Privacy Policy

This site is operated by Human Operating System, a documentary media project. For any question about this policy or about your personal data, contact us at the address in the Contact section below. We act as the controller of the personal data described here.

Information you give us. If you subscribe to our newsletter, we store your email address, your first name if you choose to provide it, the page you subscribed from, and the date of your subscription. If you send us a message through the contact form, we store your name, your email address, the message type you selected, and the content of your message. We ask for nothing else, and there are no optional profiling fields.

Information collected automatically. When you visit the site, our analytics and advertising tools may record standard technical and usage information: pages viewed, referring page, approximate location derived from your IP address, device and browser type, screen size, language, and interactions such as clicking a resource link or scrolling through an article. Whether this happens at all depends on your cookie choices, described below.

Information from advertising clicks. If you arrive from a Google advertisement, the destination URL carries a click identifier that lets us understand which advertisement brought you here. This is used for advertising measurement only.

To publish and improve the work: understanding which episodes, articles, and resources people actually read helps us decide what to make next. To send the newsletter, if you asked for it. To reply to messages you send us. To measure advertising: if we run Google advertisements, we need to know which campaigns bring readers who engage with the work, and which do not. To protect the site against abuse and technical failure.

We do not sell personal data. We do not build advertising profiles of individuals ourselves. We do not use automated decision-making that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on: your consent for analytics and advertising cookies and for the newsletter, which you may withdraw at any time; our legitimate interest in operating, securing, and improving the site, and in replying to messages you choose to send us; and legal obligation where we must retain records to comply with law.

• Google Tag Manager (container GTM-T2QB5P9F) - loads and governs the measurement tags described below. Tag Manager itself does not create profiles of you.
• Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-MHCT0NMEL2) - measures how the site is used, in aggregate. Runs only if you allow analytics cookies.
• Google Ads (conversion ID AW-18371845823) - measures whether advertising works, by recording that a visit from an advertisement led to a meaningful action such as opening a resource. Runs only if you allow advertising cookies.
• Google Consent Mode v2 - the mechanism that carries your cookie choices to the tools above before they collect anything.
• Supabase - the database service that stores newsletter subscriptions and contact form messages.
• Our website hosting and delivery provider - serves the pages and static files, and processes technical request data such as your IP address for the purpose of delivering the site securely.
• Google Fonts - the typefaces used on this site are loaded from Google servers, which receive your IP address as a technical necessity of delivering the font files.
• YouTube thumbnail images - some pages display episode thumbnail images served from Google's image servers. These are static images. We do not embed the YouTube player, so no YouTube tracking cookie is set by this site.

We do not use Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, or any other social advertising pixel. We do not use session recording, heat mapping, or fingerprinting tools.

Some of the providers above are established outside your country and may process data in the United States or other jurisdictions. Where we transfer personal data out of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we rely on the transfer mechanisms our providers make available, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies. Strictly necessary cookies are always active because the site cannot function without them. Analytics and advertising cookies run only if you allow them.

When you first visit, you will see a consent banner offering Accept all, Reject all, and Customize. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, analytics and advertising are denied by default until you choose to allow them. Elsewhere they are allowed by default, and you may refuse them at any time.

You can change your choice whenever you like using the Cookie Preferences link in the footer. Full detail of every cookie category is in our Cookie Policy.

The newsletter is sent only to people who asked for it. Every issue will carry a one-click unsubscribe link, and you may also ask to be removed by replying to any issue or by contacting us directly. We do not share our subscriber list with anyone, and we do not use it for advertising targeting.

Some outbound links to products and tools are affiliate links, which means HOS may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. When you follow such a link you leave this site, and the destination operates under its own privacy policy and sets its own cookies. We do not control and are not responsible for their practices. Editorial judgment is never controlled by affiliate relationships - see our Affiliate Disclosure.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to our processing, to withdraw consent you previously gave, to receive a copy in a portable format, and to complain to your data protection authority. If you are in the European Economic Area you may complain to your national supervisory authority; in the United Kingdom, to the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you are a California resident, you may request access to or deletion of your personal information and may opt out of the sale or sharing of it. We do not sell personal information. Refusing advertising cookies through our banner operates as an opt-out of sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising.

To exercise any right, contact us using the details below. We will respond within one month, and we will not treat you differently for asking.

This site is written for adults. It is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Newsletter subscriptions and contact messages are stored in an access-controlled database. Traffic to this site is encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep the amount of personal data we hold deliberately small, which is the most effective protection available to a project of this size.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we use your personal data, we will ask for your consent again through the banner.

For any privacy question or request, write to us at hosdocumentary@gmail.com. We read everything and reply to what calls for a reply.