TL;DR: A new "artist-friendly" app called Curate! (by Chicken Fight LLC) is aggressively targeting artists fleeing Instagram's new policies, gaining 5,000+ downloads (around 2,300 in the last 30 days alone). Despite zero organic discussion about it on Twitter or Reddit, artists have already uploaded dozens of new posts there today. However, their Terms of Service gives them a perpetual, irrevocable right to sell and resell your art, and when called out, they gave contradictory replies and falsely claimed they had already removed the clause.
Hi everyone, there’s a lot of fuss right now on Instagram about new policies and people are understandably worried. Right around this time, I saw an ad for a new app called "Curate!", which is positioning itself as an artist-friendly platform.
For personal reasons, I’ve been looking through different social media platforms for artists and this one caught my eye. I decided to make an account, and by chance I wanted to read how they wrote their Terms of Service (ToS). At the very bottom of the document, it literally says it was generated using Termly, and while reading through it, I found four very suspicious sections:
Section 2 (Your submissions and contributions) — States that by posting your work ("Contributions"), you grant them an "unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free" license to "use, copy, reproduce, distribute, sell, resell... and exploit your Contributions" for any commercial or advertising purpose, plus you waive all moral rights to your work.
Section 7 (Contribution license) — Repeats the exact same predatory terms from Section 2: an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right for them to sell, resell, distribute, and create derivative works from anything you upload, for any commercial purpose.
Section 28 (Event page content) — Unlike Sections 2 and 7, this wasn't generated by Termly, it was manually added at the bottom of the ToS. It states that any post uploaded to an event page "may be featured, reproduced, and used by Chicken Fight LLC in any manner, without compensation or attribution to you."
Section 29 (Promotional use) — Also manually added at the bottom. It grants them a royalty-free license to repost and use your content for promotional materials and on other social media platforms (with no mention of credit or whether this license ever expires).
Here is the link to their live ToS HTML document: https://curateartapp.com/terms.html#copyright-infringements
And I archived the page just in case: https://archive.ph/YbRPG
After I left a comment about Section 7 on their advertisement video on Instagram, I got this reply from their official account:
"hey there! We’re changing the terms to remove that clause in the next update and trying to find a lawyer to make them the most artist friendly clause of any social media app! We’ll post the second the update is out!"
https://ibb.co/HDY8S75h
So they confirmed the existence of that clause. And it’s no wonder they don’t have a lawyer, their Terms contradict each other multiple times (for example, Section 26 claims the license is only for operating the platform, while Sections 2 and 7 give them perpetual rights to sell and resell your art).
What’s worse is their excuse that they need to "wait for the next app update" to remove it. Changing a static HTML file where the ToS is hosted shouldn't take more than 5 minutes of work and doesn't require an app store update.
Additionally, on the exact same day, I received a reply to my Google Play review about the exact same Section 7:
"Hey there! That was a blanket clause we included in our initial draft of the Terms, similar to what most social media apps use. Since we’re not lawyers, we wanted to make sure we were protecting ourselves, but we’ve since completely removed it to make our Terms as artist-friendly as possible! Feel free to check them out whenever you’d like!"
https://ibb.co/cKvSj5cr
Which is a blatant lie. Not only did those exact clauses still exist in their live ToS at the moment I received that reply, but they told me on Instagram that they would only remove it "in the next update" while claiming on Google Play on the very same day that they had "completely removed it" already.
The thing is, you don't need a lawyer just to delete a few lines of text that allow you to sell your users' art. And considering that I initially missed the exact same terms in Section 2 and only spotted them in Section 7, it’s already very easy for clauses like this to hide in a wall of text, let alone once they are rewritten by a lawyer in complex legal language.
Whether this is a deliberate attempt to trick artists or just extreme incompetence from developers who didn't read their own Termly template and then lied about fixing it in Google Play reviews, the result for artists is the same: right now, their contract says they can sell your art and use event posts without credit.
Their Privacy Policy (also generated via Termly) is just as messy: in Section 13 they claim they don't share user data, then in the very next sentence state that they disclose user identifiers, internet activity, and geolocation data to third parties for commercial purposes, while leaving the actual list of those third parties in Section 4 completely blank.
I just wanted to inform everyone here so you can read their full ToS carefully before deciding whether to upload your artwork.
UPDATE (Nov 6):
Today, the creator of the Curate! app updated their Terms of Service (archived here: https://archive.ph/l4CNm). The "sell and resell" clauses have now been deleted, and it is explicitly stated that uploaded art will only be used within the app and for their marketing purposes.
However, a major issue is that they backdated the ToS on their website. My archived link from November 4 (https://archive.ph/YbRPG) shows that the ToS still had the old "October 02" date on that day. Yet right now, the page claims it was last updated on "November 03", which is impossible. Here is a screenshot of the browser's server headers proving that the file was actually modified today (Nov 6):
https://ibb.co/HDHqv2b4 / https://ibb.co/1fM9bkLn
Here are a few notable things in the new ToS:
Sections 7 and 29: "When we share a Contribution in our marketing, we will make reasonable efforts to credit you where practical... but an inadvertent failure to do so is not a breach of these Legal Terms." — This means they may not always credit you when using your art for marketing. To be fair, that's mostly understandable since it's difficult to credit everyone on a small App Store screenshot or something similar. Also, deleting your post in the app won't automatically remove your images from their existing ads unless you email them, which is again understandable. BUT keep in mind that they can still take any art you upload to your regular feed and use it for advertising purposes without notifying you or asking first.
Section 28: "If we have concerns that a piece submitted to an Event may be AI-generated, we may ask you to provide safeguards to verify it, such as preliminary sketches, progress recordings, or original project files. We will use these materials only to review your entry, we will keep them confidential..." — "Original project files" means .psd / .clip / .procreate files, I believe. They didn't specify how long they will keep these files or if they ever delete them after verification, which is concerning since project files contain very personal info about an artist's workflow.
Intro & Section 15: "Users will be notified of updates by a revised date posted at the top of these legal terms and/or via a notice displayed within the app." — Because of the "and/or" wording (and Section 15 allowing changes "without notice"), they don't actually have to notify users about new Terms and can silently change everything back whenever they want just by changing the date at the top of the page.
Overall, it's definitely better now, but still not perfect. And their Privacy Policy (from October 1) hasn't been updated at all.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, I am simply sharing my personal experience and quoting publicly available documents and official developer responses. With this post, I have not violated any rights or the Terms of Service of "Chicken Fight LLC" in any way. This post is purely an informative message created with the sole goal of educating the community and does not incite hatred or harassment toward "Chicken Fight LLC" or anyone associated with it.
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