Terms of service
Draft — placeholder text. Replace before this is relied on commercially.
These terms cover what Topline will and will not field. They are enforced in
two places: this page, and the acceptable-use rules the survey generator
checks every request against (survey/llm/triage.py reads this file, so
editing it here changes both).
What we do
Topline writes and fields quantitative surveys to panels of genuine American respondents, and reports the results as raw counts and MRP-modeled national estimates. You describe what you want to know; we draft a questionnaire, you approve it, we field it.
Acceptable use
We will not field a survey that:
- Identifies or targets a private individual. Questions about a named person who is not a public figure, or that are designed to surface information about one.
- Harasses, defames, or intimidates. Content whose purpose is to demean a person or group, or to push a defamatory claim by dressing it as a question.
- Collects sensitive personal data we don't handle. Government identification numbers, financial account or card numbers, passwords, precise medical records, or anything else that would put a respondent at risk if it leaked.
- Deceives respondents about who is asking or why. Push polls whose purpose is to spread a message rather than measure opinion, surveys impersonating another organization, and anything presented to respondents as something other than a survey.
- Solicits or sells. Lead generation, recruitment, marketing offers, or fundraising dressed as research.
- Targets minors. Our panels are adults; we do not field to under-18 respondents.
- Is illegal, or asks respondents to disclose their own crimes in a way that could identify them.
What we can't build (yet)
Some requests are legitimate but outside what the product does today. We say so rather than field something that won't answer the question:
- Non-US samples, or samples of a specific named organization's customers or employees.
- Guaranteed samples of a rare population (fewer than roughly 1 in 20 US adults) — we can screen for one, but can't promise the counts.
- Interviews, focus groups, longitudinal panels, or recontacting the same respondents later.
- Uploading your own respondent list.
- Media testing that needs video, audio, or image stimuli.
Respondent data
Respondents answer under a privacy notice that promises aggregate reporting. You receive aggregate results; you do not receive respondent identities.
Changes
We may update these terms. Continued use after a change accepts it.