Aster ID

Terms of Service

Version 1.0 · Published 12 October 2026 · Takes effect

These Terms govern your use of the Aster ID Personal Data Server (PDS) and the Aster ID Portal. For the services' data practices, see the Privacy Policy; the Aster ID website itself is covered by the Website Privacy Policy.

Part 1: Introduction

1. Welcome

Welcome. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of two services operated by Stichting Modal, a non-profit foundation established under the laws of the Netherlands and registered at Kranenburgweg 135 A, 2583 ER The Hague (RSIN 868779465):

  • the Aster ID Personal Data Server (PDS), our infrastructure for hosting your AT Protocol identity and the data associated with it;
  • the Aster ID Portal, the front-end at portal.aster.place for managing your Aster account.

In these Terms, “we”, “us”, and “our” mean Stichting Modal. “You” means anyone using one or more of these services.

Aster ID is Modal’s programme to build sovereign social infrastructure for researchers.

If you are using any of our services as a consumer in the EU or EEA, nothing in these Terms takes away rights you have under your local consumer protection laws. Where these Terms conflict with mandatory consumer law that applies to you, the mandatory law wins.

2. What these Terms cover, and which Parts apply to you

These Terms are organized in four Parts.

Part 1 (this Part) introduces the services and these Terms.

Part 2 sets the common rules that apply to everyone using any of our services. If you have any relationship with us as a user, Part 2 applies to you.

Part 3 covers the Aster ID PDS and Portal. It applies to you if you have an Aster ID account.

3. The protocol and the network

The Aster ID PDS and the Aster ID Portal all run on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (the AT Protocol, or atproto), an open standard for social networking. atproto is to social what SMTP is to email: a protocol many applications can speak, none of them owns. The network of applications and services running on atproto is known as The Atmosphere.

This has three practical consequences for everyone using any of our services:

  1. Your account is portable. Your identity, follows, and posts can move with you to other atproto applications and to other infrastructure providers. We design for the exit, not just for the entry. See §20 for the mechanics.
  2. What you post on the open social web is public by default. Posts, profile, follows, likes, and blocks are visible to anyone, on our services and on other atproto applications that choose to display them. We say more about visibility in the Privacy Policy.
  3. Other atproto applications and operators exist and we don’t control them. Third-party applications and PDS providers on the AT Protocol are operated by other parties, with their own terms. We are not responsible for their content or practices. See §14.

Part 2: Common terms

Applies to everyone with an Aster ID account.

4. Eligibility

The minimum age depends on which of our services you are using:

  • Aster ID PDS and Portal: you must be at least 16 years old.

We will ask you to confirm that you meet the applicable minimum age when you sign up or sign in. Where local law requires further methods of age assurance, we will introduce them over time. Methods we anticipate adopting may include verified payment card checks and zero-knowledge proof of age via the EU Digital Identity system. We aim to adopt the least intrusive method that meets the legal requirement. We do not retain biometric data, ID documents, or images supplied to age-assurance vendors. We will not use facial age estimation.

If we have reasonable grounds to believe a user is below the applicable minimum age for the service they are using, we will suspend their access until age is confirmed and, failing confirmation, terminate the account or the relevant access.

If you are using our services on behalf of an organization, you confirm you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

5. Your account

You access our services using your AT Protocol account. To use our services, your account must be hosted on the Aster ID PDS, which is infrastructure that we run(see §16).

You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity that happens under your account.

If your account is taken over or used without your permission, tell us as soon as possible at support@aster.place so we can help you recover it and protect anyone affected.

Do not share your account. Do not use anyone else’s account.

Your account handle is public. Choosing a handle that impersonates a real person, an institution, or a brand is not allowed except in clearly labelled cases such as parody or fan accounts.

6. Your content

“Your Content” means anything you post, upload, or send through any of our services, including posts, profile fields, photos, videos, lists, feeds, direct messages, and feedback.

You own Your Content. You don’t give us ownership of it by posting it through our services.

You give us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to do the things that are necessary to provide our services to you and to other users, namely to:

  1. host, store, transmit, copy, and display Your Content so other users on our services and on other atproto applications can see and interact with it;
  2. resize, reformat, and adapt Your Content as needed for different devices, contexts, and bandwidth;
  3. apply moderation, labelling, or restriction to Your Content under our moderation policy (see §17);
  4. include Your Content in transparency reporting, in aggregate and de-identified statistics, and where required by law, in disclosures to authorities; and
  5. permit our infrastructure providers to access Your Content strictly to provide hosting and operations to our services.

The licence covers only what we operate.

The licence narrows as Your Content is removed:

  • when you delete a specific piece of content, the licence over that content ends, subject to the qualifications below;
  • when you delete your Aster ID account, the licence over content on the Aster ID PDS ends, subject to the qualifications below;

Two qualifications apply throughout:

  • We may keep copies for a limited time for backups, abuse investigation, legal preservation, and similar legitimate purposes, as set out in our Privacy Policy.
  • Because the AT Protocol is federated, copies of public content may persist on other operators’ infrastructure outside our control. We will notify the wider network of your deletion, but we cannot force other operators to remove their copies.

We will never sell Your Content or any other personal data we hold about you. We will never profile you for advertising purposes.

We may use automated systems (including AI-based systems) to detect spam, abuse, and prohibited content under §7.

7. Acceptable use

Across all of our services (the Aster ID PDS and the Aster ID Portal), you specifically agree not to:

  • store, possess, or distribute content where doing so is illegal under applicable law, including:
    • material that constitutes child sexually exploitative material, including material that may not amount to illegal child sexual abuse material but that nonetheless sexually exploits or promotes the sexual exploitation of minors, unlawful pornography, or that is otherwise indecent;
    • content that contains or promotes extreme acts of violence or terrorist activity, including terror or violent extremist propaganda;
    • content advocating bigotry, hatred, or the incitement of violence against any person or group of people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, impairment, or any other characteristic associated with systemic discrimination or marginalisation;
  • violate the privacy or infringe the rights of others, including by publishing, sharing, or storing other people’s confidential information, identifying information, or intimate imagery without authorization, including for the purposes of harassing, exposing, harming, or exploiting them;
  • attempt unauthorized access to accounts or systems;
  • deploy malware or deliberately disrupt service availability;
  • otherwise act unlawfully, including by storing, publishing, or sharing content that depicts, promotes, or instructs on illegal activity, is fraudulent, defamatory, misleading, or exploitative, or that infringes the intellectual property rights of others;

Breaking these rules can lead to action on your content or your account. §17 explains what we do at the PDS layer.

8. Service availability

We will use reasonable skill and care to keep our services available and to maintain the data you store with us. We do not promise uninterrupted service. We may take any of our services down for maintenance, security, or legal reasons. Where the law requires us to give advance notice of planned interruption, we will.

Beta status. The Aster ID Portal is currently in beta. Features may be added, changed, or removed as they develop. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of material changes. We provide both on a best-efforts basis under this section.

9. How we are funded

Our services are funded by Modal, through grants, donations, and programme revenue. We will never sell Your Content or other personal data we hold about you. We will never profile you for advertising purposes.

10. Disclaimers, our liability to you, and time limits on claims

Where the mandatory law of your country of residence gives you more rights than this section, that mandatory law wins.

10.1 What we do not promise

We provide our services with reasonable skill and care. We do not promise that:

  • our services will always be available, uninterrupted, error-free, secure against every possible threat, or free of bugs;
  • any particular content, person, feed, or feature will be available or remain available;
  • our services will be compatible with any particular device, browser, or third-party application;
  • the content of other users, of operators of other atproto applications, or of third parties is accurate, current, complete, lawful, or fit for any purpose you have in mind;
  • our moderation decisions, including decisions to apply, decline to apply, or reverse a label or restriction from Bluesky or another provider, will satisfy any particular user.

Except as required by the mandatory law that applies to you, the services are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement beyond those that the law makes mandatory.

10.2 What we are always liable for

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for:

  • death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
  • fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
  • gross negligence or wilful misconduct;
  • any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded under the mandatory law that applies to you, including under EU consumer protection law and including conformity obligations under Directive (EU) 2019/770.

10.3 What we are not liable for

Subject to §10.2, we are not liable for:

  • indirect, special, incidental, punitive, or consequential losses, including loss of profits, loss of business, loss of opportunity, loss of goodwill, loss of data, loss of anticipated savings, or wasted expenditure;
  • the costs of procuring substitute services;
  • content posted by other users or by operators of other atproto applications, or harm arising from your exposure to such content;
  • the behaviour or decisions of other operators on the AT Protocol, including Bluesky Social, PBC;
  • service interruption, suspension, or termination that complies with these Terms;
  • delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, as described in §10.6;
  • moderation decisions made in good faith, except through the appeal routes set out in §21 and any rights local law gives you.

10.4 Cap on our total liability

Subject to §10.2, our total cumulative liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with your use of any of our services or these Terms, whether in contract, tort, statute, or otherwise, is limited to one hundred euros (€100) in aggregate.

10.5 Time limit on claims

You must notify us in writing of any claim within twelve (12) months of the date on which you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the events giving rise to it. Claims you do not notify within that period are waived, except where the mandatory law that applies to you, or any statutory limitation period that cannot be shortened by contract (such as the Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek Article 3:310 limitation period), provides otherwise. Notification by itself does not extend any statutory limitation period; you remain responsible for issuing proceedings within the time the law requires.

Before bringing a claim, you must give us a reasonable opportunity to investigate and, if appropriate, to remedy the issue. The appeal process in §21 (Aster ID account) is the route for moderation disputes; for other issues, write to support@aster.place with a clear description of what happened, what you want, and any evidence you can share.

10.6 Force majeure

We are not in breach of these Terms, and are not liable, for any failure or delay caused by events outside our reasonable control. These events include power or telecommunications outages, internet-backbone failures, denial-of-service attacks, malicious cyber activity, supply or service failures by third parties, action by government or regulatory authorities, court orders, natural events, public health emergencies, and labour disputes affecting us or our service providers. If a force-majeure event continues for more than 30 consecutive days, either of us may end the relationship under §21, with no further liability beyond what has already accrued.

11. Indemnification

11.1 Consumers

If you use our services as a consumer, this section does not apply to you. We do not require an indemnity from you.

11.2 Business and institutional users

This section applies if you use our services in the course of a trade, business, craft, profession, or public function, including if you use our services on behalf of any company, partnership, non-profit, public-sector body, or other organization.

If you are such a user, you will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Stichting Modal, its officers, directors, employees, contractors, and Aster ID’s partner organizations, on demand and on a full-indemnity basis, against any and all losses, damages, fines, penalties, settlements, judgments, costs, and expenses (including legal and professional fees on a full-indemnity basis) that we incur arising out of or in connection with:

  • your breach of these Terms, or our Trademark Policy;
  • any claim by a third party that Your Content, or your use of our services, infringes that third party’s intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights;
  • any regulatory finding, order, or fine arising from your conduct on our services;
  • any breach by you of applicable law in connection with your use of our services.

We will tell you promptly about any claim covered by this indemnity. We may choose to defend the claim ourselves using counsel of our choice; if we do, you will cooperate fully with that defence and you will pay our reasonable costs. You will not settle any covered claim without our prior written consent.

12. Intellectual property

The Aster ID name and logo, and the design, code, and copy of our services are owned by Stichting Modal or licensed to us. You do not acquire any rights to them by using our services.

Parts of our services are built on open-source software, including software released under the MIT and Apache 2.0 licences. Your use of those components is governed by their respective licences. We publish a notice listing the components we use and their licences.

If you want to use the Aster ID name or logo for anything beyond ordinary reference to the services (for example, “I have an Aster ID account”), see our Trademark Policy.

13. Information required under the Digital Services Act

We provide this information so that authorities, users, and others can contact us efficiently.

Single point of contact for Member State authorities, the European Commission, and the European Board for Digital Services (DSA Article 11): notices@aster.place.

Single point of contact for recipients of the service (DSA Article 12): dsa-support@aster.place.

Point of contact supported languages: English, French, German, Dutch.

Member State of establishment: the Netherlands.

Statutory representative in the EU under DSA Article 13: not required, because we are established in the Netherlands.

Reporting and transparency: we publish DSA transparency reports annually at minimum, in line with Article 15 in respect of the Aster ID PDS as a hosting service. The first report will cover the period from the launch of Aster ID through the end of our first reporting cycle; we will confirm the cycle dates and the publication date in our Transparency Centre once launch is established. We publish a single report covering our services together.

Trusted flaggers (DSA Article 22): notices submitted by entities awarded trusted flagger status by a Digital Services Coordinator are processed with priority.

Special protection of minors (DSA Article 28): the minimum age for the Aster ID PDS and Portal is 16 (see §4). We do not present recommendations based on profiling of any user. If a user is found to be below the applicable minimum age, we suspend access and, failing age confirmation, terminate the account or the relevant access.

Note on protocol-level federation: because our services operate on the AT Protocol, content may be replicated to and accessed via other atproto applications operated by third parties. Our DSA obligations cover what we do as intermediaries; they do not extend to the operations of other intermediaries on the network. See §14.

14. Other applications on the AT Protocol

Third-party applications and PDS providers running on the AT Protocol, such as Bluesky’s social application, Flashes, Tangled, Semble, Leaflet, Blento, and others, are not operated by us and are not part of our services. Their terms, privacy practices, and moderation are their own.

When you post on our services, your public posts may be visible on other atproto applications. When someone on another atproto application replies to you or follows you, you may see that activity in our services. We do not control the other application’s behaviour, and we are not responsible for it.

If you have a complaint about content or behaviour on a different atproto application or PDS provider, please contact that operator directly. We will help you find the right contact where we can.

15. Governing law and forum

These Terms, and any non-contractual obligations arising out of them, are governed by the laws of the Netherlands.

If you are a consumer in the EU or the EEA, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the law of the country where you have your habitual residence. You can bring a claim against us in the courts of your country of residence, and we can only sue you there.

If you are not a consumer (for example, you are using our services in the course of a business, or you are an institution), the courts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, subject to mandatory rules that say otherwise.

We do not require you to go to arbitration. We do not ask you to waive class action or representative proceeding rights.

16. General terms

These Terms are the whole agreement. Together with the Privacy Policy, these Terms are the complete agreement between you and us about your use of our services. They replace any earlier understanding.

If part of these Terms doesn’t hold up, the rest does. If a court or competent authority finds part of these Terms invalid or unenforceable, the rest stays in force, and the invalid part is reduced to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable.

We may need to send you notices. We will send notices to you through the service you use, by email at the address linked to your account, or by another reasonable method. By using our services, you agree that electronic notices are acceptable.

We don’t lose rights by not enforcing them. If we don’t enforce a provision straight away, we can still enforce it later.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms to anyone. We may assign these Terms to another entity within the Modal foundation structure, or to a successor non-profit, provided it is bound to the same charter and public-interest commitments.

No third-party beneficiaries. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these Terms.

Updates to these Terms. We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will tell you through the relevant service or by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect, unless the change is required immediately by law. A new version may also take effect for you earlier than its general effective date if you expressly accept it, for example when you first sign in to a new Aster ID Portal application that presents it to you. If you do not accept a change, you may end the relevant relationship under §21 and your acceptance ends. Continued use after a material change takes effect counts as acceptance.

Part 3: If you use the Aster ID PDS or Portal

This Part applies to you if you have an Aster ID account. You have an Aster ID account if you signed up directly through the Aster ID Portal.

17. About the Aster ID PDS and the Portal

The Aster ID Personal Data Server is the infrastructure that hosts your AT Protocol identity and the data associated with it: your account, your handle, your posts, your follow graph, your other public records on the open social web. The PDS is not a social media platform; it does not provide feeds, rank posts, or curate speech. It is, in effect, the European mail address for your social identity on atproto.

The Aster ID Portal is a front-end at portal.aster.place for managing your Aster ID account. From the Portal you can:

  • create or sign in to your Aster ID account;
  • view your profile information and the data stored in your PDS;
  • browse and view images, videos, and other media stored under your account;
  • discover compatible third-party AT Protocol applications via a featured-apps directory;
  • use sign-in facilitation for selected third-party apps, where the Portal shares your handle with the application to streamline its sign-in flow;
  • access account management and support links.

Modal, through Aster ID, operates the PDS and the Portal together. Your Aster ID account is a single thing; the PDS is the data layer and the Portal is one of the surfaces you can manage it through.

18. Where we host your data, and the Portal’s beta status

EU hosting. Your Aster ID account, and the content stored under it, are hosted on cloud infrastructure provided by an EU-headquartered hosting provider, in data centres located within the European Union. At the time of writing, that provider is Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany). We may change provider, but we are committed to using only providers headquartered in the EU. The Aster ID PDS and Portal will not be hosted outside the EU. Some ancillary services (for example, email delivery or operational tooling) may be processed outside the EU under appropriate safeguards described in our Privacy Policy.

Portal beta status. The Aster ID Portal is currently in beta. Features may be added, changed, or removed as the Portal develops. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of material changes. We provide the Portal on a best-efforts basis under §8.

19. Portal features and third-party applications

Featured-apps directory. The Portal includes a directory of third-party AT Protocol applications. Clicking a featured app opens the third-party application’s website in a new browser tab. The Portal does not transmit your personal data to those applications by default.

Sign-in facilitation. For selected third-party apps, the Portal may facilitate the sign-in process by sharing your handle with the destination app so that it can identify you and streamline its sign-in flow. Before any data is shared, the Portal will clearly inform you of what will be transmitted. Only your handle (and, where applicable, a marker identifying Aster ID as the referring service) is shared. The Portal does not share your OAuth access token, your email address, your password, or any other profile or account data with third-party apps through this feature.

Data browsing. The Portal may allow you to browse and view data stored in your PDS, such as images, videos, and other media. This data is retrieved from your PDS using your existing authentication and displayed to you within the Portal for your own use. The Portal does not share this data with any third party. Whether the Portal independently stores copies of this data, and if so for how long, depends on how this feature is implemented at launch; the current implementation status is described in our Privacy Policy and surfaced in-product.

Third-party responsibility. Once you leave the Portal and visit a third-party application, that application is operated by a third party and governed by its own terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or conduct of third-party applications.

20. Account portability and migration

Your Aster ID account is portable by design. At any time you may:

  1. Export your posts, profile, and follow graph from the PDS through standard atproto export tooling.
  2. Move your Aster ID PDS account to another PDS provider on the AT Protocol, including providers we have no relationship with, using the standard atproto migration flows.
  3. Use your Aster ID account in other atproto applications, including third-party applications, without changing anything about where your account is hosted.

We do not impose technical or contractual barriers to leaving. If you find one, we treat that as a bug and will fix it.

21. Notices of illegal content, PDS-layer moderation, and ending your Aster ID account

21.1 What moderation we do at the PDS layer

The Aster ID PDS is hosting infrastructure, not a curation platform. We do not pre-screen content stored on the PDS. We do not run feeds or labelling services at the PDS layer.

What we do at the PDS layer is limited and reactive, and is restricted to legal compliance:

  • act on content that we are legally required to remove or restrict, including child sexual abuse material, content covered by an EU removal order under Regulation (EU) 2021/784, and content covered by a binding takedown order from a competent court or authority;
  • respond to valid orders from competent EU authorities;
  • protect the security and integrity of the service;
  • address other clearly unlawful content where we are legally required to act.

When we act at the PDS layer, our action affects how the content is stored and federated. It does not depend on which application you used to post it.

21.2 Notices of illegal content

To notify us of illegal content on the Aster ID PDS, write to notices@aster.place. We will follow the procedure required by Article 16 of the Digital Services Act. We will confirm receipt, decide whether action is required, and tell you the outcome with reasons. Trusted flaggers under Article 22 of the DSA are processed with priority.

If your notice relates to content that is being shown on a particular application and you want action at that application’s layer, the application’s own reporting channel may also be appropriate.

21.3 Ending your Aster ID account

You may end your Aster ID account at any time. You have two options: deactivation (paused, handle held for you) and deletion (gone, handle immediately released).

Deactivate your Aster ID account. Deactivation pauses the account. The data stored under your account stays in place, you can come back later and reactivate, and your handle is held for you for 30 days from the moment of deactivation. If you reactivate within 30 days, your handle is still yours. After 30 days of continuous deactivation, the handle is released and may be re-registered by someone else; the account itself remains in its deactivated state until you reactivate, fully delete, or the additional retention period set out in our Privacy Policy expires. You can trigger deactivation from any compatible Atmosphere application that supports it, or by emailing support@aster.place.

Delete your Aster ID account entirely. You can trigger deletion of your Aster ID account from any compatible Atmosphere application that supports account deletion (for example Bluesky’s social application). If you do not use any such application, email us at support@aster.place and we will delete the account on your instruction. Deletion means:

  • we begin deleting Your Content from the Aster ID PDS, on the timeline set out in our Privacy Policy;
  • we notify the wider AT Protocol network of your account deletion, although see §6 on the limits of network-wide deletion;
  • we keep what we are required to keep for legal or trust-and-safety reasons, on the basis explained in our Privacy Policy;
  • your handle is released immediately and may be re-registered by someone else. Deletion is permanent. If you want to preserve the option of coming back under the same handle, use deactivation instead.

Migrate to another PDS provider. As described in §20, you can move your Aster ID PDS account to another provider. After migration:

  • your identity, posts, profile, and follow graph live on the new provider;
  • the Aster ID PDS and Portal Part of these Terms (this Part 3) stops applying to you;
  • your new PDS provider’s terms govern hosting from that point.

21.4 When we may end the relationship

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your Aster ID account or specific features if:

  • you seriously or repeatedly break these Terms;
  • we are required to by court order or by another binding legal order;
  • your continued access poses a credible risk to other users, to the Aster ID PDS or Portal, or to third parties.

Where the law requires us to give you notice before suspending or terminating your Aster ID account, and where doing so would not itself cause harm or breach a legal obligation, we will do so.

Contact

For general questions:

  • about the Aster ID PDS or Portal: support@aster.place

For Digital Services Act enquiries from members of the public, including DSA notices of illegal content submitted by recipients of the service: dsa-support@aster.place.

For DSA correspondence primarily for use by Member State authorities, the European Commission, the European Board for Digital Services, and trusted flaggers: notices@aster.place.

For GDPR data protection enquiries (data controller is Stichting Modal): privacy@aster.place, and see the Privacy Policy for the contact details of our Data Protection Officer.

Postal: Stichting Modal, Kranenburgweg 135 A, 2583 ER The Hague, Netherlands.

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