Privacy & Trust

Section 1: The Principle of Privacy

Thronos recognizes privacy as an important part of human dignity, trust, and healthy community.

People should be able to participate in The Third Place without assuming that everything they say, share, create, or experience will become public.

What happens in The Third Place should not automatically become public.

Participation in a community does not constitute consent to unrestricted publication or distribution of everything shared within it.

Section 2: The Difference Between Community and Publicity

Thronos distinguishes between participation in a community and publication to the public.

A discussion held within a Thronos Space, a prayer shared during a Gathering, a Project document, a personal profile, or a conversation between members may have a limited intended audience.

The fact that information is accessible to members of Thronos does not necessarily mean that it is appropriate to share it outside Thronos.

Information should therefore be treated according to the context in which it was shared and the expectations reasonably created by that context.

Section 3: Personal Information

Thronos may collect and maintain information necessary to operate the organization and its services.

Such information shall be handled with appropriate care and shall not be treated as a resource for unrestricted use.

Thronos shall seek to collect, use, retain, and disclose personal information only for legitimate purposes connected to its activities and responsibilities.

Detailed requirements concerning the collection, storage, retention, deletion, access, and processing of personal information shall be established by applicable privacy policies and procedures.

Section 4: Conversations and Discussions

Conversations within The Third Place may include personal experiences, questions, struggles, ideas, disagreements, plans, and other matters that participants may not intend for public distribution.

Members should therefore exercise discretion before sharing another person's words or information outside the context in which it was given.

A person should not be treated as having consented to publication merely because they participated in a conversation.

Section 5: Prayer and Spiritual Matters

Prayer and spiritual reflection may involve matters of personal, family, relational, or otherwise private significance.

Thronos shall treat such participation with particular care.

No person should be pressured to disclose private matters in order to participate in prayer, worship, Gatherings, or other spiritual activities.

Personal matters shared in a spiritual context should not be republished, recorded, or distributed beyond the appropriate audience without appropriate permission, except where disclosure is necessary for safeguarding, lawful obligations, or another legitimate protective purpose.

Section 6: Projects and Intellectual Work

Projects may contain information that is personal, commercially sensitive, unfinished, confidential, or otherwise unsuitable for public distribution.

Project creators should have reasonable control over what aspects of their work are made public, subject to legitimate organizational, contractual, safeguarding, or legal requirements.

Participation in a Thronos Project does not automatically transfer ownership of a person's ideas, work, materials, or intellectual property to Thronos.

Where Thronos requires rights to use or publish a Project or its materials, those rights should be established clearly.

Section 7: Profiles, Images, Recordings, and Publication

A person's participation in Thronos does not constitute unrestricted permission to publish their name, image, voice, writings, conversations, Projects, or other personal information.

Thronos may establish procedures governing photography, video, audio recording, testimonials, public profiles, livestreaming, publication, and other forms of documentation.

Where consent is appropriate, consent should be meaningful and reasonably informed.

Particular care shall be taken where children, vulnerable persons, private gatherings, or sensitive matters are involved.

Section 8: Confidentiality and Discretion

Members, volunteers, leaders, mentors, moderators, and other persons entrusted with information through Thronos should exercise appropriate discretion.

Information received because of a position of trust should not be used for gossip, humiliation, manipulation, personal advantage, or unauthorized disclosure.

Confidentiality does not prevent appropriate action where disclosure is necessary to protect a person from harm, comply with law, investigate serious misconduct, or fulfil another legitimate responsibility.

Section 9: Access Within Thronos

Not every person within Thronos needs access to every piece of information held by the organization.

Access to personal, Project, administrative, financial, safeguarding, or other restricted information should correspond to legitimate responsibilities.

Those entrusted with greater access shall carry a corresponding duty of care.

Thronos may establish different levels of access for different roles, Spaces, Projects, and organizational functions.

Section 10: Privacy and Safeguarding

Privacy shall not be used as a reason to conceal abuse, exploitation, serious misconduct, or circumstances in which intervention is necessary to protect a person.

At the same time, safeguarding responsibilities shall not be used as a general justification for unnecessary disclosure.

Thronos shall seek to hold both responsibilities together: protecting people while respecting their dignity and privacy.

Section 11: Trust and Technology

Thronos may use digital systems to facilitate community, Projects, communication, learning, Gatherings, and organizational administration.

The use of technology does not diminish the responsibility to treat people's information with care.

Thronos shall seek to understand the privacy implications of the technologies it adopts and establish appropriate safeguards as its systems and community develop.

Section 12: Trust Is Not Secrecy

Privacy does not mean that Thronos operates without accountability.

The organization may be required to maintain appropriate records, provide information to authorized persons, investigate misconduct, comply with lawful requests, or disclose information where necessary to protect people.

The principle of privacy therefore does not create an absolute promise that information can never be disclosed.

Rather, it establishes that disclosure should have a legitimate reason and should not occur merely because the information is available.

Section 13: The Culture of Trust

Thronos seeks to cultivate a culture in which people can speak honestly without assuming that vulnerability will later be used against them.

Trust requires more than technical privacy controls.

It requires people who understand that another person's story is not automatically theirs to tell, another person's struggle is not entertainment, another person's confidence is not social currency, and access to information is not permission to use it however one wishes.

Section 14: The Principle

Thronos therefore holds that:

Privacy is part of dignity. Access is not ownership. Participation is not consent to publicity. Trust creates responsibility.

The Third Place should be a place where people can belong without surrendering the boundaries of their private lives.

Where people share something in confidence, Thronos seeks to make that confidence worthy of the trust placed in it.