Terms of use

Use of the map and upload area is free and does not require a user account.

There is no entitlement to publication of a submitted photo. There is also no entitlement to permanent availability of the service.

What you confirm when uploading:

• You took the photo yourself or have the necessary rights to it.
• If a sticker was applied: the sticker was placed on property you own or with the owner's consent.
• The photo does not infringe third-party rights, in particular personality, copyright, or trademark rights.

Grant of rights. You retain the rights to your photo.

(1) Map. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide right that is revocable at any time to make the photo publicly accessible on hier-fehlt.de.

(2) Social media – only with your separate consent at upload. You additionally grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide right that is revocable at any time to publish the photo on this project’s social media accounts. Currently these are Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. New channels will be listed here with a date. This includes

• publication in posts, Stories, Reels, and carousels,
• cropping, adapting to the respective format, and adding text, graphics, or music, without distorting the image content,
• passing on the rights needed for publication to the respective platform operator, insofar as its terms of use so require.

(3) Platform terms. By posting, the platform operator (e.g. Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd.) receives rights of use in the photo under its own terms. According to Meta’s own statements, Meta also uses public posts to train AI models. We have no influence over that.

(4) What we do not do. We do not sell photos, do not ourselves use them to train AI, do not run paid ads with them, and do not pass them on to third parties for their own use. Further uses, such as in print products, do not take place.

(5) Attribution. If you provided a name at upload, we will credit you as the author under that name. Without a name, the photo appears without attribution.

(6) Revocation. You may revoke both rights together or only the social media right at any time via the “Report or delete photo” form with your image ID. We will then remove the photo within 7 days from the map or take down our social media posts. We cannot retrieve copies that third parties have already shared, stored, or further distributed. What the platform operator (e.g. Meta) has already derived, stored, or further used from the post – for example for its own systems or AI training – is outside our control and is not undone by revocation.

We generally publish all submitted photos that fit the project's theme. There is no selection based on image quality, design, or taste.

We do not publish a photo if any of the following applies. This list is exhaustive:

Image content

• nudity, sexual or suggestive depictions
• racist, antisemitic, sexist, or otherwise hateful content, as well as anti-constitutional symbols
• depictions of violence, weapons, disturbing motifs
• insults, humiliation, or content directed against specific people
• advertising, political messages, or third-party brands as the subject of the image
• recognisable minors

Place and surface

• traffic signs, traffic lights, and signal installations
• rail infrastructure, signals, and public transport vehicles
• escape routes, emergency call points, fire service access routes
• monuments, memorials, artworks, sacred buildings
• graves and cemeteries
• government buildings, police, courts, hospitals
• places where applying a sticker clearly creates a hazard or causes damage

Other

• no recognisable sticker in the image
• the photo was obviously not taken at the stated location
• identical duplicate uploads
• find location or image content was blocked after a justified report
• recognisably missing rights to the image

Every review is done by a human. No automated content detection, face recognition, or AI-supported decision-making is used. No automated decision within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR takes place.

Before publication we look at every photo and blur by hand:

• faces and other features by which people could be recognised
• vehicle registration plates
• name, doorbell, and house signs
• screens, documents, and ID cards

If that is not enough to publish the photo, we reject it.

Automated pre-check — what actually happens: We technically compare location and image content against block lists. A match never leads to automatic rejection, but only means the photo is held for separate human review.

Location processing: If the photo contains GPS data, we read it in your browser. The map pin is then offset by 100 to 250 metres before it is stored. We do not store exact coordinates.

Processing time: usually under 24 hours.

Notification of the decision: Because we deliberately do not collect contact details for uploads, we cannot notify you actively. We record the outcome and reasoning for your image ID; you can retrieve it at any time via the status page. This fulfils our obligation to provide reasons under Art. 17 DSA within the information available to us.

Logging: Every decision is recorded with timestamp and reason in a tamper-proof log.