Effective Date: 05/22/2025

Welcome to The Briefing. These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of our website located at https://thebriefing.org (the “Site”). By accessing or using the Site, you agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not use the Site.

We may update these Terms at any time. If you continue using the Site after changes are made, that means you accept the new Terms. We know — we hate reading the fine print too.

1. Acceptable Use

You’re welcome to read, laugh at, and even cry over the content we publish — just don’t do anything shady with it. That means no hacking, scraping, impersonating staff, or pretending you’re our editor-in-chief to get free breadsticks at Olive Garden. Also, please don’t use our Site to promote hate or MLM schemes. We already support enough MLMs ourselves and don’t want to oversaturate the market with competition.

On an unrelated note, have you ever wanted to be your own boss? Because for the low, low cost of $14,000, you can become one of our merch distributors.

2. Intellectual Property

All content published on The Briefing — including articles, headlines, images, and design elements — is the original work of our team and is protected under applicable intellectual property laws, including common law copyright protections.

While we haven’t (yet) registered formal copyrights or trademarks, our content is still protected from unauthorized reproduction or misuse. If you’d like to quote, reference, or remix something we’ve created, we’re flattered — just give us proper credit and maybe shoot us an email first.

We reserve the right to update this section once we become powerful enough to trademark irony.

3. User Content

If you comment, submit content, or email us spicy takes, you grant us the right to use, modify, or throw them into the group chat for a good laugh. We reserve the right to delete anything racist, threatening, spammy, or just plain annoying. Especially if you use Comic Sans.

4. Disclaimers

The Briefing is satire. This means that almost everything on the Site is fictional, exaggerated, or written by someone who once called their TA “mom” in class. We are not liable for anyone who takes our jokes seriously, uses them to make life decisions, or tattoos them on their body.

(That one guy from Nebraska — respect.)

5. Limitation of Liability

We are not responsible for any damages arising out of your use of the Site, including but not limited to: emotional damage from realizing your city is the target of our latest roast, lost productivity from bingeing our archives, or the existential dread that sets in after reading one too many jokes about the climate crisis.

6. Termination

We reserve the right to terminate or suspend access to our Site for any reason, including being annoying. If you violate these Terms, we might ghost you. Like, permanently.

7. Dispute Resolution and Arbitration

In the unlikely event of a dispute between you and The Briefing (e.g., you sue us for exposing that your favorite senator is a Gemini), you agree to resolve it through binding arbitration instead of in court. This means no judge, no jury, and definitely no dramatic courtroom monologues — just a neutral third party deciding the outcome.

You also agree to waive any right to participate in class actions, group lawsuits, or choreographed TikTok exposés about your grievances with our website.

The arbitration will be conducted under the rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), and take place in Contra Costa County, California, using California law. Each side pays their own legal fees — unless you win, in which case we will pay in cash, exposure, or expired Briefing-branded merch (your choice).

8. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, because that’s where our LLC lives and cries during tax season. Any disputes will be resolved in the courts of Alameda County, where all jokes and grievances are legally binding — unless you elect arbitration, which you just agreed to (see above).

9. Contact Us

Questions? Legal threats? Memes? Eligible Jewish bachelors in the SF Bay Area looking to marry our Head of Content?

She’s really nice, funny, smart, pretty (but doesn’t even know it), and adventurous. She’s also definitely not holding a knife to my back as I type this.

Email us at hello@thebriefing.org. We read everything. Even the weird ones. Especially the weird ones.