Terms of service

Plain English. The site is simple, so the terms are short. The petty parts are the product, not the fine print.

Square Town (square.pov.town, "Square Town", "we") is a favicon wall: a shared grid where each 1×1 square costs US$1, one-time, and shows the favicon of a website you choose. By buying a square, kissing an icon, or otherwise using the site you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, don't use it — the wall is fine either way.

TL;DR — $1 buys one square with your site's favicon, held until someone pays double to evict you. No refunds, no accounts, no guarantees of traffic. Don't put illegal or harmful sites on the wall. We can remove any square. Keep your deed URL safe; it's the only proof you own anything.

What you're buying#

1. A square, not a promise. $1 places the favicon of the URL you enter on one 1×1 cell you pick, linked to that URL through our redirect (/go/:id). The Throne (the 4×4 centre) is priced separately, starting at $100. See pricing.
2. The favicon comes from your site. We fetch it automatically (via Google's favicon service). If your site has no favicon you get a clown emoji and a place in the Hall of Clowns until you add one. We don't accept uploaded images.
3. Ownership is a deed URL. After payment you receive a secret deed link. Anyone with that link controls the square (analytics unlock, proof of ownership). There are no accounts, logins or password resets. If you lose the link, we generally cannot recover it for you.
4. "Forever" has an asterisk. Your payment never expires and there is no subscription — but any square can be evicted by anyone paying double what you paid, and icons not kissed for 90 days fade to grayscale (still yours). Evictions and decay are core mechanics of the site, not defects.

Payments and refunds#

• Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.
• All sales are final. Being evicted, being placed in the Hall of Clowns, fading, or a ring not unlocking are not grounds for a refund. If your site is removed for violating these terms, there is no refund either.
• If you were charged and no square appeared (a genuine payment failure on our side), contact us with the domain and approximate time and we will fix it or refund it.
• Prices are in US dollars. Your bank may add conversion fees.

What you may put on the wall#

You may add any website you own or are entitled to promote. You may not add or link to sites that are, or that primarily contain:

• illegal content, or content that facilitates illegal activity;
• malware, phishing, scams, or deceptive redirects;
• sexual content involving minors, non-consensual sexual content, or content that sexualises minors in any form;
• harassment, threats, or content targeting a private individual;
• spam farms, or dozens of near-identical domains added to game the wall.

We decide what crosses these lines. Domains change hands and content changes; if a site on the wall becomes something on this list, we may remove it later.

Removal, evictions and moderation#

• We may remove any square at any time, with or without notice, for violating these terms, following a valid complaint, or if a site becomes dead, parked or harmful. Removed squares are not refunded.
• Anyone can evict anyone by paying double. That is the game; we do not mediate evictions or reverse them.
• Anyone can kiss any icon for free. Kissing keeps an icon in colour; it grants no rights.
• If your site is on the wall and you don't want it there — someone else may have added it — send a takedown request. We remove sites at the request of the domain owner; you may be asked to prove control of the domain (for example a DNS record or a page on the site).
• We may hide, rename or reset the wall in dev/testing situations that are clearly marked as such.

Automated use#

The read API (/api/state, /stats.json) is public and free. Be reasonable: we rate-limit abusive traffic and may block clients that hammer the site or its favicon proxy. Purchases must complete Stripe Checkout; do not attempt to bypass or replay it. See the API page.

No warranties, limited liability#

Square Town is a small indie project run on Cloudflare's free tier. It is provided "as is" — no uptime, traffic, click, ranking or SEO guarantees of any kind. Clicks from the wall are redirects and carry no search-engine value; don't buy a square for that. To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for anything related to the site is limited to the amount you paid us in the preceding 12 months, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses.

Changes#

We may change these terms or the mechanics of the wall (prices, ring size, decay period and so on) at any time; changes apply going forward and are reflected on this page and in how it works. If a change is significant we'll say so in the live feed or on the blog.

Governing law and contact#

These terms are governed by the laws of Denmark, where Square Town is operated, unless mandatory consumer law where you live says otherwise. Questions, takedowns and complaints: use the contact page or email peter@theill.com.

FAQ#

Can I get a refund if I'm evicted?#

No. Eviction is a core mechanic: anyone can take any square by paying double what its owner paid. The evicted owner keeps nothing — the same rule that made your square cheap protects nobody, including you.

Someone put my site on the wall without asking. Can I have it removed?#

Yes. Send a takedown request with the domain. We remove sites at the request of the domain owner and may ask you to prove you control the domain.

Do I own the pixels / the square legally?#

You own a row in our database that says your domain sits on a coordinate until someone evicts you. It is not property, not an NFT, and not transferable except by sharing your deed URL.

What happens if Square Town shuts down?#

We run on Cloudflare's free tier so the bill can't lapse, but if the site ever closes, squares end with it — there is no refund for a service that no longer exists. That risk is priced in at $1.

Can I put someone else's site on the wall?#

You may add a site you're entitled to promote. Adding a site to harass its owner, or adding sites that violate the content rules above, gets the square removed without refund.