1Who runs this, and where
One person runs this, in Amsterdam, and here is how to reach him.
1.1Tembral is operated by Frank Flores, trading as Tembral, a sole trader in the Netherlands, established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. If that becomes a registered company, this clause names it first. The full identification details are on the legal notice, and a postal address is available on request.
1.2Where these terms say “we”, it means Frank Flores and nobody else.
1.3Written notice to us is sent to frank@tembral.com, and anything about your data to privacy@tembral.com. Notice to you goes to the address on your account.
1.4These terms apply to the app, to this website, and to any circle run by us. Where a clause is true of only one of those, it says so.
2Not medical care. Not a crisis service.
Nobody is on call and nothing here is monitored. If tonight is an emergency, this is the wrong place.
2.1Tembral does not provide medical care, psychiatric care, crisis intervention, or emergency services of any kind.
2.2If you are in a medical emergency, thinking about harming yourself, or in immediate danger, call 112 — the emergency number in the Netherlands and across the rest of Europe — or your own country’s emergency number. In the Netherlands, 113 Zelfmoordpreventie is free and answered day and night, on 113 or 0800-0113. Verified lines for four countries, and a directory for everywhere else, are here.
2.3Facilitators are not on call. A circle meets when it meets, and nobody is listening between sittings.
2.4Nothing you send through the app is monitored in real time. Messages in a circle’s chat exist only during that sitting. There is no inbox and there is nobody reading one. Do not use Tembral to say anything urgent.
2.5A circle in the app is audio only and nobody can see you. A facilitator cannot see your face, your room, or any visible sign that something is wrong, and cannot find out where you are. If something is wrong, you have to say it out loud, or use the numbers above.
3Not therapy, not clinical advice
This is peer support. It is a different thing from treatment and it does not replace it.
3.1Tembral is peer support: people with a shared experience speaking honestly to one another, with someone keeping the shape of the hour. It is a different thing from psychotherapy, counselling, coaching or medical treatment, and it does not replace any of them. Tembral is not therapy.
3.2Nothing said in a circle, by a facilitator or by another man in the room, and nothing in a written or recorded practice, is clinical advice, a diagnosis, or treatment. No clinical relationship arises between you and a facilitator, or between you and us, and no duty of care of that kind arises.
3.3A facilitator keeps the structure of the sitting and looks after the safety of the group. He does not assess you, diagnose you, treat you, or supervise your care. That stays true where a facilitator holds a professional qualification outside Tembral: the qualification is not being used here.
3.4If you are in treatment, Tembral is not a reason to change it or stop it. Speak to the person treating you.
3.5We make no promise about any result. Nothing here claims you will feel better, drink less, or change in any particular way. What is promised is the format.
3.6Deciding what to do with anything said in a circle is yours to do. We are not responsible for a decision you take because of an hour you spent here.
4What Tembral is, and where we stand in it
We are not a neutral platform lending you a room and stepping away. The holding is the product, and we do not disclaim it.
4.1We schedule the sitting. We decide which accounts may schedule a circle at all. We appoint the facilitator, and the schedule names him. We set the phases the hour moves through and how long each one runs. A facilitator can switch off one man’s microphone, and can end the sitting for everyone in it. The server decides who is seated.
4.2So we do not take the position that we are somebody in the middle who is not answerable for what happens in a sitting. We are answerable for how a circle is run, within the limits set out in clause 15. We are not answerable for what another man in the room chooses to say or do — that is a different thing, and both statements are meant.
4.3Confidentiality binds you to the other men in the room, not only to us. We do not waive it between you. Clause 10 sets out how.
4.4The statement in clause 3 that this is not therapy is a term of this agreement, which you accept before your first circle. It is not marketing copy on a welcome screen.
5Who this is for
Adults only. Eighteen and over.
5.1You must be eighteen or older to use Tembral, and you must have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement. We do not verify your age and we are relying on what you tell us.
5.2We do not knowingly hold data about anyone under eighteen. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under eighteen, we close it and delete what it holds.
5.3Tembral is made for gay men, and for men working on their relationship with drinking. That is who this is for, not a rule about who is turned away.
5.4We may decline or end anyone’s participation where we believe, honestly and on reasonable grounds, that this format is not right for them. That is not a clinical assessment.
6Your account
A first name is enough. One account per person. You can delete it yourself, at any time, without asking us.
6.1Use a first name or a chosen name. The app never asks for a surname.
6.2One account per person. Do not open one for somebody else and do not share your sign-in. You are responsible for what is done through your account. If you think somebody else has got into it, tell us.
6.3The app does not ask for a picture of you, and it does not request access to your camera or your photo library.
6.4You can delete your account from inside the app at any time, without asking us. Every way out, and what each one reaches, is set out here. Two limits belong here rather than in a document you have to go and find. Deletion from the live system does not reach operational backups until the backup window has passed — ask us what that window is. And deleting your account does not reach the list on tembral.com.
6.5What you write in the private parts of the app — reflections, check-ins, parts, the lines you keep, the people you choose — stays on your phone. It is not copied to a server and we have no way to restore it. If you change phones, or reinstall the app, it is gone. Know that before you write anything you would be sad to lose.
6.6The four About-you fields are the exception to 6.5. What you put under “Where you are”, “What you’re here for”, “Love, and the lack of it” and “Your story” is kept with your account so that it can be shown to a man sitting in the same live circle as you. We can read what is on our own server. Clause 10.7 says what we do with it, the privacy notice says where it is held and for how long, and nobody has to write any of the four at all.
7How circles work
A shape, a facilitator, capped seats, and the right to say nothing at any point.
7.1A circle is a scheduled live audio sitting with a facilitator and a limited number of seats. The schedule shows the title, the facilitator, the start time and the length. Voice only, and no video at any point — see clause 8.
7.2Seats are capped. If you cannot get in, the app says the circle is not available rather than explaining why.
7.3The hour has a shape: an opening, a long middle and a close. The room shows you which phase you are in. Nothing in that display is generated, summarised or transcribed.
7.4Attendance is voluntary at every moment. You can stay silent, decline a question, mute yourself, or leave, without explaining yourself to anybody.
7.5A facilitator can switch off one man’s microphone, for the safety of the group. He stays in the room, can still hear it, and can still type in the chat.
7.6A facilitator can end a sitting early, for everyone, where that is necessary for the safety of the group. The room then closes.
7.7Keeping somebody away from circles happens outside the room — through clause 9, or by our suspending or closing his account under clause 16.
7.8We can cancel or reschedule a circle, and change the size, frequency or shape of circles. Where a sitting is cancelled we give as much notice as we reasonably can.
7.9The Sunday circle offered on this website is a video call rather than an audio sitting in the app. Clauses 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 11 apply to it in full. Clause 8 applies except that it is video, and the privacy notice sets out what is received.
8Nothing recorded
This is a promise made in a contract, not a description of a current feature set.
8.1A circle in the app is audio only. There is no video in the app, and no camera is used, requested or switched on at any point. The app does not ask your phone for camera access at all.
8.2No sitting is recorded. No audio is captured, stored or transcribed — not by us, and not by anyone we use to run the service.
8.3No transcript is made and no summary is generated from what is said. No language model receives anything said or written in a circle, or anything you write about yourself. This is absolute, and it did not change when Tembral moved onto a server.
8.4Chat lines and reactions in a circle are relayed, not kept. They exist while the sitting exists.
8.5You may not record, transcribe, screenshot, photograph, stream or otherwise capture any part of a circle, by any means, including a second device pointed at your screen.
8.6Tembral does publish audio pieces you can listen to when no room is running. Every one of them was recorded on purpose, to be published. Nothing on that shelf comes out of a circle, and nothing ever will without the consent described just below.
8.7Changing any of this would be a material change to this agreement. If we ever wanted to record a sitting, make a transcript, add video to the app, or let a model read what men write, we would have to give at least thirty days’ notice under clause 17, and ask for your separate, specific, express consent in advance, for that feature, on its own. It could never be applied backwards to a sitting that has already happened, and if you did not want it you could close your account before it took effect.
9Report and block
One action, one outcome, and a person at the other end.
9.1If a man in a circle should not be there, tap his seat and report him. Reporting him blocks him: one action, one outcome. He is never told, and you are not asked for a reason. The guidelines set this out in full.
9.2A block takes effect the next time either of you asks for a seat. It is not absolute. If you are ever seated with a man you blocked, leave the room and write to us. If the problem is a facilitator, write to us rather than relying on a block.
9.3A report is acted on and there is a person at the other end of it. You are not given a case number, because the answer comes back to you directly rather than through a system.
9.4If something happened that needs a person rather than a mechanism, write to us and we will read it. We may also, on our own initiative, warn someone, suspend his access, or close his account, where his conduct breaches these terms or the guidelines. Where we do, we tell him what was decided, what it was based on, and how to object. A person makes that decision every time — nothing here is decided automatically.
10Confidentiality
It runs in two directions, it binds you to the other men directly, and it does not expire.
10.1What is said in a circle stays in the circle. You agree that, during and after your participation, you will not repeat, publish, post, paraphrase or describe anything another man shared, in any form, on any platform, whether or not you name him; record, screenshot, photograph, transcribe or capture any part of a sitting by any means; identify another man to anyone outside the circle, or contact him outside Tembral without his express invitation; bring anyone else into the room, including a person sitting with you who is listening, a second device, or any AI assistant, notetaker, transcription tool or recording tool of any kind; or repeat or copy anything you read from another man’s seat.
10.2What you read from a man’s seat is covered by 10.1 exactly as if he had said it out loud, and it is often the most private thing in the room, because it is written about his recovery.
10.3Because a circle is audio only, nobody can see who else is in the room you are physically sitting in, or what is running on your device. This rule rests on your word. Nothing enforces it. That is what makes it worth stating in a contract rather than on a poster.
10.4You may always speak about your own experience and your own material. Take what you learned; leave every other man’s story where it was told.
10.5Your undertaking in 10.1 is given to every other man in the circle, directly, as well as to us. Each of them may rely on it and may enforce it against you in his own name. This is intended to take effect as a stipulation in favour of a third party under Dutch law — a derdenbeding, article 6:253 of the Dutch Civil Code — which each man in the circle accepts by taking a seat in it. We may also enforce it. We are not required to, and choosing not to act in one case does not stop us acting in another.
10.6What we owe you. We treat what you say and what you write as confidential and handle it as the privacy notice sets out. We do not record circles — clause 8 is a term, not a policy. We do not sell your data, and no model is trained on anything you write or say.
10.7We can read what you write about yourself. It is held on a server we run and we hold the keys to it. No other account can read your row: the app hands what you wrote to another man only while he is sitting in the same live circle as you, and only when he taps your seat, and when he closes it his phone keeps no copy. We do not go looking. But we are not going to tell you it is impossible, because it is not, and you should decide what to write knowing that.
10.8The limits, said plainly. We may disclose information where the law requires it, or where we believe, honestly and on reasonable grounds, that disclosure is necessary to prevent a serious and immediate risk of harm to you or to somebody else. We cannot guarantee the conduct of other participants: a breach of 10.1 is a serious breach of this agreement and grounds for immediate removal, and it is not something we can undo. Confidentiality is a promise, not a technical guarantee. The one part of it that is architecture — that nothing is recorded — is clause 8.
11The guidelines, and conduct
The guidelines are the real rules, and they form part of this.
11.1Taking a seat is conditional on the community guidelines. They form part of these terms, and we will not change them during a circle you have already taken a seat in.
11.2We may issue a warning, suspend access, or close an account where conduct breaches these terms or the guidelines. We will not describe what happened to anybody else in the circle.
12Money
There is none. Nothing is sold anywhere, and nothing here creates a right to a refund because nothing has been paid.
12.1No money moves through the Tembral app. There is nothing to buy inside it: no prices, no subscription, and no content locked behind a payment.
12.2Circle seats are never sold inside the app.
12.3Because nothing has been paid, nothing in this version of these terms creates a right to a refund.
12.4If that changes, it changes for circles that have not yet happened, never retroactively, and we will say so in writing first. Anything sold would be sold under separate terms of sale, published before a single euro is taken, including how the fourteen-day right of withdrawal an EU consumer has when buying a digital service at a distance applies to it.
13What you write, and what we may do with it
You keep it. We take the narrowest licence that lets the service run, and no wider.
13.1You keep everything you write and say. We do not claim ownership of it.
13.2You grant us only the licence we need to run the service: to store what your account holds, to show what you chose to share with the men in your circle, and to answer you when you ask us for help. It ends when you delete your account.
13.3We will not use anything you write for marketing, publish it, or use it to train any model — not ever, without your separate, specific, written consent for that purpose, which you could withdraw.
13.4The audio is not ours, and it is not yours to keep either — it is not recorded, so there is nothing to own.
13.5We own Tembral itself: the app, the written material, the practices, the audio pieces, the name and the design. You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use them for your own participation. Do not copy, resell, republish, scrape or reverse-engineer them, or use any of them to train a model.
13.6Feedback is different: if you send us an idea about how Tembral should work, we can use it freely and without paying you. The feedback board is a public page run by a third party, so put nothing private on it, and nothing about another man.
14Third parties, and the app store
Every company involved is named on a page of its own, and Apple has rights under this agreement that it is entitled to enforce.
14.1Tembral runs on services other people operate, and each has its own terms. Every one of them is named here. We are not responsible for third-party content or third-party services.
14.2Tembral is an iPhone app and Apple is the only store it comes from today. Apple’s standard terms apply to that download as well as these terms. These terms are between you and us and not with Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide support or maintenance for the app, and no responsibility for it, for any claim about it, or for any third-party claim that it infringes someone’s rights. Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you. If the app does not work as it should, Apple’s own refund rules apply to the download.
15If something goes wrong
We are liable for what we do. We are not liable for what an hour makes you decide.
15.1Tembral is provided as it is and as available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties, including any promise that the service fits a particular purpose or runs without interruption.
15.2Nothing in this clause limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, for intent or conscious recklessness (opzet of bewuste roekeloosheid), or for anything else that cannot be limited under Dutch law.
15.3Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profit, data or goodwill; for what another man in a circle says or does, beyond acting under clause 9 or 11; or for what happens on a third party’s service or a failure of your own connection or device.
15.4Our total liability, added together across everything, is limited to the greater of what you have paid us in the twelve months before the event and one hundred euro. Today that is one hundred euro, because nothing has been paid.
15.5Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under Dutch consumer law or under the GDPR, and where a clause here conflicts with one of those rights, that right wins. That includes the two clauses above.
16Ending it, and what survives
Confidentiality does not end when you leave.
16.1You can stop at any time, and delete your account from inside the app without asking us.
16.2We may suspend or close your access where you breach these terms or the guidelines, where the law requires it, or where we stop running Tembral. If we stop, we give reasonable notice.
16.3If we stop running Tembral, the list is deleted within thirty days of that notice. It is not sold, not transferred, and not handed to a successor.
16.4Clauses 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17 and the guidelines survive after your account is closed. In particular, confidentiality does not end when you leave. What was said in a circle stays in the circle after you close your account, after the circle stops meeting, and after Tembral itself stops.
17Changes, law, and disputes
Dutch law, an Amsterdam court, and a consumer keeps his own.
17.1We may update these terms. Where a change is material — and clause 8 says what counts as material — we tell you by email or in the app at least thirty days before it takes effect. If you keep using Tembral after that date, you accept the change. If you do not want it, close your account before it takes effect.
17.2Every version carries the date it was last changed at the foot of this page. There is no archive of previous versions; if you want one, save the page.
17.3These terms are governed by Dutch law, and the competent court is the court in Amsterdam. If you are a consumer, that does not take away your right to bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of that country.
17.4There is no arbitration clause in this document, on purpose. An arbitration clause imposed on a consumer in the EU is generally not enforceable against him, and putting one in would only mislead.
17.5If you want to complain about a decision we made, this is how. For anything about your data you can also complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the supervisory authority where you live, without speaking to us first.
17.6If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still stands.
17.7These terms were last changed on 6 September 2026.
