This policy explains what personal information Culture-Watch collects, why we collect it, who handles it on our behalf, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it. It covers our website at culture-watch.com, the essay subscription and sign-in, requests to work with us and the engagements that follow them, the emails we send and receive, and the public material we study in our work. It does not cover other websites we link to.
We have written it to describe what we actually do. When our practices change, we update this policy (section 13).
Who we are
Culture-Watch LLC is a New York company. Culture-Watch studies consequential judgments that markets, institutions, technologies and people are already making without adequate instruments for understanding them. We publish Intelligence and essays, carry out Research, and, through Practice, examine real decisions for organizations using methods, evidence standards and interpretive principles we can already defend. In this policy, "Culture-Watch", "we", "us" and "our" mean Culture-Watch LLC.
For the purposes of European Union and United Kingdom data protection law, Culture-Watch is the controller of the personal information described here.
For anything in this policy, including requests about your information, write to hello@culture-watch.com.
What we collect and why
When you read the site
Our site is hosted by Vercel. To deliver a page, Vercel processes the technical information every web request carries: your IP address, your browser and device, the page you asked for and the time you asked for it. This information appears in server logs that Vercel keeps for a limited period.
We use Vercel Web Analytics to understand, in aggregate, which pages are read. It records which pages are viewed and the site that referred the visit, together with general information about the browser, operating system, device type and country. It does not set cookies or store anything on your device, and we do not use it to identify you.
Our pages also load a script from Clerk, the authentication service we use when Culture-Watch staff sign in. Because the script loads on every page, Clerk receives your IP address and browser information and sets its own cookies (section 4), even if you never sign in.
When you subscribe to read the essays
Intelligence records and Research on our site are open to everyone. Essays are open to subscribers, and subscribing is free. To subscribe, you give us your first name, last name, email address and industry. We use these details to give you access to the essays and to understand who reads our work.
Subscribing does not add you to a mailing list. The only emails a subscription produces today are the sign-in codes you ask for. If that changes, we will update this policy before it does, and every such email will let you unsubscribe.
When you subscribe, we place a signed cookie on your device that opens the essays for you (section 4).
When you sign in
If you have already subscribed and want to read on another device, you give us your email address and we send you a six-digit code by email. The code expires after ten minutes and works once. We do not store the code on our servers: a signed cookie on your device holds what we need to check it and is deleted after one attempt. When you enter an address, the sign-in page tells you whether that address is subscribed.
When you send us a request
Our request form asks for your name, company, role and email address, and, if you choose, your company's website. It asks what decision you are trying to make and what feels unclear, and, if you choose, anything we should read before responding.
When you send a request, it is saved in our database, emailed to the Culture-Watch team, and copied into our internal request queue, which is kept in Notion. We send you an acknowledgement by email. A person at Culture-Watch reads every request and decides how to reply. We do not send automated follow-up emails about a request.
We use what you send to decide whether the question is one we can examine, to respond to you, and, if we agree to work together, to set up the engagement.
When we speak with you about a request
If we arrange a call, we take notes of what you tell us so that the decision is recorded in your own words. We do not record a call without your consent.
When we work with you
If we take on your question, the engagement is governed by a separate written agreement. That agreement sets out who receives the work, how any material you supply is handled, and whether and how the work may be referred to afterwards. Sharing internal information with us is optional; anything you do share is used for your engagement and handled as the agreement says.
Practice work examines a business, not a person. We read businesses from the public record, and we do not read a named private person for anyone.
When you email us
If you write to us, we keep your message and your email address and use them to reply and to keep a record of the correspondence.
Public material we study, and people we write about
Our Intelligence, essays, Research and Practice work study the public record: what businesses, institutions and public figures publish, and what the market says about them in public, including published reporting, company filings, public statements, and public posts, comments and reviews. Some of that material contains information about the people who wrote it or appear in it. We collect it from public sources to study the judgments being made about businesses, products and ideas, including what the market understands them to be, and where the available evidence does not adequately support those judgments. Our subject is the business or the market, not the individual, and we do not sell this material.
We name public figures, companies and institutions when we cite them. Private people are not turned into public analytical objects without a legitimate reason and appropriate basis, and we do not name private individuals in the work we deliver to clients.
If you believe something we published about you is inaccurate, or you object to how we have used information about you, write to hello@culture-watch.com. We will review it. Where we got something wrong, we publish a correction and say what changed; we do not quietly rewrite what we published.
Our legal bases (EU and UK)
If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the law requires us to tell you the legal basis for each use of your information:
- Delivering the site, keeping it secure, and measuring readership in aggregate: our legitimate interest in running a reliable, secure publication.
- Giving subscribers access and signing them in: performing our agreement with you under our Terms.
- Responding to requests and preparing an engagement: taking steps you have asked for before we enter into a contract, and our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries.
- Carrying out an engagement: performing our agreement with the client.
- Recording a call: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
- Studying public material and publishing our work: our legitimate interest, and the public's, in research and analysis on matters of public interest, together with any journalistic, academic or research exemptions that apply where you live.
- Keeping records the law requires: our legal obligations.
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object (section 9). We do not make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Cookies
We use only the cookies the site needs to do what you ask of it. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels, and our analytics sets no cookies.
| Cookie | Set by | What it does | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| cw_reader | Culture-Watch | Opens the essays after you subscribe or sign in. It holds your email address in encoded (not encrypted) form with a signature, so it cannot be forged, and it can be read only by our server. | 1 year |
| cw_reader_pending | Culture-Watch | Holds what we need to check a sign-in code. It is deleted after one attempt. | 10 minutes |
| cw_trial | Culture-Watch | An older access marker set when you subscribe. | 30 days |
| cw_session, cw_pending | Culture-Watch | Used only when Culture-Watch staff sign in. | 30 days and 10 minutes |
| __client, __client_uat (and a variant of it with a suffix) | Clerk | Authentication for Culture-Watch staff. Set on every page because Clerk's script loads site-wide. | 400 days |
| __cf_bm, _cfuvid | Cloudflare, for Clerk | Protect Clerk's sign-in service from automated traffic. | 30 minutes, and until you close your browser |
You can delete cookies in your browser settings at any time. If you delete cw_reader, you will need to sign in again to read the essays.
Do Not Track. Browsers can send a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signal. We do not track visitors across other websites, and we do not allow third parties to collect information about your activity across other websites through our site, so the site does not respond differently to these signals.
Who handles your information
We use a small number of service providers. They process personal information on our behalf and on our instructions:
- Vercel: hosting, page delivery and aggregate analytics.
- Neon: our database.
- Resend: sending email, including sign-in codes and acknowledgements.
- Clerk: authentication.
- Notion: our internal request queue.
- Anthropic: AI services that may help us analyze material in our Intelligence, Research and Practice work.
- Web data-collection services: gathering public material for our Intelligence, Research and Practice work.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
We may also disclose personal information when the law requires it, when it is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Culture-Watch or others, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of our business, in which case the recipient will be bound by this policy for information it receives.
Where your information is processed
Culture-Watch is based in the United States, and our service providers may process information in the United States and in other countries where they operate. If you use our site from outside the United States, your information will be processed in the United States, where data protection law may differ from the law where you live. We apply this policy to it wherever it is processed.
How long we keep it
- Subscriber details: while you remain subscribed. If you ask us to end your subscription, we delete them.
- Requests, including those we decline: 24 months after our last exchange about the request.
- Engagement records: for the period set in the engagement agreement, and longer only where the law requires it.
- Public material collected for our Intelligence, Research and Practice work: for as long as the work and its record need it.
- Correspondence: for as long as we need it to deal with the matter and keep a record of it.
- Sign-in codes: we do not store them on our servers, and each expires after ten minutes.
- Server logs: for the limited period our hosting provider keeps them.
When a period ends, we delete the information or make it anonymous.
How we protect it
Our site is served only over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Subscription and sign-in cookies are signed so they cannot be forged, and the cookies that open the essays and check sign-in codes cannot be read by scripts running in your browser. Sign-in codes expire after ten minutes and work once.
No system is perfectly secure. If a security incident affects your personal information, we will tell you as the law requires.
Your choices and rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us:
- what personal information we hold about you;
- for a copy of it;
- to correct it;
- to delete it;
- to stop using it for a particular purpose; and
- to stop contacting you.
To make a request, write to hello@culture-watch.com. We may ask you to confirm the request from the email address we hold, so that we do not disclose or delete someone else's information. We will respond within one month. If we cannot do what you ask, we will explain why, and you can ask us to reconsider by replying.
If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you also have the right to restrict our use of your information, to receive it in a portable format, to object to uses based on legitimate interests, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting what we did before. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work; in the United Kingdom, that is the Information Commissioner's Office. We would be grateful for the chance to resolve your concern first.
If you live in a US state with a consumer privacy law, you can use the rights that law gives you in the same way, and appeal a refusal by replying to our response.
Children
Our site is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it.
Links to other sites
Our work links to sources and other websites. We are not responsible for how those sites handle personal information; their own policies apply.
If you give us information about someone else
If you send us information about another person, for example in a request, please make sure you are entitled to share it and include only what the request needs. Please do not send sensitive information, such as health details, about anyone.
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our practices change. The effective date at the top tells you when it last changed. If a change is material, we will say so on this page before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or requests about your information: hello@culture-watch.com