Privacy

elif else is an independent project run by Gabriella Baris in New York, USA, who is the data controller for this site and can be reached at gabriella@elifelse.org. This page explains what elifelse.com collects, why, and how to have it removed. The short version: you can read the whole site without an account, nothing is sold or used for advertising, and the only way personal data ends up here is if you sign in or send something in.

Browsing the site

Page visits are counted with Umami, a privacy-focused analytics service. It records aggregate information such as page URL, referrer, browser, operating system, device type, and country. It does not set cookies, does not store IP addresses, and does not follow you across other websites.

The site is hosted on Netlify, which keeps standard server logs (including IP address) for security and reliability purposes under its own privacy policy.

Some assets are loaded from third parties as you browse: fonts from Google Fonts, the LiveKit streaming client from unpkg, and, on pages showing the live stream, video and audio from LiveKit. Those providers receive your IP address as a normal part of serving the request.

Signing in

Commenting, asking Eli a question, submitting fan art, voting, and contributing to community projects require signing in with GitHub. The site requests read-only access to your public profile (read:user). From that it stores your GitHub user ID, username, display name, and avatar URL.

Signing in sets one cookie, elifelse_auth. It is signed, HttpOnly, and used only to keep you logged in. It is not used for tracking or analytics.

Things you submit

When you post something, it is stored alongside your GitHub identity so it can be attributed, moderated, and removed on request:

• Comments and replies: your text, the page it was posted on, a timestamp, and whether you chose to display your name or username.
• Questions for Eli: your question and, if it is answered, the question and answer are published on the site.
• Fan art: the image, title, and any description you provide.
• Community project submissions: the text or files you contribute to a shared project.
• Zine submissions: your piece, its title, and how you asked to be credited.
• Votes: your GitHub user ID is recorded against the item so you can change or withdraw your vote.

Where you can choose to be credited by username or anonymously, that choice controls what is shown publicly. Your GitHub identity is still stored behind it, so that submissions can be moderated and so you can ask for yours to be removed later.

Submissions are reviewed before anything is published. Rate limits are enforced per account, which means a short-lived record of how many times you posted on a given day is also stored, and for the zine a record of whether you have already submitted. All of this lives in Netlify Blobs storage.

Assume anything you submit may become publicly visible on the site, and do not include personal details you would not want published.

Newsletter

If you sign up for the newsletter, your email address is sent to Kit, which stores it and delivers the emails. It is used for nothing else. Every newsletter includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from that list.

Stored in your browser

Besides the sign-in cookie, the site uses your browser's local storage to remember small preferences: your music player position, the last animation shown, and whether you have already signed up for the newsletter. This data stays on your device and is never sent anywhere. Clearing your browser storage removes it.

Do Not Track

Some browsers can send a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signal. This site does not respond to those signals differently, because it does not do the thing they exist to prevent: there is no cross-site tracking, no advertising network, and no behavioural profiling here to switch off. Analytics are cookieless and aggregate for everyone, whether the signal is sent or not.

Why this is allowed

For visitors in the UK and EU, the legal bases under GDPR are:

• Consent for the newsletter, given when you sign up and withdrawn by unsubscribing.
• Legitimate interests for aggregate analytics, server logs, moderation, rate limiting, and keeping the site secure and working, balanced against the fact that none of it is used to profile or advertise to you.
• Contract, in the practical sense, for the sign-in session that lets you post as yourself once you have chosen to sign in.

Where data is stored

The site and its storage run on infrastructure in the United States, and the services it relies on (Netlify, Umami, Kit, GitHub, LiveKit) are US-based or operate globally. If you are in the UK or EU, this means your data is transferred outside your country. Those providers handle such transfers under their own safeguards, typically standard contractual clauses, described in their respective privacy policies.

How long things are kept

Published content, such as comments, answered questions, and fan art, is kept indefinitely so the site stays coherent over time. Rate-limit records expire on their own. The sign-in cookie expires when its lifetime ends or when you sign out. Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe. Anything you ask to have removed is deleted.

Your choices

Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask for a copy of what is stored about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, ask for it in a portable form, object to it being kept, or ask that its use be restricted while a question is sorted out. Where processing rests on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time without affecting what was done before. Email gabriella@elifelse.org and it will be handled. There is no automated process for this yet, so allow a little time for a reply.

If you are in the UK or EU and think a request has been handled badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority, which for the UK is the Information Commissioner's Office.

Children

The site is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them. If you believe a child has submitted personal information here, email gabriella@elifelse.org and it will be removed.

Changes

This policy will change as the project does. The date at the top always reflects the current version. If a change materially affects how your data is used, it will be flagged rather than quietly slipped in.

Contact

Questions about any of this: gabriella@elifelse.org.