Paladin — Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-06-26

1. Acceptance of Terms

By adding Paladin (the "Bot") to a Discord server, by configuring it, or by using or interacting with it in any way, you agree to these Terms of Service (the "Terms"). If you are adding the Bot on behalf of a server, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that server and its staff to these Terms. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not add, configure, or use the Bot.

These Terms are between you and the individual operator who self-hosts and runs the Bot instance you interact with (the "Operator," "we," "us," or "our"). The Bot is operated independently and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Discord Inc.

2. Eligibility

To use the Bot, you must:

• Be at least 13 years old, or the minimum age required to use Discord in your country, whichever is higher.
• Comply at all times with the Discord Terms of Service and the Discord Community Guidelines.

If you do not meet these requirements, you may not use the Bot. Server administrators are responsible for ensuring that the members of their server also meet these eligibility requirements where applicable.

3. Description of the Service

Paladin is a self-hosted, automated Discord moderation bot built with TypeScript and discord.js. It is designed to help server staff keep their communities safe. The Bot's features may include, but are not limited to:

• Spam detection — identifying and acting on repetitive, high-volume, or abusive messaging behavior.
• Raid detection — detecting coordinated mass-join or mass-message events.
• Scam / phishing link protection — detecting and removing malicious, scam, or look-alike links.
• Profanity and keyword detection — flagging messages that match configured keywords or filters.
• Automatic chat slow-mode (ChatSpeed) — briefly throttling channels that are being flooded.
• Network blacklist — checking users against a shared list of accounts previously flagged for malicious behavior across participating servers (see Section 7).
• Moderation actions — applying automated responses such as quarantine, timeout, or ban, according to the configuration chosen by the server's staff.

The exact features available, their sensitivity, and the actions taken are determined by the Operator's build, by each server's own configuration, and by the server's subscription tier (see Section 4).

4. Subscriptions, Free Tier & Billing

Paladin is offered on a freemium basis: a free tier plus an optional paid Premium subscription. Which features a server can use depends on its size and subscription status, as follows.

• Always free, for every server (any size): core protections — scam/phishing link protection, manual moderation tools (such as mute/unmute and server lockdown), mod-logging and warning notices, and automatic chat slow-mode (ChatSpeed) — are available to all servers at no cost.
• Free for small servers: servers with fewer than 250 members receive full access to all features, including the premium ones below, at no cost.
• Premium (subscription) for larger servers: servers with 250 or more members require an active paid subscription to use the automated protection features — for example automated spam detection, raid detection and lockdown, join screening, the content-rating filter, and use of the shared network blacklist. The "always free" core protections listed above remain free even for larger servers.
• Grace period: when a server first grows to 250 or more members, the premium features remain available for a 14-day grace period before a subscription is required, and the server is notified in-app.
• Complimentary ("whitelisted") access: the Operator may, at its sole discretion, grant any server free access to premium features (for example, partner or community servers), and may change or revoke such complimentary access at any time.
• Billing is handled by Discord. Premium subscriptions are sold and billed exclusively through Discord's monetization system (Discord Premium App Subscriptions). All payments, recurring charges, renewals, cancellations, and refunds are processed by Discord under Discord's payment terms. The Operator does not collect, process, or store your payment or billing information. You can view, manage, or cancel your subscription through Discord.
• Changes to pricing and tiers: the subscription price, the member-count threshold, the length of any grace period, and which features are free vs. premium may change over time. Changes generally apply on a going-forward basis; we will update this document and announce material changes where practical (see Section 12).

A subscription does not change the "as is" nature of the Bot or create any uptime, availability, or results guarantee (see Sections 8 and 10).

5. Acceptable Use and Operator (Server) Responsibilities

The server administrators and staff who install and configure the Bot ("Server Operators") are responsible for how it is used within their server. By using the Bot, you and your Server Operators agree to:

• Configure and use the Bot in compliance with Discord's Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and Developer policies, and with all applicable laws.
• Choose moderation settings, thresholds, and actions appropriate for your community, and review them regularly.
• Inform your members, where required, that automated moderation is in use and what data may be processed (see our Privacy Policy).
• Not use the Bot to harass, target, surveil, or unlawfully discriminate against any person or group.
• Not attempt to abuse, overload, reverse-engineer for malicious purposes, circumvent, or interfere with the Bot or the systems it runs on, including the shared network blacklist and the subscription/entitlement system.

You are solely responsible for the configuration decisions you make and for the moderation outcomes that result from those decisions in your server.

6. Automated Moderation and False Positives

You understand and agree that:

• The Bot makes moderation decisions automatically, based on patterns, keywords, thresholds, and shared data. It does not understand context, intent, or nuance the way a human does.
• Automated decisions can be wrong. The Bot may produce false positives (acting on a legitimate user or message) or false negatives (failing to act on a genuinely harmful one).
• Server staff retain final control. Human moderators can review, reverse, override, or adjust any action the Bot takes, and can change or disable the Bot's settings at any time. The Bot is a tool to assist human moderation, not a replacement for it.

You should not rely on the Bot as your sole means of moderation or community safety, and you accept the risk that automated actions may occasionally be incorrect.

7. Shared Network Blacklist

To help participating servers respond to repeat offenders, the Bot may maintain a shared network blacklist of Discord account identifiers that have been flagged for malicious behavior (such as spam, raiding, or scam activity). The following principles apply:

• Corroboration. An account is not added to the network blacklist on the strength of a single isolated event alone. Entries are intended to reflect corroborated signals — for example, the same account being flagged across multiple servers or events — to reduce the chance of mistaken or retaliatory listings.
• Expiry. Blacklist entries are not permanent by default. They are designed to expire after a period of time so that accounts are not punished indefinitely for past behavior.
• Effect. A listing may cause the Bot to take a more cautious or restrictive action (such as quarantine) against a flagged account in servers that use the network blacklist. Individual servers may choose how, or whether, to act on network blacklist data.
• Appeals and corrections. If you believe an account has been listed in error, or you wish to request review, correction, or removal of a listing, contact us at the address in Section 13. We will review good-faith requests and correct entries that we determine to be mistaken. Requests relating to personal data are also covered by the rights described in our Privacy Policy.

The network blacklist is provided to assist moderation across servers; it is not a definitive judgment about any person, and inclusion does not constitute an accusation of wrongdoing.

8. No Warranty — Provided "As Is"

The Bot is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, reliability, and non-infringement. This applies to both the free and paid (Premium) tiers.

We do not warrant that the Bot will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, error-free, or that it will detect every threat, catch every prohibited message, or avoid every false positive. You use the Bot at your own risk.

9. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law:

• We will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, goodwill, or reputation, arising out of or related to your use of (or inability to use) the Bot.
• We will not be liable for the consequences of any automated moderation action, including false positives, false negatives, missed threats, mistaken bans or timeouts, network blacklist listings, or the configuration choices made by Server Operators.
• Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Bot and these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the total subscription fees you actually paid (through Discord) for the Bot in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD $20. For free-tier use, this amount is effectively zero.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some of the above may not apply to you. In that case, our liability is limited to the smallest extent permitted by law.

10. Service Changes and Availability

The Bot is self-hosted by an individual operator and offered on a freemium basis. As a result:

• There is no uptime guarantee and no service-level commitment, for either the free or the Premium tier. The Bot may be slow, unavailable, or interrupted at any time — for example, due to maintenance, hardware or power issues, network outages, Discord API changes, or the Operator simply choosing to take it offline.
• We may add, change, suspend, or remove features (including moving features between the free and Premium tiers) at any time, with or without notice.
• We may discontinue the Bot entirely at any time. If we permanently discontinue the Bot, we will, where practical, stop new charges; any billing adjustments or refunds are handled through Discord.

You should not depend on the Bot for any critical, safety-related, or time-sensitive purpose.

11. Termination and Removal

• You may stop using the Bot at any time by removing it from your server, and may cancel a Premium subscription through Discord. When the Bot is removed from a server, guild-specific data associated with that server is purged as described in our Privacy Policy.
• We reserve the right to refuse service, restrict access, or remove the Bot from any server at any time, with or without notice, for any reason — including suspected abuse, violation of these Terms, violation of Discord's policies, or to protect the integrity of the Bot, the shared network blacklist, or the subscription system.
• Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including disclaimers, limitation of liability, and governing law — will continue to apply after your use of the Bot ends.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this document and publish the updated version at its public location. Material changes may also be announced through reasonable means where practical.

Your continued use of the Bot after updated Terms take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you must stop using the Bot and remove it from your server.

13. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, your subscription, the network blacklist, or need to reach the Operator for any reason, contact:

Info@shapedimage.com

14. Related Documents

• These Terms incorporate our Privacy Policy, which explains what data the Bot processes and stores, how long it is kept, your data rights, and how to request deletion. Please read it alongside these Terms.
• Your use of Discord itself — including all billing for any Premium subscription — remains governed by the Discord Terms of Service and Discord Community Guidelines. In the event of a conflict, Discord's own terms govern your use of the Discord platform and its payment system.

Paladin — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-06-26

1. Who we are (data controller)

Paladin is a self-hosted, 24/7 Discord moderation bot. It is run by an independent operator ("we", "us", "the operator") on the operator's own Windows computer. The operator who runs the instance you interact with is the data controller for any data that instance stores.

• Contact: Info@shapedimage.com

Paladin is local-first and outbound-only: it connects out to Discord's API and does not run any inbound network listener. There is no server you can connect to and no remote endpoint that collects your data. All data the bot keeps lives in a local database on the operator's machine.

This policy covers the Paladin bot software itself. The Discord platform — through which all messages and events reach the bot — is operated by Discord and governed by Discord's own Privacy Policy.

2. What data we collect and store

Paladin stores only the minimum needed to do moderation, in a local SQLite database on the operator's machine. The only personal identifiers it keeps are Discord IDs (numeric account and server identifiers that Discord itself issues). Specifically:

We collect this data because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the servers Paladin protects safe from spam, raids, and abusive content (see Section 4).

3. What we do NOT collect

We are deliberately minimal. Paladin does not store, download, sell, or share the following:

• Message content — never stored. Message text is read transiently in memory only long enough to check it for spam and blocked words, then discarded. It is never written to the database. (User IDs and the specific matched term may appear in a moderation log or operational log when an action is taken — see Sections 2 and 8.)
• Images and media — never handled. Paladin does not download, scan, analyze, or store any images, attachments, or other media. It looks only at attachment metadata (filename and size) transiently for spam detection. There is no image-content or pixel analysis and no cloud vision service involved. (Server staff may optionally enable Discord's own built-in explicit-media filter, which runs entirely on Discord's platform — Paladin never sees the image.)
• No direct messages (DMs).
• No voice data.
• No email addresses.
• No IP addresses.
• No payment or financial information. Premium subscriptions are billed entirely by Discord — we never receive or store your card, billing address, or any payment details. We learn only whether your server currently has an active subscription (see Sections 4a and 7).

4. How and why we use data (lawful basis)

We process data solely to operate moderation features: detecting spam and blocked words, and taking the configured action (delete a message, time out, ban, or quarantine an account), plus maintaining the cross-server blacklist that protects participating servers.

Under the EU/UK GDPR, our lawful basis is legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) — specifically, the legitimate interest of server operators and their communities in maintaining a safe, spam-free, abuse-free space. We do not use your data for advertising, profiling unrelated to moderation, or any commercial purpose.

Moderation decisions are made automatically based on rules and thresholds the server operator configures. If you believe an automated action was taken in error, you can contact the operator (Section 7) to ask for review.

4a. Subscriptions & billing data

Paladin has a free tier and an optional paid Premium subscription. Servers under 250 members are free; larger servers need a subscription for the automated-protection features (the core protections stay free for everyone). How this affects your data:

• Billing is 100% handled by Discord. Subscriptions are sold and charged through Discord's monetization system. Paladin never sees, receives, or stores any payment information — no card numbers, no billing details, nothing financial.
• What we actually use: to decide whether a server gets premium features, Paladin checks (a) the server's member count (provided live by Discord — we don't store the number itself, only a timestamp of when a server first crossed the free-size limit, to run the grace period), (b) the server's subscription status — an "entitlement" Discord reports to the bot, held only in memory and not persisted long-term, and (c) the operator's whitelist of servers granted free access (Server IDs only).
• No profiling or selling. Subscription data is used only to unlock features for paying or whitelisted servers — never for advertising, resale, or any unrelated purpose.

Lawful basis: providing the subscription you (or your server) have purchased (contract), and our legitimate interest in operating a sustainable service.

5. How long we keep data (retention)

We keep data only as long as it serves a moderation purpose, then delete it automatically:

When Paladin is removed from a server, the bot automatically purges that server's stored settings, moderation logs, raid records, and per-server reports.

6. Where your data is stored

All stored data lives in a local SQLite database file (and a local log file) on the operator's own Windows computer. Paladin is self-hosted — there is no third-party cloud database, no hosted backend, and no inbound network service. Because the bot is outbound-only, your stored data is never exposed to the public internet by Paladin itself.

7. Third parties

We keep external sharing to essentially nothing:

• No image-scanning third parties. Paladin uses no cloud vision or AI image services — none at all. If a server enables Discord's built-in explicit-media filter, that scanning happens on Discord's platform under Discord's own policies, not ours.
• No data sales or sharing. We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• Optional operator alert webhook. An operator may optionally configure an alert webhook (for example, to a private moderation channel) to receive operational alerts. Any content sent there is determined by the operator; it contains no end-user personal information beyond what the operator chooses to include.
• Subscription billing (Discord). Paid subscriptions are sold and billed through Discord's payment system. Discord handles all payment processing; Paladin receives only a signal ("entitlement") indicating whether a server is currently subscribed. We never receive your payment information.
• The Discord platform. Discord is the conduit through which all data reaches the bot. Your use of Discord is governed by Discord's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Aside from the above, data may be disclosed only where required by law.

8. Your rights and how to exercise them

Depending on where you live (for example, under the GDPR in the EU/UK), you may have the right to:

• Access the data the operator's instance holds about you;
• Rectify inaccurate data;
• Erase your data ("right to be forgotten");
• Restrict or object to processing;
• Data portability; and
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

We honor access and deletion requests for all users, regardless of location. To make a request, contact the operator at Info@shapedimage.com. Please include the relevant Discord user ID (and server, if applicable) so the request can be located. Note that some short-lived records (such as moderation logs and auto-blacklist entries) delete themselves automatically on the schedule in Section 5.

Because the operator is the controller of the instance you interact with, please direct requests to that operator at the contact above. We do not sell or share your personal information, so there is no "Do Not Sell" action to take.

9. Children

Paladin is not directed to children. Discord requires all users to be at least 13 years old (or older where local law sets a higher minimum digital-consent age). We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under that age. If you believe such data has been collected, contact Info@shapedimage.com and it will be deleted.

10. Security

The database and logs are stored locally on the operator's machine, which limits exposure to the public internet — the bot is outbound-only and runs no inbound listener. The operator is responsible for applying commercially reasonable measures to protect that machine, including operating-system access controls, disk security, and protection of the database file. No method of storage or transmission is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time — for example, if Paladin's features change. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top. Significant changes will be reflected in the bot's documentation. Continued use of Paladin after a change indicates acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact

Questions, concerns, or data requests:

• Operator contact: Info@shapedimage.com