Terms of Use

Version: 1.6

Effective date: 28.10.2024

Terms of Use

Welcome to "nebenan.de"! The following Terms of Use govern the free use of "nebenan.de" by registered users (hereinafter: "membership") via the internet, mobile services, apps, other domains, or communication channels. "Users" are consumers within the meaning of § 13 BGB, i.e., natural persons who predominantly do not act for commercial or self-employed professional purposes when using "nebenan.de".

In addition to these Terms of Use, our Guidelines and our Netiquette apply.

These Terms of Use do not apply to commercial users (merchants, freelancers, and other entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 BGB) and organizations that can prove a non-profit, non-commercial, and non-profit-oriented activity. They can register on "nebenan.de" via a so-called business profile and are subject to the Terms of Use for Commercial Users.

"nebenan.de" is a company of Good Hood GmbH, hereinafter also referred to as "we". Further information can be found in our Imprint.

1. Registration and User Account

1.1 The membership is established upon our confirmation of your membership.

1.2 You must be at least 18 years old. You must be fully legally competent.

1.3 When registering, you must provide truthful, current, and complete information. You must keep your data, especially your name and address, up to date in your member account at all times. Multiple registrations under different member names are prohibited; re-registration is also prohibited if we have terminated a membership and banned re-registration.

1.4 Membership is personal, and only you may use your login details, not, for example, family members or friends. You must keep your login details for your user account confidential. Please inform us immediately if you detect misuse. In such a case, we are entitled to temporarily block your login details until the suspicion of misuse is resolved or until new login details are assigned by us.

2. Duration and Termination

The membership runs for an indefinite period. It can be terminated by you or us at any time with immediate effect. You can make your termination in your member account. Your profile, your posts, photos, and everything else you have posted will no longer be visible to other users.

3. Use of "nebenan.de"

3.1 When using "nebenan.de," you commit to complying with applicable legal provisions. This includes, for example, the protection of other users' personal rights or copyright on photos. You also commit to adhering to our Guidelines and Netiquette.

3.2 The use of "nebenan.de" is free of charge. We do not guarantee or warrant the information on "nebenan.de," content from other users, or any specific availability or functionality of "nebenan.de".

3.3 "nebenan.de" is a platform aimed at promoting and improving community life in your neighborhood. The platform "nebenan.de" offers you new opportunities to connect with your neighborhood, exchange information related to your neighborhood, and make new contacts in your neighborhood. To this end, we personalize the platform "nebenan.de" as best as possible to your needs and provide you with a variety of different functionalities and communication channels, certain information, personalized offers, recommendations, and services based on collected data. In this context, we also regularly send you current information to the email address you used to register on the platform "nebenan.de". To the extent we process your personal data in this context, we comply with data protection regulations (see further under section 5).

3.4 To the extent our platform contains links to third-party websites, sources, or services, we have no control over the content of these sites, sources, or services. The use of any such sites, sources, or services is subject to the terms of use and privacy policies of the respective third party. We assume no liability for them or for damages that may arise from their use.

3.5 You may not use your private profile on "nebenan.de" for commercial purposes, e.g., for the commercial offering of goods or services or advertising. Detailed information can be found in this guideline. If you want to use "nebenan.de" commercially, you need an official business profile. Information can be found at gewerbe.nebenan.de.

3.6 You remain the owner of your content (e.g., photos, comments, or posts you publish on "nebenan.de"). If your content is subject to intellectual property rights (e.g., copyright on a photo or text), you grant us the right to use the content for the operation of "nebenan.de," in particular to reproduce, distribute, and publicly display the content. This usage right is non-exclusive and unlimited in time and space. If necessary, we may also transfer or sublicense this usage right. The grant of rights applies to all known and unknown types of use. Any further promotion or presentation of your content by "nebenan.de," e.g., in our magazines, impact reports, or social media appearances, will be separately regulated between us and you.

3.7 We retain or acquire exclusive and unlimited rights to the structure and functionalities of "nebenan.de" as well as their designations (e.g., groups, events) and the databases of "nebenan.de" in the course of further development.

4. Content Moderation

4.1 We support the objectives and efforts of the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC, "DSA"), which aims to provide better protection for users online. We want you to feel safe when using "nebenan.de" and not be exposed to inappropriate content. For this reason, the following content is prohibited on "nebenan.de": discrimination/hate speech, pornography/sexualized content, political extremism, non-consensual distribution of images of third parties (including deepfakes), fraud, advertising/spam, false information, violence, self-harm, illegal products, animal cruelty, infringement of third-party intellectual property, violations of data protection and personal rights, violations of the protection of minors, and threats to public safety.

4.2 In case of violations of these Terms of Use, our Guidelines, our Netiquette, or applicable law, we have the right to restrict information provided by the user or remove affected content, partially or completely suspend or terminate access to "nebenan.de," suspend or close the user's account, and suspend, terminate, or otherwise restrict payments related to "nebenan.de" to the user. We are obliged to take one of the aforementioned measures if requested by an administrative or judicial authority.

4.3 Violations of these Terms of Use, our Guidelines, our Netiquette, or applicable law can be reported to us via the reporting channels we provide. We inform the reporter and the user who posted the reported content immediately about the measures we have taken and provide clear and specific reasons for our decision. Affected users have the opportunity to appeal our decisions. To exercise this right, affected users can contact kontakt@nebenan.de within six months, stating reasons. Complaints submitted through our internal complaint management system are processed by appropriately qualified personnel promptly, without discrimination, carefully, and free of arbitrariness. If a complaint contains sufficient grounds to assume our original decision was unfounded, we will reverse our decision. We will inform you about the decision made within our internal complaint management system, including the reasoning. Please note that the content of reports or complaints, including the name of the reporter or the reported party, may, in certain cases, be forwarded to the reporter or the reported party, e.g., in cases of possible copyright infringement.

4.4 If you frequently and obviously provide illegal content or frequently file obviously unfounded reports or complaints, we have the right to temporarily or permanently suspend your access to "nebenan.de" or the processing of your reports and complaints. Before the intended suspension, we will issue a warning and inform you of the reasons for the suspension as well as possible legal remedies against the decision. In making this decision, we consider, in particular, how often you have provided obviously illegal content or filed obviously unfounded reports or complaints, the proportion of your abusive content or reports compared to other content or reports within a certain period, the severity of the abusive use (including the type of illegal content), and, if ascertainable, your intentions. We waive prior warning if we consider there are reasons justifying immediate suspension. This applies, for example, in cases of a court or official order, if a suspension was threatened due to your previous violations, if pornographic content was uploaded to your user account, or if you have called for criminal acts against life and limb or other serious crimes.

4.5 To best protect you from illegal content, we may use partially automated means in addition to human review of content on "nebenan.de" to detect and identify illegal content, process reports, and/or make decisions regarding a report. The automated means check content for various parameters, including certain keywords, fake profiles, or descriptions indicating impermissible content. If the automated review indicates that content likely violates these Terms of Use, our Guidelines, our Netiquette, or applicable law, we will remove the content or forward it to our moderation team for review.

4.6 To continuously adapt "nebenan.de" to your needs, we may use so-called recommendation systems. This allows certain posts and information to be prioritized in the feed on "nebenan.de" alongside the chronological display, e.g., based on your neighborhood, age, gender, or stated interests. You have the option to change these parameters accordingly in your user account.

4.7 We prepare an annual transparency report on our moderation activities, which you can view on our website.

5. Changes to the Terms of Use

5.1 With your consent or if your consent is deemed given according to the following provisions, we may adjust the Terms of Use agreed with you (e.g., when introducing new features).

5.2 If we wish to change the Terms of Use, we will notify you at least six weeks before the proposed effective date in so-called text form (e.g., by email). If you continue to use "nebenan.de" after six weeks from receipt of this notification, your consent to the change is deemed granted, and the changes will take effect on the announced date. We will specifically point this out in the change notification. If you do not agree to this change, you can delete your account on "nebenan.de".

6. Limitation of Liability

6.1 We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence.

6.2 For simple negligence, we are liable only: For damages resulting from injury to life, body, or health. For damages resulting from the breach of a material contractual obligation (i.e., an obligation whose fulfillment enables the proper performance of the contract in the first place and on whose compliance the other party regularly relies and may rely); in this case, liability is limited to the compensation of foreseeable, typically occurring damage.

6.3 Any further liability is excluded.

6.4 The above limitations of liability do not apply insofar as a guarantee
for the quality of a product has been assumed or a defect was fraudulently
concealed. The provisions of the Product Liability Act remain
unaffected.

7. User Liability; Indemnification

7.1 You are liable according to statutory provisions.

7.2 You assure that you hold the necessary usage rights to all content you upload and distribute on "nebenan.de" and that this content is not encumbered with third-party rights (especially not copyrights, related rights, or personal rights).

7.3 Should third parties assert claims due to content you have uploaded and distributed on "nebenan.de," you are obliged to indemnify us from all claims arising from the proper use of this content on "nebenan.de." This also includes reasonable costs of legal defense and prosecution.

8. Data Protection

8.1 We process your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection regulations, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") and the Federal Data Protection Act ("BDSG").

8.2 The processing of your personal data primarily serves the purpose of organizing and carrying out your membership or providing the platform "nebenan.de" free of charge. For basic verification within the platform "nebenan.de," we only require proof of your first and last name as well as your full address. To protect your personal data, we ask you to redact any other personal information not relevant for verification (e.g., customer numbers, ID card numbers) when submitting personal documents (e.g., invoices or ID cards).

8.3 In the course of your use of the platform "nebenan.de," we also process your personal data for the purpose of fulfilling our contractual obligations. We offer you a variety of functions that can be individually tailored to you (for example, we provide you with certain information, offers, recommendations, and services based on the processed data and promote your interaction with the platform "nebenan.de"). To provide these services, processing your personal data is necessary. Finally, we are also obliged to process your personal data in certain cases due to legal requirements (e.g., in connection with the implementation of the Digital Services Act or due to commercial and/or tax law provisions).

8.4 If you provide us with additional personal data about yourself during your use of the platform "nebenan.de" (e.g., by entering information within your profile or adjusting your interests and settings), we also process this data for the purpose of optimizing, managing, marketing, and personalizing the platform "nebenan.de." If we specifically place advertisements based on the information you provide, our cooperation partners receive only anonymized information about the targeted audience, such as demographic data, interests and offers, survey results, and possibly information about the performance of the campaign. We ensure that our cooperation partners do not receive any concrete information (such as name, address, or other contact details like an email address) about you.

8.5 The data processing described in sections 8.2 to 8.4 enables us to continue providing the platform "nebenan.de" free of charge and is therefore necessary to fulfill our obligations under these Terms of Use. The legal basis for data protection is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. b GDPR ("necessary for contract performance"), Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. c GDPR ("to fulfill legal obligations related to the provision of the platform"), and additionally Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR if we rely on overriding legitimate interests. In case we carry out individual processing operations based on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR), we will ask you separately for your revocable consent in each case.

8.6 Further information on the processing of your personal data within the scope of using our platform "nebenan.de" can be found in our privacy policy on our website at nebenan.de/privacy.

9. Alternative Dispute Resolution under the Consumer Dispute Resolution Act

We inform you that we are neither willing nor obligated to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

10. Applicable Law

German law applies, excluding private international law and the UN Sales Convention as incorporated into German law. Mandatory consumer protection law of the European member state in which a user has their habitual residence remains unaffected.