Last updated October 2026
If you create an account we store your username and a salted password hash — never your plain password. Your security question is stored with a salted hash of the answer, never the answer itself. If you sign in with Google we store your email address and Google account ID so we can recognise you next time — we never see your Google password, and we request only your basic profile (name and email).
For every debate we store the transcript (your typed and transcribed spoken arguments), fact-check results, audience votes, scores, and rating changes.
If you send us a message through the Contact form, report another player, or dispute a fact-check, we store what you send so it can be reviewed.
We never record video. Your camera feed is live only — it is shown to your opponent and to whoever is watching the debate at that moment, and it is never written to disk, never stored, and never published. There is no video file of your debate anywhere, and no way for us or anyone else to replay it.
What is kept from a debate is the written transcript, and nothing else.
During a debate each participant's microphone audio IS recorded — solely to produce the debate transcript used for judging and the public history. It is uploaded securely, transcribed once after the debate ends, and then DELETED immediately (at most within one hour). We keep only the resulting text transcript, never the audio.
To produce the transcript and verdict, your recorded audio may be sent to Groq (speech-to-text), and your typed and transcribed arguments to Google's Gemini API, with Groq as a backup, which picks out factual claims, checks them against public sources (the searches, built from your claims, go to Wikipedia, Google News and DuckDuckGo), and judges the debate. In a rematch, a short text summary of your previous match is included so the judge can reward how arguments developed.
The camera/microphone call between the two debaters travels directly between their devices (peer-to-peer) and is not stored. To help the two devices find each other, your browser contacts a public STUN server run by Google; it sees your IP address, but never your audio or video.
So that an audience can watch a debate live, each debater's camera and microphone are also streamed through LiveKit Cloud, a third-party media service, which relays them to the viewers watching at that moment. It relays the stream only while the debate is live; we have not enabled any LiveKit recording, so nothing is stored there. Viewers can watch and listen only; they cannot send video or audio into a debate.
Finished debates are viewable via a public replay link and the Archive, containing the topic, participant display names, transcript, fact-checks, audience result, and verdict. Each replay also has a result image (the motion, both display names, the scores and a line from the judge's verdict) that appears as the link preview when a replay is shared.
If you enter the Daily Argument we store your argument, the side you chose, your display name, your score and the judge's feedback. The day's top scores, and the text of the top three arguments, are shown on a public leaderboard.
Your argument is sent to Google's Gemini API to be scored and to pick out any factual claims, which are checked against Wikipedia, Google News and DuckDuckGo in the same way as debate claims.
Motion votes are stored as a FOR or AGAINST vote on that day's motion and are only ever shown as a total split.
To limit each person to one vote and one entry per day, your browser creates a random identifier. We store only a salted, one-way hash of it: it is not linked to who you are and is not used for anything else. If you are signed in, your account is used instead.
A single HttpOnly session cookie keeps you signed in for 30 days. We use no advertising cookies, no tracking cookies, and no cross-site profiling of any kind.
Your browser also keeps a few small things in its own local storage: your sound on/off choice, your 18+ confirmation, and the random identifier described above. None of it identifies you, and you can clear it at any time in your browser settings.
We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they land on. It is privacy-first by design: it sets no cookies, does not fingerprint your device or browser, does not track you across other websites, and never builds a profile of you. There is nothing to opt out of because nothing identifies you.
What it records is limited to aggregate page data — the page visited, the referring site, rough country, browser and device type, and page load speed. Cloudflare processes this on our behalf and we cannot tie any of it back to an individual visitor or account.
Your IP address is processed in memory for rate limiting (e.g. login attempts) and fair-play checks (e.g. detecting two ranked players on the same network). It is not shown to other users and is not part of public replays. Cloudflare, which carries all traffic to this site, also processes IP addresses in order to deliver and protect it.
MASSDEBAITER is for adults only. You must be 18 or older to create an account or take part in a debate, including as a guest without an account. We ask you to confirm this before you sign up and before a guest debate begins.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has used the service, contact us and we will remove the account and its data.
You can delete your account yourself at any time: open your profile menu and choose Delete account. You will be asked to confirm, and the deletion is immediate and permanent — we cannot undo it or restore anything afterwards.
Erased outright: your username, password hash, security question and answer hash, Google email and account ID if you signed in with Google, your rating and rating history, win/loss record, achievements, season results, tournament entries, forum memberships, blocks, any challenge links you created, your Daily Argument entries and motion votes, and any messages you sent us through the Contact form. You are signed out on every device at once.
Kept, but with your identity removed: a debate involves two people, so deleting the record would also erase your opponent's history. Debates you took part in therefore stay online — the transcript, fact-checks, verdict and your opponent's details are unchanged — but your account is unlinked from them and your display name is replaced with “[deleted]”. The same applies to moderation reports and tournament brackets that mention you, and to any forum you created, which stays but loses its creator. Nothing left behind identifies you.
Your username becomes available for anyone to register again once your account is deleted. If you would rather have something handled manually, or you want to ask about a specific debate, contact the site operator through the Contact form.