Acceptable Use Rules

Last Modified: July 9, 2024

We have a few rules on how our services can and cannot be used and this policy explains them (the “Acceptable Use Rules”). The rules apply to all of Hootsuite’s services (the “Services”) and to all our users regardless of their plans (Free, Professional, Team, Business, and Enterprise). These rules form part of our broader terms of service. If you see an undefined term here, it has the same definition as in the terms of service applicable to your Services (the “Terms”). For clarity, wherever used in these Acceptable Use Rules, “you”, “your”, “Customer”, and similar terms mean the person or legal entity accessing or using the Enterprise Services and “Hootsuite”, “we”, “us”, or “our” refers to Hootsuite.

A. GENERAL RULES

1. You must:

a. Use your best efforts to prevent unauthorized access to or use of the Services, including by maintaining a strong password;

b. Keep your passwords and other login credentials for the Services confidential;

c. Monitor and control all activity conducted through your Hootsuite account;

d. Notify us promptly if you become aware of or suspect any security breach regarding your account, including any loss, theft, or unauthorized disclosure or use of your (or any of your Authorized Users’) username, password, or account; 

e. Comply with the Social Networks’ applicable terms which you connect through the Services (the “Social Network TOS”). These include without limitation and as applicable: 

f. If you use Hootsuite to upload Content that was made for children to YouTube websites, applications, services or products, go to YouTube on desktop to declare that Content was made for children.

2.1. You must not:

a. Make the Services available to anyone other than your Authorized Users;

b. Allow more than one individual Authorized User to use a single log-in to the Services, or use the Services in excess of the quantities or limits set out in your Services plan;

c. Sell, trade, or otherwise transfer any Services to another party;

d. Upload or share Content that you do not own or otherwise have the right to share;

e. Use the Services to store or transmit any Content, including Customer Content, that may infringe or violate the intellectual property, privacy, publicity rights, or any other rights of any person or third party, that may violate any applicable laws or applicable Social Network TOS, or that is:

1. Defamatory;

2. Threatening or harassing;

3. Fraudulent;

4. Willfully or intentionally misleading;

5. Hate speech;

6. Terrorist content;

7. Inciting violence;

8. Child exploitative;

9. Intimate content shared without consent; 

10. In breach of ethical advertising principles; or

11. Otherwise tortious or unlawful;

f. Use the Services to send spam or other unsolicited messages in violation of applicable laws or any applicable Social Network TOS;

g. Upload to, or transmit from, the Services any Content that contains or redirects to a virus, Trojan horse, worm, or other harmful component;

h. Attempt to reverse engineer, de-compile, hack, disable, interfere with, disassemble, modify, copy, translate, or disrupt the features, functionality, integrity, or performance of the Services or the Social Networks (including any mechanism used to restrict or control the functionality of the Services or the Social Networks) or any data from third parties (in other words, someone other than you, your Authorized Users or Hootsuite) contained in the Social Networks (except to the extent such restrictions are prohibited by applicable laws);

i. Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services, the Social Networks, or related systems or networks or to defeat, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or otherwise circumvent any software protection or monitoring mechanisms of the Services or the Social Networks;

j. Access the Services in order to build a similar or competitive product or service or copy any ideas, features, functions, or graphics of the Services or the Social Networks;

k. Engage in any abusive practices that degrade the performance of the Services (or any part of the Services) for you or any of our other customers (for example, by tracking singular high-frequency terms such as “love”, “yes”, or “the” or other similar activities, or  conducting a search on all sport clubs without using any additional filters such as "country" or otherwise);

l. Use the Services for redistribution, syndication, or fraudulent activities;

m. Knowingly use, display, distribute, or otherwise make Content (or information derived from Content) available to any entity, for the purpose of: (a) conducting or providing surveillance or gathering intelligence, including but not limited to investigating or tracking end users or Content; (b) conducting or providing analysis or research for any unlawful or discriminatory purpose, or in a manner that would be inconsistent with end users' reasonable expectations of privacy; (c) monitoring sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings); or (d) targeting, segmenting, or profiling individuals based on sensitive personal information, including their health (e.g., pregnancy), negative financial status or condition, political affiliation or beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical affiliation or beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation, trade union membership, Content relating to any alleged or actual commission of a crime, or any other sensitive categories of personal information prohibited by law;

n. Use the Services to access or use Content from X (formerly Twitter) if you are, or act on behalf of, any government-related entity whose primary function or mission includes conducting surveillance or gathering intelligence; or

o. Allow or encourage any third party to do any of the above.

2.2. Hootsuite has established processes for reporting, validating and, where appropriate, taking down content that is believed to be illegal. If there is content on Hootsuite that you believe may be illegal, please report it to Hootsuite by following the instructions on our Reporting Illegal Content to Hootsuite page.

B. USING AND TRANSFERRING MENTIONS OUTSIDE OF HOOTSUITE

3.1. When Hootsuite obtains Mentions on your behalf and at your instruction from Social Networks or other Third-Party Services that you connect to the Hootsuite Services, Hootsuite does so subject to the terms and conditions that the Social Networks and Third-Party Services impose on use of those Mentions within our Services. When you subsequently make any use of Mentions outside of Hootsuite’s Services, export Mentions outside of Hootsuite’s Services, or instruct Hootsuite to transfer Mentions to Third-Party Services, you are controlling the purposes and means of processing any personal data associated with such Mentions, Hootsuite does not control the use of those Mentions and is consequently unable to ensure that the use of those Mentions complies with the requirements of the Social Networks or other Third-Party Services from which the Content originated or any privacy laws. As such, to the extent that you use, transfer or instruct Hootsuite to transfer Mentions outside of Hootsuite, you expressly acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for ensuring that your and your service providers’ use of such Mentions complies in all respects with privacy laws and the then-current terms and conditions imposed by the Social Networks or other Third-Party Services on the use of such Mentions, including, without limitation and as applicable:

a. any Mentions that originated from Facebook or Instagram are subject to the Meta Platform Terms published at https://developers.facebook.com/terms/ and Developer Policies published at https://developers.facebook.com/devpolicy/;

b. any Mentions that originated from X (formerly Twitter) are subject to X’s (formerly Twitter’s) Developer Agreement and Policy published at https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer-terms/agreement-and-policy.html.

THE FOREGOING LIST IS NOT INTENDED TO BE EXHAUSTIVE. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO IDENTIFY WHICH SOCIAL NETWORKS OR OTHER THIRD-PARTY SERVICES MENTIONS ORIGINATE FROM AND TO ENSURE THAT YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THOSE MENTIONS IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS SECTION AND ALL TERMS AND CONDITIONS REQUIRED BY THE APPLICABLE SOCIAL NETWORK OR OTHER THIRD-PARTY SERVICE.

3.2. Hootsuite cannot guarantee that historical data (including but not limited to Mentions) will be available at all times. If a Social Network or other Third-Party Service requires Hootsuite to remove Mentions from the Hootsuite Services, or Hootsuite reasonably believes that the provision of Mentions would cause Hootsuite to violate agreements with third parties, or to infringe the intellectual property, other proprietary rights of third parties or any applicable laws and/or regulations, Hootsuite may remove Mentions from the Hootsuite Services and you agree to cooperate with Hootsuite to ensure that any affected Mentions are also removed from your and your service providers’ systems. Further, once the Services expire or are terminated, Hootsuite shall have no obligation to retain any historical Content or data (including but not limited to Mentions) and shall be fully entitled to delete such Content or data. You will also ensure that any affected Mentions are also removed from your and your service providers’ systems on termination. 

C. ADDITIONAL RULES APPLICABLE IF YOU USE THE SERVICES FOR CONTESTS OR OTHERWISE ASK INDIVIDUALS TO SUBMIT CONTENT THROUGH THE SERVICES (“Submitted Content”)

4. You must not:

a. Request that any participant submit personal medical information, social security information, payment card details, financial or other similarly sensitive information;

b. Request Submitted Content that would violate any applicable laws, rules, or regulations; or

c. Refer to Hootsuite or use our name, trademarks, or trade names in connection with your request for Submitted Content.

D. ADDITIONAL RULES APPLICABLE IF YOU USE AI POWERED SERVICES OR CHATBOT SERVICES

5.1. In addition to the Additional Rules in Section C.4. of these Acceptable Use Rules, you must not:

a. Contact end users through any messaging service, unless you, or the party to whom you are operating as a service provider, have all the necessary consent to do so;

b. Include links to sites off of Facebook Messenger or Instagram Messaging where payment information is collected; or

c. Use Facebook Messenger or Instagram Messaging to sell digital goods, unless you have received permission from Meta to do so.

5.2 You must:

a. Immediately respect all requests by end users to block, discontinue, or otherwise opt out of receiving messages from you; and 

b. Provide human agents to receive, and respond to, any Conversations (as defined in the Hootsuite Chatbot Terms) that are escalated via a Chatbot Service (as defined below) for human review.

5.3. Hootsuite uses, without limitation, MicrosoftAzure and OpenAI to provide certain AI Functionality and if you use any AI-Powered Services with such AI Functionality, the following terms apply: 

• https://openai.com/policies/business-terms/

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/openai/code-of-conduct?context=%2Fazure%2Fai-services%2Fopenai%2Fcontext%2Fcontext 

• https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/terms/product/ForOnlineServices/all

5.4 Chatbot Services. In addition to the terms of the Terms and the Acceptable Use Rules, if you use the Chatbot Services (“Chatbot Services”), the Hootsuite Chatbot Terms published at www.hootsuite.com/legal/chatbot-terms also apply and govern that use. 

E. ADDITIONAL RULES APPLICABLE IF YOU USE ANY HOOTSUITE SOCIAL LISTENING SERVICES

6.1. You must not publicly display any Mentions. Notwithstanding the foregoing, analytic extracts of social listening reports, such as charts and graphs, may be displayed so long as the Mentions or any portion thereof do not appear in such display. For illustrative purposes, if you wish to embed Mentions directly on your website, you must comply with any applicable law and the conditions specified by (a) the relevant Third-Party Service or (b) as stated in the agreement between such relevant Third-Party Service and you, if any. Any other public displays are not permitted unless specifically authorized and pre-approved by Hootsuite, and the applicable Third-Party Service, as may be required.

6.2. You acknowledge and agree that (a) Hootsuite depends upon (i) availability and access to Third-Party Services, and (ii) international legislation (including but not limited to laws pertaining to intellectual property, copyright, or personal data protection), which we do not control and may change without notice; and (b) Hootsuite may, in its sole discretion at any time for any reason, remove Mentions and/or stop providing access to data (or parts of data) from Third-Party Services without liability to you or any third party for such change.

6.3. You understand and agree these additional social listening services are reliant on Third-Party Services and, as such, specific conditions are attached to their access and use. In addition to complying with any applicable terms, conditions, rules and policies of the Social Networks (listed in these Acceptable Use Rules), when you use any Hootsuite social listening services, you must also comply with the applicable terms of any Third-Party Service to the extent that it is used in connection with the Hootsuite social listening services, which are published here: www.hootsuite.com/legal/listen-aur. This list may be updated by Hootsuite from time-to-time without notice to you. 

6.4. In order to obtain Mentions from certain Third-Party Services, you may be required to either (a) sign a dedicated Authorization Form, (b) include a dedicated line in an Authorization Form, or (c) sign a direct subscription form with the relevant Third-Party Service (for example, LexisNexis and/or TVEyes). 

6.5. Content and Mentions (including without limitation the text, image, video and audio files, graphics, tables, functionality, data selection, and arrangement) are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law, or trade secrets, and may be protected by patent and other forms of intellectual property rights. You acknowledge and accept that the owners of Content and Mentions retain all present and future right, title, and interest in their Content and any Mentions, and all intellectual property rights therein including but not limited to trademarks, trade names, database rights, processes, software, patents, copyrights, designs, logos, calculations, algorithms, and domain names.

F. CONFLICT

7. In the event of any conflict between these Acceptable Use Rules and the Terms, the Terms will govern.