Terms of Service

About the service

Madala Machine is a service provided by Ard Songs CC for managing artist content publication, scheduling, and analytics across social media platforms. The platform enables you to create, schedule, and publish content to connected accounts — including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X — and to retrieve performance analytics from those platforms in a single dashboard.

We are an independent service provider. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Meta, TikTok, YouTube, X, or any other platform we integrate with. Your use of those platforms remains governed by their respective terms of service, and you are responsible for ensuring your use of Madala Machine complies with those terms.

Your account

• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account and use Madala Machine.
• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account.
• You must provide accurate and complete information when registering and keep that information up to date.
• We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or that we reasonably suspect are being used for fraudulent, abusive, or illegal purposes.

Your content and ownership

You retain full ownership of all content you upload, create, or generate within Madala Machine. This includes text, images, videos, captions, metadata, and any other materials you add to the platform. We do not claim any ownership, copyright, or intellectual property rights over your content.

By using Madala Machine, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, revocable licence to store, process, display, and transmit your content solely for the purpose of operating the service on your behalf. This licence is necessary so that we can:

• store your drafts, scheduled posts, and media files in our secure database and storage infrastructure;
• publish your content to the social media accounts you have connected through the platform;
• retrieve and display engagement analytics associated with your published content;
• generate previews, thumbnails, and formatted outputs required by the platforms you publish to.

This licence terminates when you delete the relevant content or close your account, except where we are legally required to retain copies. Madala Machine acts strictly as a service provider — we are not a publisher, record label, or rights holder in your content.

Prohibited usage

You agree not to use Madala Machine for any of the following purposes:

• Scraping or automated extraction: you may not use bots, scrapers, crawlers, or automated tools to extract data from Madala Machine or from the platforms you connect through Madala Machine, except through the authorised APIs and features we provide.
• Abuse of connected accounts: you may not use Madala Machine to publish content that violates the terms of service of any connected platform, to spam or harass users, to distribute malware or deceptive content, or to engage in coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
• Automated spam: you may not use the scheduling or batch features to publish repetitive, unsolicited, or otherwise spam-like content at volumes or frequencies that violate platform policies or disrupt user experience.
• Illegal content: you may not upload, store, or publish content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, threatening, infringing on third-party rights, or promoting illegal activities.
• Circumvention: you may not attempt to bypass rate limits, access controls, authentication mechanisms, or any technical restrictions we or our platform partners impose.
• Reverse engineering: you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code or underlying structure of Madala Machine.

Violation of these prohibitions may result in immediate suspension or termination of your account, removal of content, and reporting to relevant authorities or platform partners where required by law or policy.

Connected platforms

• When you connect external accounts — such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, YouTube, or X — you authorise Madala Machine to act on your behalf within the specific OAuth scopes you grant during the connection process.
• You remain bound by the terms of service, community guidelines, and developer policies of each platform you connect. It is your responsibility to ensure that your use of Madala Machine complies with those external terms.
• We do not guarantee the continued availability of any platform integration. Platform partners may change their APIs, restrict access, or terminate partnerships at any time. We will make reasonable efforts to maintain integrations but are not liable for changes made by third-party platforms.
• Madala Machine is not affiliated with or endorsed by Meta, TikTok, YouTube, X, or any other platform we integrate with.

Service availability and disclaimer

Madala Machine is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or completely secure service. Like all software services, Madala Machine may experience downtime, bugs, or performance issues from time to time.

• We do not provide a service level agreement (SLA) or uptime guarantee for any tier of the platform.
• We are not liable for losses arising from changes in third-party platform APIs, policy enforcement actions by platform partners, or connectivity issues outside our control.
• We make no warranty that the platform will meet your specific requirements, that it will be compatible with all devices or browsers, or that defects will be corrected within a specific timeframe.
• You use the platform at your own risk. We recommend maintaining local backups of critical content.

Intellectual property

Madala Machine, its name, logo, interface design, and underlying software are the intellectual property of Ard Songs CC. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from any part of the platform without our express written permission. This does not affect your ownership of the content you create or upload through the platform.

Pricing and payment

• Pricing details are presented clearly before you subscribe to any paid plan.
• Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from the Settings page or by contacting us.
• Refunds are granted at our sole discretion, typically only where there has been a billing error or a service fault on our side.
• We reserve the right to change pricing for future billing periods with reasonable advance notice.

Termination

• You can cancel your account and delete your data at any time from the Settings page or by emailing info@ardmatthews.com.
• We can suspend or terminate accounts for breach of these terms, repeated violation of connected platform policies, or fraudulent or illegal activity.
• Upon termination, your data is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Active scheduled posts will not be published after account closure.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ard Songs CC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or relating to your use of Madala Machine. Our total liability for any claim arising from these terms or your use of the platform is capped at the total amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or R1,000 (South African Rand) if you have not paid anything, whichever is higher.

Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms of Service are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any dispute arising from or relating to these terms or your use of Madala Machine will be resolved in the courts of the Western Cape, South Africa. You consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of these courts.

Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms of Service from time to time. Material changes will be communicated to you by email or through a prominent notice in the platform at least 14 days before they take effect. Your continued use of Madala Machine after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

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