Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using Deliberate Academy, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform.

You must be at least 13 years old to use Deliberate Academy. By using the platform, you confirm that you meet this age requirement. If you are under 18, you should review these terms with a parent or guardian.

2. Description of Service

Deliberate Academy is a free online learning platform offering short, focused AI courses for professionals. The platform provides:

• Text-based AI course content that is free to read without an account
• End-of-course exams to assess understanding
• Verifiable certificates issued automatically upon passing an exam
• A certificate verification page that allows employers and clients to confirm the authenticity of a certificate

No payment is required to access courses, take exams, or earn certificates. The platform is funded by display advertising on public pages.

3. Account Registration

To take exams and earn certificates, you must create an account using an email address and password. You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity that occurs under your account.

You agree to provide accurate and complete information when registering. Do not create an account on behalf of someone else without their knowledge and consent.

If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately at hello@deliberateacademy.com.

4. Acceptable Use

What you may do

• Access and read all course content freely
• Create an account to take exams and earn certificates
• Share your certificate verification link with employers, clients, or on professional profiles
• Link to Deliberate Academy courses and content from your own website or social media

What you may not do

• Share exam questions, answers, or answer keys with others in any form
• Attempt to reverse-engineer or manipulate the exam grading system
• Create multiple accounts to gain additional exam attempts or circumvent any restrictions
• Scrape, systematically download, or reproduce course content in bulk
• Reproduce or redistribute course lessons commercially without written permission
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your identity when registering or in any communications
• Use the platform in any way that could damage, disable, or overburden our infrastructure
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the platform or its underlying systems
• Submit a report about content you know to be false or misleading, or use the reporting tool to harass another user

5. Certificates and Credentials

Certificates are issued automatically when you pass a graded exam. Each certificate records the course completed, the date issued, and a unique certificate ID. Certificates are publicly verifiable via their unique URL — this is an intentional feature that allows employers and clients to confirm authenticity.

Certificates represent genuine completion of a graded assessment and are issued in good faith. Deliberate Academy reserves the right to revoke a certificate if it is found to have been obtained through fraud, cheating, or violation of these terms.

Deliberate Academy makes no guarantees that certificates will be accepted, recognised, or valued by any specific employer, institution, or third party. Certificates are professional development credentials, not regulated qualifications. We do not make employment guarantees of any kind.

6. Study Groups

Signed-in users may create or join a study group to work through courses together. A group's name is visible only to its members, never publicly.

• The creator can rotate the group's join code and delete the group.
• If the creator leaves, creator rights pass automatically to the longest-standing remaining member.
• A group is deleted automatically when its last member leaves.
• Group names follow the content rules and are subject to the moderation tools described in "User Content and Moderation" below, including automatic holds, reset to a placeholder name, or deletion of the group.

7. Intellectual Property

All course content, design, platform code, branding, and materials published on Deliberate Academy are the intellectual property of Deliberate Academy or its licensors. All rights are reserved.

You may not reproduce, redistribute, sell, or commercially exploit any course lessons, content, or materials without our prior written permission. Personal, non-commercial use — such as saving notes for your own reference — is permitted.

Certificates issued to you are yours to use professionally. You may display them on your CV, LinkedIn profile, portfolio, or share the verification link as a credential. You may not alter, misrepresent, or forge any certificate.

8. User Content and Moderation

If you submit feedback, contact messages, or other communications to Deliberate Academy, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use that feedback to improve the platform, correct errors, and develop new features. We will not publish your personal details alongside any feedback without your permission.

Comments and study group names

Lesson comments are public and shown to other readers under your first name and last initial (for example, "Jordan K."), never your full name. By posting a comment or a study group name, you grant Deliberate Academy a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store and display that text on the platform for as long as it remains visible under this section.

Content rules

Comments and study group names may use printable English-keyboard characters only — letters, numbers, spaces, and standard punctuation. Accented letters, emoji, and other non-English characters are not accepted. Comments may include line breaks; group names may not. Before your text is saved, curly quotation marks, en and em dashes, the ellipsis character, and no-break spaces are automatically converted to their plain equivalents (for example, a curly quote becomes a straight quote, a long dash becomes a hyphen).

You may not post content that:

• is illegal, including hate speech or other unlawful material
• harasses or bullies another person
• is sexual content
• shares someone else's personal information without their consent
• is spam or advertising
• otherwise breaks these terms

Automated and human review

We use an automated word filter to screen comments and study group names before they are shown to anyone else. If the filter finds a possible match, the text is held from public view until a person reviews it — the filter never rejects or permanently removes text on its own, and every hold is reviewed by a person.

If a comment or group name breaks these terms or the law, we may: hide it pending review; remove a comment; reset a study group's name to a placeholder; or delete a study group. Taking one of these actions does not by itself suspend or terminate your account. Repeated or serious violations may still lead to account action under Section 12 (Termination).

Reporting content

If you are signed in, you can report a comment you believe breaks these terms or the law, using the Report button beneath it. Reporting is available to signed-in users only; it is not available to signed-out visitors, and there is no separate email or contact-form channel for reports. When you submit a report we collect the reason and explanation you provide, the comment reported, and the name and email on your account. You confirm your report is accurate and made in good faith. Submitting a report you know to be false, or using the tool to harass another user, is itself a breach of these terms. We do not tell a comment's author who reported it. You will get an email when we receive your report and another when we decide it.

If we take action

If we hide, remove, or reset something you posted, we will tell you: the action taken; where it applies and how long it lasts; the facts we relied on, including the date and location; whether it followed a report from another user (without naming the reporter); whether the hold or decision was automated or made by a person; and the rule, or where relevant the law, it is said to have broken. We send this to the email on your account and post it to your account page under Moderation notices.

Contesting a decision

You can contest a decision to hide, remove, or reset your content, or a decision to leave a reported comment up, within 6 months of the decision, from your account page. We will review your statement and tell you the outcome. If upheld, we restore the content where technically possible; a deleted study group cannot be restored. If a contest is not decided within 30 days after that 6-month period ends, it lapses. Contesting a decision with us does not affect any right you may separately have to seek independent legal advice or bring a claim before a court with jurisdiction over the dispute.

We do not sell user data. See our Privacy Policy for full details on how personal data is handled.

9. Privacy

Your use of Deliberate Academy is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these terms by reference. The Privacy Policy explains in detail what data we collect, how it is used, and what rights you have over your personal information.

10. Disclaimer of Warranties

Deliberate Academy is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that the platform will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free from harmful components.

We make no guarantee that:

• The platform or any specific course, exam, or feature will be available at any particular time
• Course content is complete, accurate, or up to date for any specific professional context
• Certificates will be accepted, recognised, or given weight by any employer, institution, or regulator

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the platform at any time without notice.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Deliberate Academy is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of, or inability to use, the platform, including loss of data, loss of earnings, or reputational harm.

As explained in Section 2, no payment is ever required to access courses, take exams, or earn certificates. Our maximum aggregate liability to you for any claim arising from these terms or your use of the platform is capped at the greater of US $100, or the total amount you have paid for the optional ad-free subscription in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you.

12. Termination

Deliberate Academy may suspend or terminate your account at any time if we reasonably believe you have violated these terms, engaged in fraudulent activity, or acted in a way that harms other users or the platform. Where practical, we will notify you before taking action.

You may delete your account at any time from your account settings or by contacting us at hello@deliberateacademy.com. Deletion requests are subject to a 30-day grace period, during which you may cancel the request by logging back in. If the request is not cancelled, your login credentials, profile data, and course progress and exam records are permanently deleted after 30 days.

Certificates you have earned are not deleted along with your account. By agreeing to these terms, you acknowledge that certificates remain permanently accessible via their public verification URL after account deletion, since they are designed to function as durable credentials for employers and clients independent of your login account. See our Privacy Policy for the full legal basis for this retention and for how to request certificate removal in specific circumstances.

13. Changes to Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We may also notify registered users by email for significant changes.

Continued use of Deliberate Academy after an update constitutes your acceptance of the revised terms. If you do not agree to the updated terms, please stop using the platform.

14. Governing Law

These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from your use of Deliberate Academy, are governed by the law of the country in which you reside. If you are using the platform on behalf of a business rather than as an individual, "the country in which you reside" means the country in which that business is established.

Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally may be brought before the courts of that country. Nothing in these terms limits or removes any right you have under mandatory consumer-protection law that applies to you, including a right to bring or defend proceedings in the courts of your own country regardless of this clause.

If a recognised out-of-court or online dispute-resolution service for consumer complaints is available in your country, you may be able to use it before or instead of going to court. We do not currently operate one ourselves.

15. Contact

If you have any questions about these terms, please contact us at hello@deliberateacademy.com.