Principles
Principles, and what Nicholic will never do
The refusals, the promises refused as unkeepable, and the mechanism for holding Nicholic to both.
Last updated
Why this page is written as constraints
Most companies publish values. Values are agreeable, unfalsifiable, and cost nothing — nobody can point at a company and demonstrate that it stopped believing in integrity.
This page is written as constraints instead, because a constraint can be broken and the break can be observed. The first refusal on this page is either kept or it is not, and the difference is visible from outside. That is the only property that makes a published promise worth more than a published sentiment.
They are published now, while Nicholic is small, for a reason worth being blunt about: this is when they are cheap. Promising that leaving stays easy costs almost nothing at this size. The same promise made after years of growth means giving up something real, which is exactly why so few companies make it then. Anything written here can be checked against what actually happens next.
How to read this page
- Each item carries a version and the date it was added. Nothing is edited silently.
- Where a commitment could be read as broader than intended, the narrower reading is stated. That is a limit, not an escape hatch — the limits are part of the promise.
- Changes are published at least thirty days before they take effect, with a dated entry saying what changed and why.
- Wherever these commitments appear elsewhere on the site, the same words are rendered from this list rather than retyped.
How Nicholic makes money
From the people who use the products, directly. TruXSocial has supporters who pay a small amount each month, and that is the entire model. There is no advertising, there are no investors, and revenue from anyone's data is ruled out by the first commitment on this page.
Running costs are deliberately kept small — small enough that a modest number of supporters covers them. That is a design decision, not a temporary state: a service that needs scale to survive will eventually be redesigned to get it.
This matters here more than anywhere else on the site, because "who pays you" is the question that predicts every other answer. A platform funded by advertising is eventually built for advertisers, whatever its founder intended at the start.
If this ever changes, it gets published on this page before it is switched on, not after.
If a commitment is broken
The realistic failure is not a dramatic betrayal. It is a small breach that happens by accident and is convenient not to mention.
So: if one of these is broken, it gets written up in the updates log with what happened, when, and what changed as a result. If it was broken and only noticed later, the write-up says that too. A commitment with no stated consequence for breaking it is decoration.
How to hold Nicholic to this page
Every version of this page is dated, and superseded versions stay readable. If something here changes in a way that was not announced first, that is the failure this page exists to make visible — and it is worth saying so publicly.
Each version of this page will be submitted to a public web archive. That copy is not under Nicholic's control, which is exactly what makes it useful.
What Nicholic will never do
Thirteen refusals. Each is written so that breaking it would be visible from outside.
Nicholic will never sell, rent, or broker personal data.
No user data is sold, rented, or passed to a data broker, an advertising network, or any other buyer. Not in aggregate, not anonymised, not as part of an acquisition of assets.
This does not mean no company ever handles data on Nicholic's behalf. Hosting and email providers necessarily process data to deliver a service. Every such provider is named on the privacy notice, and none of them is paid in data.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never use private user content to train a model without specific, opt-in permission.
Messages, drafts, private posts and anything else not published publicly are not training data. Permission means an explicit choice to opt in, for a stated purpose — not a pre-ticked box, not a terms update, not silence treated as consent.
This does not mean models are never used. It means private content is not the material they are trained on.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never make leaving harder than joining.
Deleting an account takes no more steps than creating one, happens in the same place, and never requires sending an email, waiting for a reply, or talking to anyone.
This does not mean deletion is instant everywhere. Backups roll off on a published schedule. It means nothing is placed in the way of the decision.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never change published rules without notice before they take effect.
Changes to this page, to terms, or to privacy commitments are published at least thirty days before they apply, with a dated entry saying what changed and why. Superseded versions stay readable.
A change forced by law or needed to close a live security hole may take effect immediately. Where that happens it is published as soon as it is safe to do so, and labelled as such.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never hold a person's own data hostage.
Anything a person puts in can be exported in a documented, machine-readable format, without asking permission and without a fee. Export works whether or not the account is being closed.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never build mechanics designed to be hard to stop using.
No streaks that punish absence, no artificial scarcity, no notifications engineered to pull someone back, no infinite feed tuned to maximise time spent. Success is not measured in time on the product.
This does not mean the product will be dull, or that notifications will not exist. It means the test for shipping one is whether the person would want it, not whether it raises a number.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never make core functionality conditional on advertising.
The thing a product is for keeps working without watching, clicking, or being profiled for an advertisement.
This is not a promise that Nicholic will never carry advertising of any kind. It is a promise about what advertising is allowed to hold hostage. How Nicholic is funded is published and kept current.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never use deceptive pricing, hidden charges, or automatic renewal a person did not knowingly choose.
Prices are shown in full before payment. Renewal is opt-in, announced before it charges, and cancellable in one place without contacting anyone.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never ignore a security report made in good faith.
Every report to the security address is read and acknowledged. Good-faith researchers will not be threatened or pursued for reporting.
There is no paid bug bounty, and no guaranteed fix time. Those are stated plainly rather than left implied.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never ship a capability it cannot make safe.
If a feature cannot be made safe, it is delayed or cancelled — and the delay is announced with the reason, rather than absorbed quietly into a roadmap nobody can see.
Safe does not mean risk-free, which is not achievable. It means the failure modes are understood, bounded, and disclosed.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never build profiles of people who have not signed up.
No tracking pixels on other sites, no shadow profiles, no purchasing of contact data, no inferring a person from an address book uploaded by someone else.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never hand over user data without a valid legal order, and will say when orders are received wherever the law allows.
Requests are checked for legal validity and narrowed to what is actually compelled. Where disclosure of the request itself is permitted, it is published.
Where a legal order forbids disclosure, Nicholic will comply with the law. That limit is stated here rather than discovered later.
v1.0 · added
Nicholic will never claim a security property that is not implemented and running.
No security claim appears on this site or in a product until the control exists and is switched on. Every claim carries its limit, because a security claim without a limit is trust theatre.
v1.0 · added
Commitments Nicholic will not make yet
This section matters more than the one above it, because it shows the promises were costed rather than wished for.
- An uptime or availability guarantee
- One person cannot promise continuous availability, and any number printed here would be a number nobody is on call to defend. What is promised instead: when something is down and it is known, it is said publicly rather than waited out.
- A guaranteed reply time
- The response windows published on this site are targets, not guarantees, and they are labelled that way everywhere they appear. A service level nobody can staff is worth less than an honest target that is usually beaten.
- An independent security audit or certification
- A third-party audit, SOC 2, or ISO 27001 costs more than this company has. Claiming one is not affordable and implying one is dishonest, so neither happens. When an audit becomes affordable it will be published in full, including what it found.
- A paid bug bounty
- There is no money to pay one. Reports are still wanted, still read, still acknowledged, and still credited if the reporter wants credit — but nobody should send hours of work here expecting payment that cannot come.
- A launch date
- Nothing still to come has a date, because a date given now would be a guess presented as a plan. Progress appears in the updates log as it happens, which is slower to read and harder to fake.
- A promise that Nicholic will still exist in five years
- Most small companies do not. What can be promised is the ending: if Nicholic winds down, notice comes before shutdown, exports keep working through it, and the data is deleted rather than sold as an asset.
Version history
Nothing on this page is edited silently. Superseded versions stay readable.
| Version | Date | What changed | Archived |
|---|---|---|---|
| v1.1 | 13 August 2026 | One wording correction in the refused promises: "Nothing here has a date" became "Nothing still to come has a date". The refusal is unchanged; the old wording implied nothing had shipped, which was not true. No commitment statement changed. | [FOUNDER TO CONFIRM: archive snapshot URL] |
| v1.0 | 12 August 2026 | First published. Thirteen refusals and six promises refused as unkeepable, written before there was anything to lose by writing them. | [FOUNDER TO CONFIRM: archive snapshot URL] |