Field OP — Acceptable Use Policy

Version: 1.0-draft Published at: /acceptable-use and /acceptable-use/1.0-draft Effective: not in force. A version that is not a draft takes effect on publication.

This version is engineering's, and it is not in force. It was corrected on 17 September 2026 by checking every sentence about what the platform does against the code that does it. No lawyer has reviewed it, nobody has been asked to accept it, and it stays a draft — the page carrying it says so before the text — until a version counsel has cleared replaces it.

This policy forms part of the Field OP Terms of Service and you accept it at sign-up. Words defined there have the same meaning here. Where this policy and the Terms of Service conflict, the Terms of Service govern.

1. What this policy is

This policy sets out what you may and may not do with Field OP. It applies to the organization that holds the account, to everyone the organization gives access to — administrators, managers, organizers, candidates and volunteers — and to anyone acting on the organization's behalf.

Field OP is a product of Gestalt Communications Inc., a federally incorporated Canadian company, which is the contracting party. In this policy "we" and "us" mean Gestalt Communications Inc., and "you" means the organization that holds the account.

2. Our position: neutral infrastructure, not an editorial publisher

Field OP is politically neutral technology infrastructure. We do not approve or reject political viewpoints, and we do not decide who deserves to organize. What we enforce is the law, the safety of the platform, and the rules set out in this policy.

This is deliberate, and it is worth being plain about it. Some campaign platforms will serve only one side of the political spectrum. Field OP serves nonpartisan municipal politics, and campaigns and advocacy organizations across the spectrum, subject to law and to this policy. A campaign is not refused service here because of what it believes.

What we do keep is commercial discretion. We may decline to provide service, or end it, where there is material legal, security, sanctions, conflict-of-interest or reputational risk. That is a business judgment about a relationship, not an editorial judgment about a viewpoint, and the two are kept separate on purpose — see section 7.

3. Sign-up is self-serve, so review happens after you start

Anyone can create an organization on Field OP from a public page and start immediately. There is no waiting list, no approval step and nobody from Gestalt in the path.

That has a consequence worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to discover it: because we do not check you before you start, we review after you have started. Shortly after an organization is created we carry out an acceptable-use and commercial-conflict review. In almost every case you will never hear about it. Where it finds a problem, the outcome is a conversation, and in the rare case that the problem is serious, a restriction or a suspension of an account that already exists — not a refusal to let you open one.

In practical terms: starting to use Field OP is not our approval of what you intend to do with it. The rules in this policy bind you from your first day, and the enforcement ladder in section 6 is how they are applied.

4. Prohibited uses

You may not use Field OP, and you may not permit anyone using your account to use it, for any of the following.

4.1 Law, elections and people

• Violating election law or privacy law, in any jurisdiction where you operate.
• Voter intimidation or suppression of any kind.
• False polling or false voting instructions — wrong dates, wrong locations, wrong eligibility rules, or anything else designed to stop somebody voting or to send them to the wrong place.
• Impersonation, fraud, threats or harassment, whether aimed at a member of the public, at a volunteer, at an opponent or at anybody else.
• Illegal spam, unlawful automated calling, or contacting people who are suppressed. A do-not-contact instruction is not a preference to be worked around.
• Contacting people outside the hours permitted in your jurisdiction. The platform does not enforce a time window on contact and will not stop you. The obligation is yours and it is not a smaller obligation for being unenforced — see section 5.
• Uploading data you do not have the rights to use, including any list obtained in breach of the terms it came under. Voters' lists obtained under electoral legislation carry their own access, use and destruction obligations, and those obligations follow the data into Field OP.
• Unauthorized resale or redistribution of data held in the platform.

4.2 The platform itself

• Scraping, probing other organizations, or attempting to bypass permissions. Every campaign's data is isolated at the database, not merely hidden in the interface; attempting to get around that is a serious breach of this policy whether or not it succeeds.
• Malware, or anything that disrupts or degrades the service for us or for another customer.
• Fraudulent fundraising. Field OP does not process donations, and it may not be used to solicit them fraudulently through any channel.
• Using AI — ours or your own — to get around a compliance or security control. If a control would refuse a person, it refuses the same request made through a model.

4.3 Intelligence-specific prohibitions

These matter more than the rest, and they are stated without softening. Field OP can produce estimates about people — including labels inferred from a family name — and the rules below are what keep that capability from becoming something else.

• You may not use an inferred trait to exclude, discourage or suppress contact with a group. Inferred traits exist to match volunteers to the people they can talk with and to choose the language a piece of material is written in. Using them to decide who does not get knocked on, who does not get a reminder, or who is worth less effort is prohibited, and it is the single use this platform was built to refuse.
• You may not present a model score or an inferred label to any person as a statement of fact about them. These are estimates. They are wrong often, and they are wrong unevenly — the error falls hardest on adoptees, on converts, on people who married across a group, and on families longest in the country.
• You may not attempt to re-identify individuals or organizations from aggregate or benchmark data, including the pooled calibration counts described in the Privacy Notice.
• You may not use message testing to deliver false or unapproved claims, or to vary a required disclaimer. Testing which of two approved wordings works better is the feature. Testing whether you can get away with dropping a sponsor identification is not.
• You may not circumvent suppression, permitted contact hours or consent by any means, including by asking an AI feature to do it for you. "Any means" is meant literally: a second list, an export, a different channel, a volunteer's personal phone, or a prompt.
• You may not upload data intended to poison or manipulate the platform's models, including fabricated survey answers or corrections submitted to move a model rather than to record what somebody said.
• You may not target anyone on the basis of an inferred religion, or use an inferred trait for any purpose that would be unlawful if the person had told you the same thing directly.

5. What the platform enforces, and what is on you

You should know which of these rules the software will refuse to let you break and which depend on you. A rule the platform enforces is still your obligation; a rule it does not enforce is not a smaller obligation.

Enforced by the platform:

• Organization isolation. The database refuses cross-campaign reads. An application bug cannot expose another customer's data.
• Who may read an inferred label. Reading a trait requires the Restricted Data grant, which is time-boxed and dual-controlled — the database itself refuses a grant approved by the person who requested it or by the person who receives it. Frontline roles, including every volunteer, are refused traits and restricted fields outright, and traits are never exportable: an export refuses a restricted or inferred class before any grant is even considered.
• Traits never reach a phone, and they cannot be used to choose which wording a volunteer is asked to say. The wording rules a canvass can use are limited by construction to fields the mission bundle already carries plus the person's stated language; an inferred trait cannot be one of them.
• A stated fact outranks a guess. When somebody tells a volunteer their language at a door, that statement is recorded as a first-party assertion, supersedes the previous one, and is the heaviest signal the model reads. It never disappears: the second, third and tenth statements are all kept.
• Labels are superseded, never overwritten, and every label carries its model, its version, its evidence, its confidence and its usage restrictions on the row.
• Suppression is recorded per person, propagates to the household, and reaches the phone. There is one definition of it and every place that decides contact shares it. There is no override.
• An immutable audit trail records which record changed, by whom, and the shape of the change — and never the content. A check in the build refuses any new audit payload that would carry content.

On you, and not enforceable by software:

• Permitted contact hours. The platform holds no time window, reads no hour of the day, and will not stop a contact at any time. Section 4.1 binds you regardless.
• Required disclaimers and sponsor identification. The platform carries the fields. It does not verify that what you send is compliant.
• That your list was lawfully obtained and is lawfully used.
• That what you say at a door, on a call or in a message is true.
• That the people you give access to understand these rules. Volunteers see real people's information on their own phones.
• Decisions made using model output are yours. Field OP is not automated legal counsel and it is not a decision-maker. A human reviews, and a human is responsible.

6. Enforcement

Where we find a breach of this policy, we act in steps, and we start at the lowest one that fits.

1. A warning, or a request that you correct something. Most matters end here.
2. A feature restriction, or pausing a specific activity — for example, turning off a capability that is being misused while the rest of the account carries on working.
3. Suspension of a user or of the whole organization.
4. Termination.

We may move directly to a higher step where the breach is serious, where somebody is at risk, or where the law requires it.

What suspension means for your data. Suspension is a change to your organization's standing, not a deletion. Nothing is erased, and reading and export stay available so that you can take your own data out, as does billing so that you can put the account right. This matters where your organization holds a voters' list it must still account for.

[NOT YET BUILT — 17 Sep 2026] True of read-only standing, and not of suspended. A suspended organization can sign in and can pay — that much was built on 17 September 2026 — but the permission evaluator allows a suspended organization billing and nothing else, so an export is refused. The sentence is kept because it is what we intend and because a campaign holding a voters' list may be under a statutory deadline; it is marked because the platform does not do it today.

Evidence. Where a matter involves unlawful conduct or a risk to somebody's safety, we preserve the relevant records and report where we are legally required to. The audit trail, custody acknowledgements and destruction certificates are append-only and cannot be deleted in any event.

Appeal. You may appeal any substantive enforcement decision. Write to legal@fieldop.ca. A person who was not involved in the original decision reviews it. A restriction stays in force while an appeal is pending unless we say otherwise.

7. Commercial conflict review

Separately from this policy, Gestalt may carry out an internal commercial conflict review where a prospective customer's work could materially affect an existing Gestalt relationship. That is business governance. It is not product editorial policy, and it is not a political test.

This review never becomes a way for one customer to learn that another is a customer. It is carried out without disclosing organization identities beyond the people who need to know, and the outcome told to anybody outside that group is a decision, never a reason that names somebody else. We will not confirm or deny that any organization uses Field OP.

8. Reporting misuse

If you believe somebody is misusing Field OP — including somebody inside your own organization — tell us at legal@fieldop.ca.

9. Changes to this policy

This policy is versioned. A new version is published as a new version rather than an edit to this one, so that it is always possible to say which words you agreed to and when. We will give your administrators notice of a change. Where a change is material, section 16.3 of the Terms of Service applies.

Field OP is a product of Gestalt Communications Inc.