SynchThese Terms & Conditions ("Terms") apply when you use anything run by Synch ("we", "us"), an unregistered, volunteer-run online community: this website, the Synch Academy, the Community Relations (ComRel) portal, our Discord servers and our Discord bots (together, "our services"). By using our services you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use them.
How we handle your personal data is explained separately in our Privacy Policy and GDPR Notice.
Synch is independent. Synch, the Synch Academy and SynchAcademy are run by volunteers and are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by Discord Inc. We don't represent Discord or speak for it, and we are not Discord's own Moderator Academy or any other Discord programme. Discord is a trademark of Discord Inc.; we use the name only to describe that our services work with Discord.
1. Who can use our services
- You must be at least 13, or the minimum age to use Discord in your country if that's higher.
- You must follow Discord's Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Our services run on Discord, so if Discord removes your account, you lose access to ours too.
- You must not use our services if we've removed you from them, or if you're acting for someone we've removed.
2. Your account
You sign in with your Discord account. You're responsible for everything done through it, so keep it secure — we recommend two-factor authentication. Don't share access to our portals, and don't sign in as anyone else. What you can see and do depends on your roles in our Discord servers, and changes when those roles do.
3. Behaving well
Our purpose is to make online communities safer. When you use our services, you must not:
- harass, threaten, bully or discriminate against anyone;
- post anything illegal, sexually explicit, violent or hateful, or anything that puts someone at risk;
- scam, phish, spam, or share malicious links or files;
- share other people's personal information without their permission;
- impersonate staff, another member, or another community;
- try to break, overload, probe or get around the security of our services or bots, or access anything you haven't been given access to;
- use bots, scripts or other automation against our services without our permission.
The rules of each Discord server also apply there. Staff apply these rules fairly and consistently; the action we take depends on how serious a breach is and your history — from a warning, to a timeout, to a permanent ban.
4. The Synch Academy
Learning is free. You need learner access, which we grant either automatically (for example, if you've been in our server or an approved partner community's server long enough) or after our team reviews your application. We can refuse or withdraw learner access.
Your work must be your own. Don't share exam questions or answers, sit an exam for someone else, use anyone else's help during an exam, or use tools to generate your answers. Don't record or republish simulation sessions.
Certificates. A certificate confirms you met the standard for that course, pathway or simulation when it was issued. It's not a professional qualification or licence, it doesn't make you a member of our staff, and it is not issued, recognised or endorsed by Discord. Every certificate has a public verification page. We may revoke a certificate if it was earned dishonestly or issued by mistake; a revoked certificate shows as revoked on its verification page.
Course content is provided for education. It reflects our best guidance, but every community is different — use your own judgement and follow your own community's rules and the law. Content marked External is written by a partner community, not by Synch; it's reviewed before publication but may not reflect our views. No Academy content is written, reviewed, approved or endorsed by Discord.
Help and simulations are run by volunteer instructors, so response times vary. Be respectful to instructors, including when a simulation asks you to deal with a deliberately difficult character.
5. Partner communities
Discord communities can partner with the Academy in two ways. Each needs our approval, and we can suspend or end either at any time.
Community Programs lets a community publish its own courses and pathways. It is covered by the separate Community Programs Terms, which the community's representatives accept in the Provider Portal and which apply in addition to these Terms.
Guild Teams lets a community use the Academy to train its own team.
- A community can only add you to its team if you accept an invite or open its join link, and you must be a member of its Discord server.
- It can see your progress and certificates on the training it assigns you. It sees your other certificates or your scores only if you choose to share them. It can never see your exam answers or failed attempts.
- It can recommend and assign training, but it can't hide anything in the Academy from you, change our content, grading or certificates, or brand our certificates.
- You can leave a team at any time from My Teams; the community's view of you ends immediately. Your progress and certificates stay yours.
- A community must use what it sees only to support and train its own team, keep it confidential, and not share it further.
6. Volunteering with Synch
Everyone on our staff is a volunteer. Volunteering doesn't create a contract of employment, a job, or any right to pay. Some roles come with community rewards (for example, economy coins or perks); these are gestures of thanks, not wages, and have no cash value.
Volunteers must follow our staff handbook and policies, keep anything learned in confidence through their role confidential — including after they leave — and use staff tools only for their role. We can change or end anyone's volunteer role, and remove staff access, at any time.
7. Community features, economy and giveaways
- Economy coins, points and items in our servers are virtual. They have no real-world value, can't be exchanged for money, and we can adjust or reset them — for example to fix a bug or reverse abuse.
- Giveaways and events have their own rules, announced with them. We decide winners fairly, and can disqualify entries that break the rules or these Terms. Prizes are offered as described and can't be exchanged for cash unless the giveaway says so.
- Suggestions and ideas you send us may be used freely to improve our community, without payment or credit.
8. Moderation, appeals and reports
We can remove content, restrict features, time out, suspend or ban accounts that break these Terms, our server rules or the law, or where we reasonably need to protect others. Appeals and reports about staff are handled privately in our appeals server, not in direct messages. Please don't contact individual staff members about moderation decisions.
9. Content and intellectual property
Our websites, courses, bots and branding belong to Synch or its licensors. You may use them for your own personal learning and community work, but you may not copy, republish or sell them without our permission.
You keep ownership of what you post, but you give us permission to host, display and use it as needed to run our services — for example, keeping a support ticket transcript or showing your course review. Content submitted by partner communities is covered by the Community Programs Terms.
10. Our services are provided "as is"
We're volunteers doing our best. Our services may change, have interruptions, or occasionally lose data, and we may add, change or remove features at any time. As far as the law allows, we don't give any warranty that our services will be available, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose.
11. Liability
Nothing in these Terms limits liability that can't be limited by law — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Otherwise, as far as the law allows, we're not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for anything done by other users, partner communities, or third-party services such as Discord. Our services are free, and our total liability to you for anything arising from them is limited accordingly.
If you're a consumer, you keep the statutory rights the law gives you; these Terms don't affect them.
12. Ending your use
You can stop using our services at any time, and ask us to delete your data as described in our Privacy Policy. We can suspend or end your access if you break these Terms, if we're required to by law, or if we stop providing a service. Sections that by their nature should continue (such as 9 and 11) survive after you stop.
13. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. We'll change the version and date at the top, and announce important changes in our Discord. If you keep using our services after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms.
14. Problems and disputes
Synch is an unregistered online community, not a company. If you have a problem, please contact us first through a support ticket in our Discord server — most things can be sorted out quickly. Nothing in these Terms takes away any rights you have under the law of the country where you live.
15. Contact
Synch · open a support ticket in our Discord server: discord.gg/NvbG77QZSP