What Xertz keeps, and for how long.
Short version: no accounts, no recordings, no ads, no selling. Transcripts happen only when both debaters say yes, and everything from a round is deleted about a day after it ends. Effective 16 October 2026.
Who we are
Xertz runs private one on one Lincoln-Douglas practice rounds at xertz.app and xertz.me. It is operated by its founders from Illinois. Questions and requests about your information go to support@xertz.app.
This policy explains what Xertz collects when you use it, why, who can see it, how long it is kept, and how to delete it. It is written to match what the product really does.
Who Xertz is for
Xertz is for people 13 and older. If you are under 18, you need a parent or guardian's permission to use it. Xertz is not meant for children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Before anyone enters a seat code, Xertz asks for a birth month and year. That answer stays on your device. Xertz does not store your birth date, and no session or record is created for anyone who does not pass.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child under 13 used Xertz, or you want your teen's information deleted, write to support@xertz.app. We will delete it.
What we collect
From Discord, when you use the Xertz bot: your Discord user ID, your display name, the server you used it in, and what you typed into the command, such as the resolution and the side you want. The bot sends you messages through Discord.
Your seat: when you enter a code, your browser gets a temporary guest session with a random ID. Xertz has no accounts, so it never asks for your name, email, or password. To stop people guessing codes, Xertz keeps a short log of code attempts that stores your network address only in scrambled form.
Your round: the resolution, each side's display name, the timing of each speech, and connection events such as when someone joined or lost connection. Connection events are stored with a scrambled session ID, not your name.
Your camera and microphone are carried live between the two debaters and are never recorded or stored by Xertz. The camera and microphone check before a round happens only on your device.
A transcript, only if both debaters say yes in that round: the text of what each person said, which side said it, and when. How it is made is explained below.
Judge feedback, only if both debaters agree to ask for it: the judge's Discord user ID and the feedback they write.
Basic technical information: our hosting provider receives your network address and browser details to deliver the site. Error reports record what went wrong in the app, with personal information removed. Page counts are measured with Simple Analytics, which uses no cookies and does not identify you, and round addresses are stripped from what it sees.
How transcription works
Transcription is off unless both debaters separately say yes before the round starts. When it runs, each person's microphone is sent, as they speak, to our speech-to-text provider and turned into text. Xertz does not save the audio, and the provider processes it without keeping it.
Each microphone is transcribed separately, so Xertz knows who said what from which microphone it came from. Xertz never identifies anyone by the sound of their voice.
The finished text is private to the two debaters. It is shared with a volunteer judge only if both of you agree. Xertz does not send transcripts to AI services and does not use them to train any AI model. Automated transcripts contain mistakes.
No biometric data
Xertz does not collect, store, or use biometric identifiers or biometric information, such as voiceprints, face geometry, or anything that identifies a person from their voice or face. Video is never analyzed.
If that ever changes, Xertz will first publish a written retention and destruction schedule and ask for written consent, from a parent or guardian for anyone under 18, before collecting anything. Nothing like that happens today.
Who can see what
Your opponent sees and hears you live during the round, sees your display name, and can read the transcript if you both agreed to one.
A volunteer judge sees the transcript, the resolution, and each side's display name, only after both debaters agree. Judges never get audio or video. Judges may be adults and may come from another Xertz server.
The founders who run Xertz can access information only to operate the service, answer your requests, and keep people safe.
Xertz does not sell your information, does not share it for advertising, and shows no ads. Xertz may disclose information when the law requires it, or to report apparent child exploitation as described below.
Companies that help run Xertz
LiveKit carries the live video and audio and provides the speech-to-text service, which uses Deepgram. Supabase stores the database, in the United States. Lovable and Cloudflare host the website. Discord runs the bot. Sentry receives error reports. Simple Analytics counts page views. Google Workspace handles support email.
Each of them receives only what it needs for its part, and they process it for Xertz, not for their own purposes.
How long it is kept
Rounds, transcripts, and judge feedback are deleted automatically about 24 hours after the round ends. If you want to keep a transcript, download it before then.
Seat codes expire 30 minutes after they are issued. The code-attempt log is deleted after 24 hours. Records of Discord commands are deleted after 7 days. Guest sessions last until you choose Leave and clear this device, and unused ones are removed after 24 hours.
Deleted information can remain in encrypted database backups for up to 7 more days before those backups expire. Connection events kept for reliability contain no names, Discord IDs, or words, and lose their link to your round when the round is deleted.
Support emails are kept as long as needed to answer them.
Your choices and rights
You can say no to transcription, and the round runs the same. You can delete your own words from a transcript at any time; once both debaters have deleted theirs, the transcript is gone. You can say no to sharing with a judge.
You can ask what information Xertz holds about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted, by writing to support@xertz.app. Xertz answers within 30 days. Because Xertz has no accounts, we may ask for your Discord username or round details to find your information.
These choices apply wherever you live, including Illinois and California.
Safety
Report anything unsafe to support@xertz.app. Reports about the safety of young people come first.
Federal law requires Xertz to report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and to preserve related information when it does. Xertz will do that, and will cooperate with law enforcement when the law requires it.
Security
Everything travels encrypted. The database only lets each debater read their own rounds and transcripts, and private keys never reach your browser.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, Xertz will tell the people affected as Illinois law requires.
Changes
If Xertz changes what it collects or how it is used, this page and its date will change before the new practice starts. Anything that needs your consent, such as a new kind of processing, will ask for it in the product first.
Xertz is operated from Illinois. See also the terms of service and the accessibility statement.