Terms of Service.

• You must be at least 13 years old to use debatezone.
• By registering, you confirm that the information you provide is accurate and belongs to you.
• One account per person. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent bans is prohibited.

• You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials.
• You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.
• If you believe your account has been compromised, change your password immediately and contact us.
• We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, without prior notice in serious cases.

When participating in debates, you agree to:

• No AI assistance. Using AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or any other AI) to generate your debate arguments is strictly prohibited. Violations result in temporary suspension. Repeat violations result in longer suspensions.
• No hate speech or harassment. Debate topics may be controversial — that is intentional. However, personal attacks, slurs, threats, or targeted harassment of other users are not permitted.
• No spam. Sending repeated identical messages, flooding the chat, or attempting to exploit the rate limiter will result in account action.
• No exploitation. Deliberately losing matches to manipulate Elo ratings, colluding with another account, or exploiting bugs to gain an unfair advantage is prohibited.
• Debate in good faith. Engaging with the topic honestly is expected. Stalling, ignoring the opponent entirely, or submitting nonsense arguments degrades the experience for everyone.

debatezone uses automated systems to detect AI-generated content in debate messages. These systems analyse writing patterns and, in high-confidence cases, use an LLM to verify suspicious messages.

If AI usage is detected:

• Your account will be suspended (1 hour for a first offense, 12 hours for repeat offenses)
• No Elo or stats will be awarded for that match
• The record of the offense is retained on your account

Our detection is not perfect. If you believe you were incorrectly flagged, contact us and an administrator can review and lift the suspension.

• You retain ownership of the messages you send. By submitting them, you grant debatezone a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, display, and use them for platform features (e.g. match history, spectator mode, leaderboards).
• Debate transcripts may be processed by Google's Gemini AI for judging and moderation purposes. See our Privacy Policy for details.
• We reserve the right to remove any content that violates these terms or applicable law.

• Elo ratings are calculated automatically based on match outcomes.
• We do not guarantee the accuracy or fairness of any specific Elo calculation. Ratings are provided for entertainment and competitive purposes only.
• We reserve the right to adjust, reset, or recalculate ratings if systemic manipulation, bugs, or abuse is detected.
• Forfeiting a match results in an automatic loss.

• AI debates are for practice only and do not affect your Elo rating.
• DebateBot is powered by Google Gemini. The quality and accuracy of its responses may vary. We make no guarantees about its factual correctness.
• There is a limit of 5 AI debates per day site-wide due to API constraints. This limit resets at midnight UTC.

• debatezone is provided "as is". We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free service.
• We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the platform at any time, with or without notice.
• We are not liable for any loss of data, Elo ratings, or match history resulting from downtime or service changes.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, debatezone and its operators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from your use of the platform, including but not limited to loss of data, loss of Elo ratings, or offensive content encountered in debates.

Our total liability to you for any claim shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim (which, as this is a free service, is €0).

These terms are governed by and construed in accordance with applicable law. Any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the relevant courts.

We may update these terms at any time. The "last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent version. Continued use of the platform after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated terms.