Socrates AI Companion

Privacy policy

Effective September 11, 2026

This policy covers the Socrates pilot website at socrates-pilot.duckdns.org and the Socrates AI Companion Chrome extension. The pilot is operated by the Socrates AI team. For privacy questions or requests, contact dcoluigbo@gmail.com.

Information we process

• Account information: your email address, display name, Firebase account identifier, verification status and sign-in/session information. Firebase Authentication manages passwords. Your password passes through our server to Firebase over HTTPS; we do not store the plaintext password in the Socrates database.
• Discussion content: debate registrations, forum posts and replies, discussion topics, participant names, transcribed speech, AI responses, summaries, archive content and publication choices. Discussions may contain political opinions or other sensitive information you choose to share.
• Meeting context: on supported Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams pages, the extension can identify the meeting platform, meeting address or identifier, and microphone mute state to connect the discussion and manage transcription. It does not collect your general browsing history.
• Device and technical information: browser storage holds session tokens, preferences and discussion state. Servers and service providers may process IP addresses, request times and diagnostic information to deliver and protect the service.

Guest access

You can create or join a conversation and read public archives and upcoming debate listings without an account. Your browser stores a random guest token so the server can recognize your participation without an email address or password. The server uses a hash of that token as your guest identifier. Clearing browser storage loses that guest identity. Guest names, contributions and discussion state are stored with the conversation. Commenting on archives and registering for debate forums require an account.

Microphone and transcription

Voice participation requires microphone permission and activation of the microphone controls. You can stop listening in Socrates or revoke microphone permission in Chrome. The hosted pilot uses browser speech recognition, which may send audio to the browser provider for transcription. Socrates receives and stores the resulting discussion text; the hosted pilot does not save raw microphone recordings on its server. Stopping the microphone does not erase text already submitted.

The extension does not record the entire meeting or read the meeting chat. Each participant contributes through their own Socrates session. Only participate in transcription when the people involved understand how their contributions will be used.

How information is used and shared

We use this information to authenticate users, operate forums and live discussions, generate AI facilitation and summaries, produce spoken responses, maintain archives, troubleshoot problems and protect accounts.

• Google Firebase Authentication processes account credentials, verification and password-reset requests.
• Google Cloud hosts the pilot and its backups. Discussion text and relevant context are sent to Gemini through Vertex AI for facilitation and summaries. Text selected for speech is sent to Google Cloud Text-to-Speech. AI processing occurs on Google services, not solely on your device.
• Browser services and Google Fonts may receive requests when speech recognition or website fonts are used. Their processing is governed by their own policies.
• Other participants can see content shared in their discussions. Forum posts and published archives are shared content and may be visible to other platform users according to the feature's access settings. People who receive or download content may keep their own copies.
• The pilot operator can access stored information for administration, support and handling privacy requests. Information may also be disclosed when required by law.

The pilot does not sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising. We do not use your discussions to train our own AI models. Google's handling of AI inputs and outputs is described in its cloud AI data-governance documentation; this policy does not promise zero retention by providers. See also Firebase privacy information and Google's privacy policy.

Storage, security and retention

The pilot's application database and discussion files are stored on a Google Cloud persistent disk in the United States, with restricted cloud backups. Google authentication and AI services may process information in other locations; the AI endpoint is global. Connections to the hosted service use HTTPS, and stored server sessions use hashed tokens. Discussions are not end-to-end encrypted: the server and AI services must process their content.

Account records, forum content, live-discussion state and archives currently have no automatic expiration in the pilot. They remain until removed by the operator, including in response to an applicable deletion request. Daily backups are scheduled for deletion after 30 days; cloud soft-delete protection may retain recoverable copies longer. Removing an account or uninstalling the extension does not by itself remove shared posts, archives or backup copies.

Your choices and requests

You can sign out, disable microphone access, clear browser or extension storage, or uninstall the extension. “Keep me signed in” stores the session beyond the current browser session; it does not store your password in Socrates browser storage. You can choose whether to contribute content or participate in archive publication.

To request access, correction, export or deletion of your account or content, email dcoluigbo@gmail.com from your registered address. Identify the account and relevant discussions without sending your password. Requests are handled manually, and we may verify your identity. We will explain any limits involving shared content, legal obligations, backups or copies held by other participants. There is no self-service account deletion in this pilot.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page and its effective date when the pilot's data practices change. Material changes will be brought to users' attention through the app or an account notice.