The Contract, in plain terms.

Who may hold an account

You must be 18 or older to sign the Contract and hold an individual CrossHUG account. A student aged 13 to 17 takes part through a classroom account: enrolled on a licensed institution’s roster, by its join code or its school email domain, and treated as a minor’s account unless the student had already confirmed they are 18 or older. We never knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

How students take part

Students in a licensed classroom take part through a school, district or youth organization that licenses CrossHUG, inside that institution’s closed classroom. Only the students and staff on its roster can see what students write in the classroom. A facilitator named by the institution moderates the classroom. A student’s work never appears in the public feed, the Roll or search. The institution, not CrossHUG, is responsible for obtaining any parent or guardian consent its own rules require.

What never happens to a minor

No money moves to or from a minor: no Stakes, standing support, sponsorships, payouts or purchases. No profiling: no scoring of their values, no AI consultation on their goals and no AI reading of their videos. What a minor did still counts, in the code’s own words: “A student under 18 still earns Standing, because Standing is a record of their own acts — documents they read and sealed, commitments they kept, coursework they finished, witnesses other members gave them. Refusing to count a student’s own work would take away the thing they did while leaving any inference about them untouched, which protects nobody.” No ads. If a user’s age can’t be confirmed, they are treated as a minor.

Youth sponsorship

A sponsor can be an individual, an organization, or a corporation. A sponsorship funds seats in a licensed classroom, not a young person’s own membership. • Choosing where it goes. The sponsor chooses which licensed school, district, or youth organization receives the seats, or lets CrossHUG place them where they’re needed most. An institution can be chosen only once at least 10 students are on its roster. • The institution assigns the seat. The chosen institution assigns each sponsored seat to a student on its roster. • The student stays private. The sponsor never learns which student holds a seat and never sees any student’s work. Sponsors receive only totals, and “seats used” is reported in steps of 5, rounded down. • No branding to students. A sponsor’s name, logo, or ads never appear to students inside the classroom. An institution may thank its sponsors publicly in its own channels. • Where the money goes. A sponsored seat is priced at the institutional seat rate. The payment goes to CrossHUG as license revenue and is never paid out to any member. The member sponsorship split does not apply to youth sponsorship. • Unused seats. If an institution doesn’t assign a sponsored seat within 60 days, not counting June through August, CrossHUG reassigns it to another licensed institution or refunds the sponsor, at the sponsor’s choice. • Not tax-deductible. A sponsorship is not tax-deductible.

Turning 18

There is no automatic change at 18. A former student who is now an adult may sign the Contract and open their own account. Nothing carries over.

If we learn a minor holds an account

If we learn that a person under 18 holds an account outside a licensed classroom, we will close it on request or on discovery. Closing uses the existing deletion process: the member, or an administrator of the institution that enrolled them, can delete the account, and anyone else — a parent or guardian included — can write to privacy@cross-hug.com, where a person checks the request and our staff carry it out. What deletion removes, and what it keeps with the name taken out, is set out at /legal/minors. No automated process detects or closes these accounts.