email: privacy@disagreewisely.org

Inquiries from institutional privacy, security, or procurement offices are welcome and will receive a direct response.