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Privacy Policy

Last updated October 21, 2026

MEAT is built for a community that has real reasons to care about privacy. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have.

1. Who this applies to

This policy applies to your use of MEAT. By using the service you consent to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use MEAT.

2. Information we collect

  • Account information: your email address, used to sign you in and to send you service and safety messages.
  • Profile information: what you choose to add, including display name, age, bio, tags, and optional details such as height, weight, body and identity details, relationship status, and, if you choose, sexual-health information (for example HIV status). Some of this is sensitive; you decide what to share and can hide any optional field.
  • Photos and video: the images and clips you upload to your profile, messages, the board, or the video feed.
  • Location: your device's location, used to show you people nearby. See Section 4.
  • Messages and content: the messages, posts, and interactions you create on the service.
  • Device and usage data: basic technical data such as device/browser type and how you use the app, used to operate, secure, and improve it, and to power our own in-house analytics.
  • Notification tokens: if you enable push notifications in your browser, the token needed to deliver them. If you use the iPhone app, a push token for your device, which the app saves while you are signed in, even before you choose whether to allow notifications. We only send notifications you allow. The iPhone token is removed when you sign out and deleted 30 days after that.
  • Sign-in security data: when you ask for a sign-in code or link, and while your session is active, we record the network address and browser identifier the request came from. We use this to limit sign-in attempts and investigate attempts to take over an account. Session records can remain after you sign out or a session expires. Deleting your account removes your session records, but sign-in request records may remain.
  • Safety signals: limited technical signals we may derive to find spam, fake accounts, and coordinated abuse. These are derived values, not copies of your messages. They include a record of the messages you send (who they went to, when, and whether they were delivered, but not what they said); a one-way fingerprint of the messages you send when you start a new conversation (your first few, and any more before the other person replies), used to spot the same text sent again and again; and a keyed one-way hash of the network address your device connects from or of a member referral code you signed up with. For fingerprints and hashes, our safety records store the hash, not the underlying value. We do not use device fingerprinting, face recognition, or reverse image search.

3. Sensitive information

Because MEAT is a service for gay, bi, and queer men, your use of it may reveal information about your sexual orientation, and you may choose to share health-related information such as HIV status. We treat this as sensitive and use it only to provide the service to you. By providing it, you explicitly consent to our processing it for that purpose. You can remove it at any time by editing your profile.

4. How location works

We compute distances on our servers from your device's location. Unless you choose Exact, we never share your exact coordinates with other users: the position other people can see is deliberately fuzzed, offset to an approximate area. If you choose Exact in your settings, other members see your pin at your actual location. Nearby is the default, and you can change the precision level or hide yourself from the map entirely in your settings. Distances shown to others are rounded. To name the neighborhood at the top of your grid, our servers send our mapping provider an approximate point, rounded to about a kilometer, with nothing that identifies you, and we don't store the name it sends back.

5. How we use your information

  • to operate discovery, showing you nearby people and letting them find you;
  • to deliver messages, notifications, and the features you use;
  • to keep the community safe: moderation, reviewing reports, and enforcing our Terms;
  • to find and act on spam, fake accounts, and coordinated abuse, including limiting, pausing, or reviewing accounts that break our Terms;
  • to understand and improve the product through our own first-party analytics;
  • to communicate with you about your account, security, and service updates;
  • to comply with legal obligations and protect our rights and users.

6. Analytics and advertising

We do not use Google Analytics or third-party advertising trackers, and we do not run behavioral ad tracking across other sites. Our analytics are computed in-house from our own data and are designed to be privacy-preserving. We do not sell your personal information.

7. How we share information

  • With other users: your profile, photos, and location (approximate unless you choose Exact) are visible to other users as part of how the service works. Anything you send in a message or post is shared with its recipients.
  • With service providers: we use trusted vendors to run MEAT, including cloud hosting and storage, our database provider, an email delivery provider, a mapping provider, push-notification delivery, and, for any paid features, a payment processor. They may process your information only to provide services to us.
  • With OpenAI, only if you chat with Kevin: Kevin is an AI profile. When you message him, the text of your conversation with Kevin, and only that conversation, is sent to OpenAI, which works as our service provider to check each message and write his reply. We send no profile details, no location and nothing that identifies your account. Messages you send to other members never go to OpenAI. The Meat team can also read your chats with Kevin, which is how we pick the monthly winner.
  • For legal and safety reasons: we may disclose information if required by law, to respond to lawful requests, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of our users, the public, or us.
  • In a business transfer: if we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction.

8. Cookies and local storage

We use a small number of essential cookies and browser storage, principally to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences. We do not use them for cross-site advertising.

9. Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the service. When you unsend a message, we clear its text and queue its attachments for erasure, which happens within a reasonable period. When you remove a profile photo, we stop showing it at once, keep a record of the photo, and queue its image files for erasure, which happens within a reasonable period. When you remove a photo from your private album, we stop showing it at once, including to anyone you unlocked it for, keep a record of the photo, and queue its image files for erasure, which happens within a reasonable period. Limited copies are also retained for legal, safety, dispute-resolution, or backup purposes. When you delete a Board post, a Watch video, or a comment on either, we hide it from the service rather than remove it: we keep the record, and any photo, voice clip, or video behind it, for moderation and safety review.

Deleting your account is not the same as erasing everything we hold. We sign you out, stop push notifications, mark the account deleted, and remove your profile from discovery. We clear the text of messages you sent and remove their link previews, and we queue your profile photos, private album photos and sent message attachments for erasure. We keep your account and profile records, your Board posts and comments, your Watch videos and the comments on them, and the files behind those posts and videos, which are hidden from the service rather than removed. We also keep messages other people sent to you, and shared game and system messages, because those are part of other members' records too. After your account is deleted, our servers stop returning those conversations in the other person's inbox or when they try to open one. Messages already loaded on a device may remain visible; deletion does not immediately clear those copies.

Content that has been reported may be retained for up to 30 days for review, even if the sender unsends it.

10. Your rights and choices

  • Access and correction: you can view and edit most of your information directly in the app.
  • Deletion: you can delete your account, which removes your profile from the service. Section 9 explains what deleting your account removes and what we keep.
  • Data export: you can request a copy of your personal information.
  • Notifications: you can control push and email notifications in your settings, and unsubscribe from non-essential emails.

If you ask us for a copy of your information you can request your sign-in security records and information about whether we hold safety signals for your account and what kind. We do not include other people's accounts, the identity of anyone who reported you, or the internal thresholds our safety systems use, because releasing those would let the accounts we are trying to stop work around them.

Depending on where you live (for example, under the EU/UK GDPR or California's privacy laws), you may have additional rights, such as the right to object to or restrict certain processing, or to lodge a complaint with your data-protection authority. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@mmmmmeat.com.

11. How we protect your information

We take security seriously: sign-in secrets and session tokens are stored hashed, connections are encrypted in transit, uploaded images are re-encoded to strip embedded metadata (including GPS location) before they are stored, and we keep encrypted backups. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to improve continuously.

12. Children

MEAT is strictly for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18, we terminate the account. We remove and report child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and/or law enforcement as required by law. If you believe a minor is using the service, report it to support@mmmmmeat.com.

13. International users

MEAT is operated from the United States, and your information may be processed in the United States and other countries where our providers operate, which may have different data-protection laws than your own. By using the service you consent to that processing.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.

15. Contact

For any privacy question or request, contact us at support@mmmmmeat.com.