Raiz

Terms of Service

Last updated: September 19, 2026 · How we handle your information: Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Raiz is operated by People Ventures Inc., a British Columbia company. These terms are an agreement between you and People Ventures Inc. By creating an account or using Raiz, you agree to them. Raiz was called Rise until September 2026. These are the same terms under the new name, and your agreement to them carries over.

2. What Raiz is

Raiz lets residents speak about life in their neighborhood, see their voice counted alongside their neighbors, echo other residents' statements, add their own opinion under them, and follow what happens next. Residents can also post directly to their neighborhood's feed: alerts, things to share, and what is on their mind, with up to four optional photos. Residents can put up neighborhood events (with an optional banner image and an optional external link) and ask or answer questions on them. Residents can open a neighbor's profile, ask to connect, and, once both have said yes, message and wave at each other; anyone can message the author of a live Board listing about that listing. Residents can list their pets on their profile, with photos, for neighbors who open it to see. Residents can start or join a group in their neighborhood with its own chat, shared works and events; members see each other by display name, and the group's page tells everyone who can read its chat. Raiz compiles what residents say into digests and reports for the public, community organizations, journalists, and decision makers.

3. Your account

• You sign in with an email address (a one-time code or a passkey). There is no password to remember.
• You must live in the neighborhood you declare and be at least 16 years old.
• You choose a display name before your first post, connection request, wave or message, or before you start or join a group. Neighbors see it beside your statements, Board listings, requests and chats; pick one you are happy to stand behind.
• One account per person. Do not use Raiz to impersonate anyone or to manufacture support for a view.

4. Your voice, your posts, and how they are used

• When you speak, Raiz records a short structured version of what you raised: a summary, a one-sentence statement, a topic, and the neighborhood it concerns.
• When you post directly (a heads up, a question, a recommendation, something lost or found, something to share, or anything at all), it is published exactly as you wrote it the moment you send it; nothing is reworded and nothing waits. An automated safety check runs as you post: it refuses only a narrow list nobody may publish (sexual content, violence or threats, hateful content, exposing or targeting a private person, weapons or drugs for sale, obvious scams), and it can ask a human moderator to look at a post that is already up. Moderators can take a post down after it is published; you are told in the app when that happens. A heads up leaves the feed after 3 days. Alerts come from official sources only.
• The photos you attach to a post (up to four) are shown to signed-in neighbors beside your words and each is reviewed after posting; a photo that breaks the ground rules is removed. You can delete your own posts (and their photos) at any time from Posts on your profile.
• When you voice an opinion, your words are published exactly as you said them (2 to 500 characters): nothing is reworded and no question is asked. An AI service only files a topic, a sentiment and a one-line summary for the record. Neighbors can echo your opinion (and take the echo back) or add their own opinion under it as a comment shown beside their display name; the newest comment shows on your opinion's card. You can delete your own opinion and your own comments at any time.
• Pets on your profile are for your own animals: a name, a kind, an optional breed and description, and up to four photos each, shown to signed-in neighbors who open your profile. Pet photos are reviewed after you add them like post photos. The pets section is not a place to sell or rehome animals (the Job Board and the feed are there for that), and it is not a place for photos of other people. You can edit or remove your pets at any time.
• Neighbors can react to a direct post, comment on it, and share it. A comment, whether on a post or under an opinion, is published exactly as you wrote it the moment you send it, with the same automated safety check and the same narrow refusal list as a post; nothing is reworded and nothing waits, and a moderator can take a comment down after the fact. You can delete your own comments at any time, and reactions can be taken back with a tap. Reactions are not anonymous: signed-in neighbors can open a post's or an event's reaction count and see the display names of the neighbors who reacted. Sharing a post uses your device's own share sheet: what you share leaves Raiz, so share the way you would repeat something a neighbor said over the fence.
• When you put up an event, the same applies: it is published exactly as you wrote it the moment you save it (edits too, with the same automated check), the banner image is reviewed after it appears, and past events leave the events page on their own. You can edit, cancel, or remove your event at any time; a canceled event stays visible, marked canceled, until its date passes, so neighbors who saw it know.
• Questions and answers on an event are shown to signed-in residents with the display names of the people who wrote them. While the host has not answered a question, Raiz may show an automatic answer, clearly labeled, drawn only from what the event listing itself says; it is hidden once the host answers. Raiz does not guarantee automatic answers are complete; the listing and the host's own answers are the reference.
• Statements, comments and posts are shown to other signed-in residents with your display name, never your email. Echoes are not anonymous either: when you echo an opinion, signed-in neighbors who can see that opinion can open its echo count and see your display name, exactly the way reactions on a post show who reacted.
• Your profile shows signed-in neighbors your display name, photo, badge, neighborhood, the interests you picked, and your live Board listings. A connection request carries your note and your interests to one neighbor. Requests, direct messages and waves are private between the two of you. A connection is not consent to anything beyond chatting on Raiz: either neighbor can end it at any time, and the other is not told. Requests that are not answered lapse after 30 days.
• Anything that leaves the app is anonymized: public share pages, digests, statistics, and reports say "a neighbor in your area", never a name.
• You give People Ventures Inc. a licence to use, anonymize, aggregate, and publish what you submit as part of neighborhood digests, statistics, and reports. You keep ownership of your words.
• You are never quoted in a way that identifies you unless you explicitly agree to it first.
• Counts and statistics (for example, "47 voices on pedestrian safety") are aggregates and may appear in public materials.

5. Ground rules

Raiz is for conditions, places, and policies, not for targeting people. The same rules cover statements, direct posts, photos, events, event questions and answers, pets and their photos, connection requests and their notes, direct messages, and everything inside a group: its name, its description, its rules, its chat, the works members share and the events it puts up. Do not use Raiz to:

• attack, name, or identify a private individual;
• post content (including photos) that is unlawful, hateful, sexual, or harassing;
• misrepresent where you live, automate submissions, or otherwise distort the neighborhood's voice;
• post events that are not real, or use the events page for scams or pure advertising with no actual event behind it;
• use connection requests or messages to pester, sell to, or pressure a neighbor. One request per neighbor per month, and no more than a handful of requests a day, is the built-in pace.

A group is for people who want to do something together, never against people. A group for painters, for climbers, for a parish or for the rainbow neighbors on a block is welcome. A group whose purpose is to oppose, exclude, or target a person or a group of people is not, and there is no warning and no second chance for one. No group may say its audience is under 16, because Raiz is for people 16 and older. A group's admins host it: they may remove a post or a member from their own group, and what they do is written in the group's log. Raiz may remove a post, remove a member, or close a group that breaks these rules.

Every statement, post, event, event question, neighbor profile, group, group message, member's work, and conversation can be reported in the app, and you can block a neighbor, from their profile or from anything they posted, so you no longer see each other's content and neither of you can message the other. We may decline to record, or may remove, content that breaks these rules, and may suspend accounts that repeatedly do.

6. The Verified badge

You can optionally verify that you live in your declared neighborhood with a one-time location check done on your device. The result is a yes or no; your coordinates are checked and immediately discarded, never stored. Verified voices may be given extra weight in reports, and that weighting is disclosed in our methodology.

7. Privacy

The full details live in our Privacy Policy. In short:

• What we collect: your email address, the neighborhood you declare, what you submit (your words and the structured version of them), your direct posts and any photos you attach, your pets if you add any, your interests if you pick any, your connection requests and messages with neighbors, the groups you joined and what you posted and wrote there, your echoes, and standard technical logs needed to run the service.
• What we do not collect: your legal name, your address, or your precise location. Verification coordinates are never stored. Your display name is whatever you choose to be called; it is required before your first post and shown to signed-in neighbors.
• No ads, no sale of data, no tracking pixels. Your information is used to run Raiz and to build the anonymized, aggregated reports described above, nothing else.
• Where your data lives: on Canadian servers (currently in central Canada).
• AI processing: an AI service classifies your opinion (a topic, a sentiment and a one-line summary for the record) and never rewords it; direct posts, comments, events and attached photos are checked by an AI service against the ground rules as they are posted (the words are already public while it looks; only the narrow refusal list above is stopped up front, and photos are reviewed after they appear). None of it is used to train third-party AI models.
• Your rights: under BC's Personal Information Protection Act you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and submissions. Contact us at hello@rhaeize.com.

8. What Raiz is not

• Raiz is not a government service and does not guarantee that any authority will act on, or respond to, anything you or your neighbors raise.
• Raiz is not an emergency service. If someone is in danger, call 911. For city service requests (a pothole, a broken light), Raiz may point you to Van311.
• Raiz is provided "as is", without warranties. To the extent the law allows, People Ventures Inc. is not liable for indirect or consequential damages arising from your use of Raiz.

9. Changes and contact

We may update these terms as Raiz grows. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Raiz after a change means you accept it. These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and of Canada.

Questions? hello@rhaeize.com