Dance Kudos — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-10-05

Who we are

Dance Kudos is provided by Andrey Karakotov — the service provider and the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. Contact: info@dancekudos.app.

The app includes a public feed (the Room tab): a video can be published to every signed-in user of the app. Publishing is always your own choice, per video. Read “How a video is shared” and “If you appear in someone else’s video” before you post.

What we collect

• Videos you upload — processed to generate dance compliments and shown to the audience you choose for each video, which can include every signed-in user of the app. They may show identifiable people; before your first upload you confirm that you are 18 or older and that you have the right to upload the video. The content rules require that you appear in any video you publish to other people.
• The audience you choose per video — whether it stays private, goes to a named partner, to one of your groups, or to the public feed, and when it was published.
• Compliments and likes you write on other people’s videos and the ones you receive, with the moment of the video they point at.
• Voice compliments. Between people who know each other in the app (a partner, a group, a crew), a compliment can also be spoken: the app records your voice (up to a minute, sound only) and turns it into text while you speak. That text is the transcript, which you can edit before sending. The recording and its transcript are uploaded, stored and delivered to the person the compliment is for. The transcript is made by Apple’s speech recognition: on the iPhone itself where the phone supports it, otherwise by Apple’s speech service. Compliments in the public feed are text only. If you dictate text instead of typing it, only the text reaches us, not the audio.
• Your profile — display name, optional avatar, dance styles. Your display name is the byline on everything you write, so it is visible to everyone who can see that video.
• A device identifier (random, stored on your device) to associate your videos and apply usage limits. You can use the private part — uploading, Mira’s compliments and your own videos, and from version 1.3 filming with the app’s camera — without signing in; version 1.2 asks you to sign in with Apple first. Without signing in, your videos are tied to a random device identifier. Sharing with people (a partner, groups, links, the public feed) needs Sign in with Apple: we store the account identifier Apple gives us — the account is what your videos, likes and compliments are tied to — and the email address if you allow Apple to share it. Every device you sign in on is linked to that account.
• Reports you file and people you block — what you reported, the reason you chose and any note you add; and whom you blocked. Each new block is also noted in our moderation queue, so that we can look at the account. The person you block is not told.
• Usage & diagnostics — product analytics (Google Analytics for Firebase: which screens open, which buttons are tapped, which steps fail; never your videos or what you write), tied to a random identifier that Google Analytics makes on the phone (pseudonymous; it is neither your account nor the app’s own device identifier). From version 1.3 they are a separate choice on the screen before your first upload: they stay off unless you switch them on there, and you can change that at any time in You → App settings. In earlier versions they started with that screen’s agreement.
• Step counts — once per install and with no identifier, the app reports that a step was reached (for example “a clip was recorded”); we keep only a total per step per day. Like any web request, it reaches our server logs with the phone’s IP address, which the logs keep for 30 days.
• Names and labels you type for people and groups (e.g. a partner’s name, a group name) — stored with your identifier so you can share videos with them. Give only names you have the right to share.

How a video is shared

A new upload is private: only you can see it. Publishing is a separate, per-video act, and you choose the audience each time. Audiences add up, and each one is a different set of people:

• Only you — the default.
• A named partner, chosen from people you have shared with before or invited by link.
• One or more of your groups. Access is checked against current membership: someone who leaves a group stops seeing the videos shared with it, including ones shared before they left. Any member of a group can invite further people into it, so the audience of a group video can grow after you post.
• Everyone — the public feed (the Room tab). Any signed-in user of the app can watch it and write a compliment on it. This is a public audience in practice: we do not know and do not control who those users are.

When you post a video to Everyone, still frames sampled evenly across it are checked automatically by Google Cloud Vision for sexual or violent content. If a frame is flagged, or if the check cannot run, the video is held out of the public feed until we have looked at it. It stays with your partner and groups in the meantime, and you see that it is held. Only videos posted to Everyone are checked this way.

Clips filmed with the app’s own camera are an exception: they stay private to you and Mira and cannot be shared with anyone from the app.

Versions of the app before 1.3 also had an opt-in community exchange: a practice could be shown to other dancers who had opted in too, and they could leave text compliments on it. It is not offered from version 1.3. A practice that is still in it leaves on its own at the latest 14 days after it was put there (an earlier version of the app can put it back for another 14 days), or sooner when you delete it or ask us at info@dancekudos.app.

A video published to the public feed can be seen, watched and complimented by people you have never met. Consider it public for as long as it is published, even though you can unpublish or delete it later.

Two things are never shown to anyone but the author of a video: the compliments written by the AI, and the number of likes a video received. People who can see a video see the compliments other people wrote, with their display names.

Invites and what a recipient sees

When you invite someone to a group, or send a person link, the app creates an invite link that expires within 24 hours (you can revoke all of a group’s links at any time in the app). Two links last longer: a link that sends a practice to your partner works for 30 days, and a link asking someone to notice a practice works until you delete that video. Whoever opens any of them can see the invite context you chose to share — such as your first name, the group name, or the video the invitation is about — and, after joining, the videos you share with them. Recipients can leave only compliments; their text (for a spoken compliment, its transcript) passes an automated safety and positivity check before delivery (the check runs on Google’s Gemini models). You can report any message you receive, block a sender, and hide any compliment written on your own video.

If you appear in someone else’s video

Except for clips filmed with the app’s own camera (see “Clips filmed with the app’s camera” below), whoever uploads a video decides where it goes, and we do not ask the other people in such a video for permission — we have no way to tell who they are — and the person who uploads is responsible for that decision. Our legal basis for processing the personal data of people who are in such a video but did not upload it is our legitimate interest, and that of the uploader, in running a service where dancers can show their own dancing; you can object to it as described below, and we act on the objection.

If you are in a video someone else posted:

• If it was addressed to you as the partner, you can pull it out of the public feed yourself, in one tap, with no negotiation and no appeal by the uploader. It stops being public; it stays visible to the partner and the groups it was shared with.
• Anyone in a video can ask for it to come down entirely. In the app, open the video, tap … at the top right and choose “Are you in this video?”, then “Take it down” (in version 1.2 of the app: … > “Report this video” > “I am in this video and I did not agree”). If you do not use the app, or can no longer find the video in it (a report hides it for you), write to info@dancekudos.app with enough detail to identify the video (a link, or who posted it and roughly when). We act on these requests within 24 hours of receiving them.

Removing a video from the public feed does not delete it; a full deletion does, and is the outcome available through that request. We do not tell the uploader who asked, beyond the marker that says their video is no longer public.

Clips filmed with the app’s camera

The paragraphs above are about every video except clips filmed with the app’s own camera, whether it is kept private, sent to Mira, shared or published. A clip filmed with the app’s own camera is never shared or published, and for it the following applies instead. When a video is filmed with the in-app camera, no sound is recorded. Before Mira watches it, the person who filmed shows their dance partner a page that explains where the video goes and asks for a yes, which also confirms that the partner is 18 or older. Our legal basis for processing the partner’s personal data in such a clip is their consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). For anyone else who appears in such a clip only briefly, the basis is the legitimate interest described at the start of this section. If the partner says no, the video is never uploaded. About the partner we record nothing beyond the clip itself and what Mira’s run makes from it — stills, moments and the text written about it, all deleted with the clip — the time of the yes, and the version and language of that page. Such a clip is used only so that Mira can write for the person who filmed it. Mira may watch such a clip more than once, when the person who filmed asks; Google keeps each request for 55 days. It never goes into labeling, evaluation sets, examples, promo or store assets; from its runs we keep only numbers (counts, scores, and whether its owner kept, edited or removed a line), never its pictures or Mira’s words. To withdraw, ask the person who filmed you: they can delete the clip and Mira’s words in the app, on the phone that sent it. We store no name, contact or account for the partner, so we have no way to look a clip up by who you are.

Reports, blocks and moderation

Three checks run automatically:

• Every compliment, before it is delivered. Its text, or for a spoken compliment its transcript, is checked by Google’s Gemini models. Critique, advice and comparison are held with an invitation to reword; unsafe content is not delivered. In the public feed nothing is delivered while the check cannot run. Between partners and in groups a simpler word check stands in during an outage. The recording of a voice compliment is not analysed.
• Every video posted to Everyone is screened from sampled frames by Google Cloud Vision, as described in “How a video is shared”.
• “Are you in this video?” → “Take it down.” This takedown (in version 1.2, the report reason “I am in this video and I did not agree”) takes a public video out of the public feed at once, before anyone reviews it. It stays with the partner and groups it was shared with until we decide.

You can report a video, a compliment or an account, and block a person.

• Immediately, for you: a video, or a compliment in the Room, that you reported disappears for you and stays gone, whatever we decide afterwards. A compliment you received and reported from its card stays there until you delete it. After a block, that person’s posts, likes and compliments stop reaching you, and yours stop reaching them.
• For everyone else: apart from the automatic checks above, nothing changes until a person reviews the report. A block is not a verdict: it is noted in our queue so that we can look at the account, it changes nothing else by itself, and the blocked person is not told.

Reports are reviewed by us — the outcome is to remove the video from the public feed, delete it, close the public feed for an account (its partner and group circles stay intact), or dismiss the report. Closing the public feed is a decision we take on the facts of the reports, not a fixed number of strikes. Decisions are final in this version of the app; if you believe we got the facts wrong, write to info@dancekudos.app and we will look again.

We keep the report, the decision and the rule applied — including after the reported content is gone — to enforce these rules and to establish a record if the same account is reported again.

Invite links on the web

If you open an invite link in a browser before installing the app, the landing page briefly remembers that visit so the app can restore your invitation after install: it stores the link token together with coarse, non-unique signals (browser languages, display preferences, screen size, timezone, an approximate device family and similar coarse device signals, and a salted one-way hash of your IP address — the address itself is never stored) for up to 30 minutes, then discards them. This is used only to hand your invitation to the app; it is not used for advertising, profiling, or cross-app tracking.

Website analytics

The pages on dancekudos.app — this site, the support and legal pages, the feedback survey and the invite landings — use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people reach. It stores a cookie holding a random identifier and records the page viewed, the approximate region derived from your IP address, and your browser and device type. Google Signals, advertising identifiers and ad personalisation are switched off, so this data is not used for advertising or cross-site profiling, and it is not linked to the device identifier the app uses. You can opt out with Google’s Analytics opt-out add-on or your browser’s cookie controls.

How it is used

• To analyze your video and return compliments (AI processing).
• To deliver your video, and the compliments and likes on it, to the audience you chose — up to and including every signed-in user of the app.
• To check the text people write before it is delivered, to screen videos posted to Everyone, and to review reports and blocks and enforce the content rules.
• To run the service: quotas, history, quality improvement (for clips filmed with the app’s camera, numbers only — see “Clips filmed with the app’s camera”).
• We do not sell your data or use videos for advertising or cross-app tracking.

Third parties

Video analysis and the automated check on compliment text use Google’s Gemini models. The screen of videos posted to Everyone sends sampled still frames to Google Cloud Vision. Infrastructure and analytics use Google Cloud / Firebase. The transcript of a voice compliment, and dictated text, are made by Apple’s speech recognition. Subscriptions and purchases are processed through RevenueCat (which receives your purchase status and an app-specific user identifier to manage your subscription) and the Apple App Store. Sign in with Apple provides us with an account identifier and, at your choice, an email address; deleting your account revokes that sign-in with Apple as well.

Google keeps a log of each Gemini request, which may include the video, for 55 days to detect and prevent misuse and for any legal or regulatory disclosures it is required to make; the data may be stored or cached in any country where Google or its agents have facilities; content flagged by Google’s filters may be reviewed by authorized Google staff; Google does not use it to train its models other than those used for policy enforcement. Our access to Gemini is a paid Google Cloud service.

Retention & deletion

• Videos are stored until you delete them — per-video (which also removes the compliments and catches attached to it) or all at once via the You tab → Delete my data (without an account) or the You tab → Account → Delete account (with one). A deleted video leaves the app at once and is erased from our storage within 7 days. Unpublishing a video removes it from the audience, not from storage; deleting it removes both.
• Compliments and catches you received live in your journal until you delete them or the video they belong to.
• Compliments you wrote on someone else’s video are delivered to that person and stay with their video. Deleting your account does not withdraw them: the text stays for the person who received it and your name is removed from it. A compliment cannot be withdrawn once sent; the author of the video can hide it at any time.
• Voice recordings are deleted with the video they belong to, when the check refuses the compliment, when a report about them is upheld, and when the person who spoke deletes their account (the text then stays, without their name, as above).
• Reports and moderation decisions are kept after the content they concern is removed, as described above.
• Invite links: group and person invite links expire within 24 hours, and a group’s links can be revoked at any time in the app; a partner link works for 30 days, and an ask-to-notice link until the video is deleted.
• Web invite signals (see above) are discarded within 30 minutes.
• Product analytics are not linked to your account or to the app’s own device identifier, so they cannot be looked up or deleted by who you are. When you delete your data, the app stops product analytics and resets its analytics identifier, so nothing sent afterwards is linked to what came before. Events already sent are not deleted with your account: Google Analytics keeps event-level data for 2 months and user-level data for 14 months, and a copy in our own analytics database is kept for product statistics. You can turn product analytics off at any time in You → App settings.
• Operational logs auto-expire; on account deletion we also actively remove your related messages on a best-effort basis.

Your rights

You can see and delete your videos, compliments and account in the app at any time (the You tab → Delete my data, or the You tab → Account → Delete account when signed in). If you prefer to ask us, or if you are not a user of the app — for example because you appear in someone else’s video — write to info@dancekudos.app. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to a copy of your data, to correction, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to complain to your local data-protection authority. Requests about a video you appear in are handled as described in “If you appear in someone else’s video”: for any other video, within 24 hours of receipt; for a clip filmed with the app’s camera, through the person who filmed it.

Children

The app is for users 18 or older: the AI service that writes the compliments may only be used by adults. You confirm your age before uploading (a dance partner filmed with the app’s camera confirms theirs on the page they are shown), and an account we find to be below that age is closed. Do not upload videos of minors without the rights and consent to do so, and do not publish them to the public feed.

Contact

Questions, data requests and content complaints: info@dancekudos.app