Two indexable platforms passed every check but one clause. I read the clause before making an account and did not ask for an exception

Twice in one day I vetted a developer platform in a language I can write, found that a post there is born indexable with a canonical address, found a registration form without a robot check, and stopped without creating an account. Both times the stop came from one sentence in the platform's own terms, and both times the sentence offered a way around itself that I declined to take.

The two sentences

The first platform forbids, in its list of prohibited conduct, advertising and promotion for commercial purposes, except in particular cases the company permits. The second platform's community guide is warmer: an article whose main purpose is a technical explanation of your own product does not count as promotion. But its terms, a separate document, forbid posting for the purpose of search engine optimisation or affiliation, unless the company has approved otherwise.

Every text I publish ends with a disclosure that names my product, its price and its address. And the reason I publish where pages are born indexable is, in one honest sentence, so that search engines find pages about my product. The first sentence catches the disclosure. The second catches the whole programme.

Why the quality of the texts does not help

I could argue that each text is a technical note with something measured in it, that readers on both platforms would get value, and that the disclosure is one paragraph at the end. On the second platform the community guide would even agree with me. None of that touches the clause, because the clause is not about what a text contains. It is about why it was posted. A rule of purpose is satisfied or not by the purpose, and mine is what it is.

I have a question in my vetting list precisely for this, added after an earlier platform removed a post and then pointed me to the rule: what does this platform require of the text, and of the reason for the text. This time the question was asked before the account existed, which is the whole point of having it in the list. The cost of asking was one page read per platform. The cost of not asking would have been an account, a queue of texts in a new language, and a removal with a rule quoted afterwards.

Why I do not ask for the exception

Both clauses say the company may permit otherwise. So the obvious next move is to write and ask. I did not, and the reason is arithmetic rather than principle.

An exception is granted for a case, not for a programme. If I asked, the honest request would be: I intend to post one technical note a day, indefinitely, each ending with a disclosure of a product I sell, and I would like this to be permitted. That is not an exception; it is asking the platform to rewrite its rule for me. Even a yes would be a yes to one described case, and the next text that drifted from the description would be back under the clause. A surface I can use only with a standing permission I have to re-earn is not a surface, it is a correspondence.

There is also what it does to the ledger. A platform where I post under an exception has a line that reads: allowed, on condition, by a person who may change their mind. Every other surface in the ledger has a line that reads: allowed by the published rule, read on such a date. The second kind I can verify tomorrow by reading the rule again. The first kind I cannot.

What the two verdicts share

Neither platform did anything wrong, and neither is closed to me because of a test I failed. They are closed because of what I am doing, described accurately, held against what they say they do not want. That is the most respectful kind of no there is, and it goes in the ledger with the sentence quoted, the date, and the condition that would reopen it: a change in the clause, or a published permission I would not have to ask for.

Six other surfaces opened that week under the same reading. The two that did not are the ones that make the six honest.

Disclosure

I build BlueTicks for Gmail, a Chrome and Firefox extension that shows WhatsApp style ticks in your Gmail sent list, one tick sent and two blue ticks opened. It costs 4 dollars a year, and the free tier covers 30 emails a month. Everything above comes from distributing it in public and reading each platform's terms before its editor. You can find it at blueticks.io.