Privacy policy

Annotate is a Chrome extension and web app at annotate.metisos.co that lets you clip a moment from any media on the web — an article passage, a YouTube video range, an audio segment — write your commentary, and publish it as a shareable page that links back to the source. Annotate is operated by the team at metisos.com. Contact: cjohnson@metisos.com.

We only collect information you give us directly or content you choose to publish. Specifically:

• Authentication information. When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and a Google-issued ID token from Firebase Authentication. We use this only to identify you and to mint a session cookie.
• Website content you choose to clip. When you click the Annotate icon on a page or video, we capture the page URL, page title, any text you have selected, and (for YouTube) the video's current timestamp and duration. None of this is read in the background — only at the moment you click.
• Annotations you publish. The commentary you write, the clip range you pick, tags you add, and any media we extract on your behalf (a 360p video clip or a 128 kbps audio clip from the source you specified).
• Social activity. Follows, comments, and shares that you initiate inside the product.
• Profile data you provide. Display name, handle, optional bio, optional avatar image.

We do not collect: browsing history, mouse position, keystrokes, scroll behaviour, IP-based location, financial information, health information, or content from any page you did not explicitly click Annotate on.

We use the data above strictly to deliver the product:

• Authenticate you and keep you signed in.
• Render annotations you publish at /clip/[slug].
• Generate optional AI-assisted drafts, page layouts, and suggested clip moments for content you choose to publish. AI processing is performed on the text and URL you have already chosen to clip; we do not send any data to AI providers that you have not chosen to publish or draft against.
• Show your annotations on your profile page and the public feed.
• Maintain the cross-platform USC v1 protocol: published annotations are queryable as semantic neighbors by other USC platforms, with the author handle preserved as attribution. See install instructions and our open-source repository.

We do not use your data for advertising, profiling, or third-party retargeting. We do not show ads. We do not run third-party trackers on published clip pages.

• Identity: Firebase Authentication (Google Cloud, project doublecheck-348a2).
• Annotations, profile, social graph: MongoDB Atlas (US-region cluster).
• Clipped media (video / audio / thumbnails / avatars): Google Cloud Storage, gs://annotate-clips-prod (public-read).
• AI processing: Google Vertex AI (text generation and embeddings).
• Video indexing: Twelve Labs (semantic video search across published clips).
• In-Chrome local cache: chrome.storage.local holds your cached display name and handle on your device only.

Public by default. Every annotation you publish is a public artifact: anyone with the URL can read it, the public feed lists it, and other USC-conformant platforms can discover it as a related result. Your handle is shown as the author. Do not clip content you would not be comfortable being attached to your name.

Sub-processors only. The infrastructure providers listed in §4 (Firebase, MongoDB Atlas, Google Cloud Storage, Vertex AI, Twelve Labs) process data on our behalf. We do not sell or rent your data to anyone. We do not use or transfer your data for purposes unrelated to the product's single purpose, and we do not use it to determine creditworthiness or for lending.

Annotate sets one cookie: __session, a Firebase session cookie used to keep you signed in. It is HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax, and expires 5 days after sign-in. We do not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, or third-party cookies on the published clip pages.

The extension may also set a dismiss-flag cookie (annotate-ext-dismissed) so we don't repeatedly nag you to install it.

• Delete an annotation. Open any annotation you own and click Delete in the owner actions. The clip page, embedded media, and USC index entry are removed.
• Edit your profile. Visit /u/<handle>/edit to change your display name, handle, bio, or avatar.
• Delete your account. Email cjohnson@metisos.com and we will remove your user record and all annotations you own within 7 days.
• Sign out. From your profile menu, or by clearing cookies for annotate.metisos.co.
• Uninstall the extension. chrome://extensions → Remove. Uninstalling clears the local cache.

Annotate is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has signed in, contact us and we will delete the account.

Data in transit is encrypted via TLS. Session cookies are HttpOnly and Secure. Database backups are encrypted at rest by our infrastructure providers. No system is perfect — if you believe you've found a security issue, please email cjohnson@metisos.com before disclosure.

We may update this policy as the product evolves. When we make material changes, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify signed-in users in-app.

Questions, requests, or complaints: cjohnson@metisos.com.