Who runs this service
電扶梯走左邊 Community ("Left Side Escalator Community") is the members’ community app of the podcast 電扶梯走左邊. It is built and run by the podcast team.
The app is open only to current members of the podcast. It is a separate service from the podcast’s own app of the same name: the two share no accounts and no data, except that your own records there are copied here when you ask for them to be (see below).
What we collect
Three kinds of thing only: what you write or upload, what is needed to sign you in, and the minimum technical data needed to run the service.
- Your email address. To sign in, we email you a 6-digit code that is valid for 10 minutes. There are no passwords in this app.
- Your membership status. Before sending a code, and once a day after that, we check your email against the podcast’s member list, read one thing only — whether you are a current member — and keep the result of that check.
- What you write: journal entries, goals and goal journals, weekly reviews, your year vision and year review (including the photos and words you put in them), mood records and notes, habits and check-ins (including notes, durations, wake-up times, and the one question each kind of habit asks, such as which workout you did or which book you are reading), posts and comments, reactions, direct messages and group names, and your answers to the monthly matching questions.
- Photos you upload, including your profile photo. EXIF data, including location, is removed on your device before a photo is sent, and removed again by the server.
- Your profile: display name, profile photo, city, occupation, what you are practising, birthday, gender, MBTI, interests, what you want from the community, core values, core mission and core principles, and your choice of whether each one is shown. Every field is optional. Your answer to “what did you come here to change?” is kept in your account too, and only you can read it.
- Matching, friends and events: who you liked or passed on, your matches, the feedback survey you fill in after meeting; friend requests and your friends list (a declined or removed friend leaves a status record, so the same request is not sent again), your friend code and your “who can add me” setting; the events you register for, wait-list for and check in to, the events you host, and any “want to host an event?” proposal you send to the administrators.
- Who you have blocked and what you have reported, so that blocking works and reports can be handled.
- Technical data: device platform, app version, and the error message and code location when something fails; if you turn on notifications, the push endpoint and encryption keys your browser provides on the web, or the push token of the phone app (no longer used to send anything once you turn notifications off, and deleted when you sign out).
- Abuse prevention: when you ask for a sign-in code we record the source IP address to limit how many requests can be made in a short time, and delete it within a day.
- Records imported from the old app, only when you ask: after you sign in to the podcast’s 電扶梯走左邊 app in Settings → Import from the old app, your own phone reads your profile, core values, habit check-ins, journals, moods, goals, weekly reviews and year vision there and copies them into this account; photos are copied by our server from that app’s photo storage. The sign-in to that app is used only while reading, and is neither kept nor sent to our servers. We keep only when the import ran, how many records it copied, and a code that makes sure one old account is imported into one account here, never the raw records. What is imported is yours like anything you write here, and can be deleted at any time.
What we do not collect
No advertising tracking, no third-party analytics SDKs, no location data, no contacts, no passwords and no tracking cookies. “Add to calendar” only opens your phone’s calendar so you can save the event there yourself; we cannot read your calendar. Event and habit reminders are scheduled by your phone and never pass through our servers.
Membership fees are collected by the podcast’s membership platform. This app handles no payments and never sees your payment details.
We do not sell your content to anyone, and we do not use it to train any model.
Why we collect it
What you write is kept so that you can read it — on this device, and on any other device you sign in on — and what you choose to share is kept so that other members can read it. That is what this app is for.
Your email address is used only to sign you in and confirm your membership. We do not send marketing email to it.
Community statistics count people and rates — for example, how many people journalled this week. They are computed from timestamps and row counts, never from the content itself, and any group smaller than 10 people is shown only as "<10".
Technical data is used only to fix what is broken.
Where your data is stored
Everything you write is saved on your own device first (in the app’s database, or in your browser’s local storage) and then synced to our servers. You can read and write with no network at all.
Server-side data is transferred to and stored in the United States. These are the service providers we use; they process data only on our instructions:
- Vercel: hosting for the API and the web app, in the US East region. Photos are stored in Vercel Blob as private files and can only be read through our API, which checks who is asking. Profile photos are stored in the database.
- Neon: managed database, in the US East region.
- Resend: sends the sign-in code emails, and the notice sent when an address is not on the member list.
- Airtable: holds the podcast’s member list; we read only email addresses and membership status from it.
- Sentry: if error monitoring is turned on, error reports are sent to Sentry, with journal, message and mood-note text and email addresses removed before sending.
- Push services: used only if you turn on notifications. On the web, your browser’s push service (for example Apple, Google or Mozilla); in the phone app, Expo’s push service, which hands the notification to Google (Android) or Apple (iPhone) to deliver. Notifications never contain the text of anything anyone wrote, such as a message or a journal entry.
What administrators can see
To handle reports and run channels and events, community administrators can do the following, and their actions are logged:
- Read reported content, and the display name, email address and profile of a reported account.
- See, in member management, a member’s email address, when they joined, when they last left a record in the app (the time only, never the content), city, occupation, practice, interests, the titles of their posts, and the events they hosted or signed up for. These are not affected by What others can see.
- Hide, edit or delete content that breaks the community rules. When content is edited, the previous version is kept.
- While handling a report, read the direct messages relevant to that case — only under a time-limited grant that is itself logged. Outside of that, administrators cannot read your messages.
- When a member reports another member, or one of their messages, the direct messages between the two of them from the last 90 days (up to 500) are copied into the report at that moment, as the record it is handled on — and the reported message itself, even when it was in a group or event chat; deleting a message or an account afterwards does not remove the copy. The copy can be read only under the grant described above, and is kept until 2 years after the case is closed, then deleted — or, if the case is never closed, 2 years from the day it was made.
How long we keep it
A card you take off Today does not delete what is in it: every day written before stays until you delete your account. Posts and mood records you delete, and check-ins you undo, are removed from the database straight away; so that the same item disappears from your other devices too, we keep a deletion record with no content in it (only an ID, a type and a time) until you delete your account.
Error reports the app sends to our server have any email addresses removed before they leave your device and again before they are stored, and are deleted after 30 days.
Records of sign-in code emails (your email address and when it was sent) are deleted after 24 hours. The code itself is never stored as written — only a hash from which the code cannot be worked out.
You stay signed in for 3650 days in the app and 30 days in a browser. The web app uses a single sign-in cookie. You can sign out at any time.
What you can do
Delete your whole account: in the app, open 我 (Me) → 設定 (Settings) → 帳號 (Account) → 刪除帳號 (Delete account) — called 個人資料與隱私 (Profile & Privacy) in older versions. The moment you delete, the account is switched off: you are signed out on every device, and other members can no longer see you, your profile, your posts or your comments. Sign back in within 7 days to cancel the deletion, and everything comes back. After 7 days the account is deleted for good and cannot be recovered: your profile and profile photo, journals, moods, habits, year vision and review, photos, friends list, posts, comments and any conversations with no one else left in them are deleted, and other people’s comments and reactions under your posts go with those posts. At the same moment, our member-list check record and our records of sign-in code emails for your address are deleted too. You can do this entirely in the app — there is no need to write to anyone. If your membership has ended, you can still do this as long as you are signed in.
Deleting your account does not cancel your paid subscription on the podcast’s membership platform. To stop paying, cancel it there.
What remains after you delete your account: administrator action logs and report case records (which may include your email address; reports you filed also stay, no longer linked to your account), earlier versions of content an administrator edited, copies of direct messages made when a report was filed (kept until 2 years after the case is closed — or, if the case is never closed, 2 years from the day they were made), event ticket records, events you hosted that have already taken place (their title, description, time and place, because other people took part; the host name becomes “Deleted account”), and notifications other members received that mention your name. These are kept for community safety, auditing and the people who signed up. Events you host that have not happened yet: when you delete, you choose to cancel them straight away or hand them to the administrators, who can take one over within 7 days; any no one takes over is then cancelled, and everyone signed up is told. If you are a team member whom an administrator added to the sign-in list by hand, that list entry also stays until an administrator removes it.
Sign out: at the bottom of Settings. Signing out wipes the local database on that device.
Correct: every field in your profile can be edited by you.
There is not yet an "export all my data" button. That is a feature not yet built, not a refusal.
Depending on where you live, data protection law (such as Taiwan’s Personal Data Protection Act or the UK GDPR) may also give you the right to ask us to access, copy, correct, stop processing or delete your personal data.
Age
This app is only for people aged 18 or older, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.
When you sign in, or the first time the app asks, we ask you to confirm that you are 18 or older, and we record when you confirmed. That record is kept until your account is deleted.
If this page changes
The effective date is at the top of this page. When something material changes we update that date. A major change — to what we collect, who can see it, or what deleting your account means — is explained in the app the next time you open it, and you are asked to agree again; if you do not, you can sign out or delete your account.
When you agree to this policy and the terms (at sign-in, or again in the app), we record which version you agreed to and when, and keep that until your account is deleted.
Language
This English version is a translation provided for convenience. If it differs from the Traditional Chinese version, the Traditional Chinese version prevails.
Contact us
For any question about this page, or to request a copy of your data, email team@leftsideescalator.com.