Terms of service

1. 1

   Who this agreement is between

   These terms are an agreement between you and the operator of MediaBid, who runs MediaBid at mediabid.lol. Below, we and us mean the operator, and you means the person using the site.

   Using MediaBid accepts them. That covers reading the board, importing a profile, and paying for a listing. If you do not accept these terms, do not use the site and do not place a bid.

   Two other pages sit beside this one. How it works sets out the mechanics of the board in full, and the privacy notice says what happens to data. If the plain description over there ever contradicts the wording here, this page is the one that binds — but tell us, because it means one of the two is wrong.

2. 2

   What MediaBid is

   MediaBid is a public directory of X and Instagram handles. Paying lists a handle and buys a rank on a public leaderboard, ordered by the amount paid. That is the whole product. In concrete terms, a paid listing is:

   • a row on the board for that platform, with a display name, bio, photo and follower count;
   • a permanent public page at /x/handle or /instagram/handle;
   • an outbound link to the profile from both, marked as a paid placement;
   • a count of the clicks that go down those links;
   • a rank that holds until somebody pays more.

   A bid buys a place on the board. It does not buy, sell, rent or transfer an account, and it grants no interest of any kind in one. Nothing that happens here changes who owns a handle, who can log into it, or what it posts. We hold no credentials, broker no account sales and act as escrow for nobody. A bid offered as payment for an account is void and the listing comes down.

   We also have no control over any X or Instagram account. We cannot post from one, edit one, verify one, unlock one, recover one, or stop one being suspended. If that is what you need, this is the wrong site.

   The display name, bio, photo and follower count on a listing are imported from public profile data on X and Instagram, and the photo is copied into our own storage so the row does not break when the original moves. The name and bio stay editable before you pay. Nothing on the site checks who an account belongs to, which is why the next two sections exist.

3. 3

   MediaBid is not X or Instagram

   MediaBid is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to X Corp. or Meta Platforms, Inc. Their names appear here to say which platform a handle is on, and for nothing else. Their trade marks remain theirs.

   Neither company has any part in what happens on this board, and nothing you do here changes your standing with either of them or your obligations under their own terms. Reporting a lot to X or Instagram does not reach us: the takedown route is on the contact page.

4. 4

   Who can use MediaBid

   • You must be at least 18 years old.
   • You must have the right to list the handle you submit: it is yours, you run it, or the person who runs it has said yes.
   • You must be entitled to use the card you pay with.

   Nothing on the site verifies any of that. Anyone can list any handle, including one they have nothing to do with — and that is exactly why anyone can ask for a listing to come off, through the takedown route.

   So be clear on the risk before you pay: if you list a handle you do not run and the person who does asks us to remove it, it comes off, and the money is not returned. That risk is yours, and it is written here before the payment rather than after it.

5. 5

   Prices and how bidding works

   The mechanics are set out at length on how it works. The part that is contractual is short:

   • Prices are in US dollars, and bids are whole dollars. There are no cents.
   • A handle nobody has listed opens at the reserve, $1. No single bid can be more than $50,000, a ceiling that exists to catch a mistyped zero.
   • Rank is the amount and nothing else, highest first. No decay, no weighting, no model.
   • When two lots hold the same amount, whoever paid first sits above.
   • Taking a lot from someone else costs their standing bid plus $1.
   • Raising your own standing bid charges only the difference between it and the new amount. Money already on your lot is never charged twice.

   Payment is handled by Stripe. Card details go to Stripe, not to us — MediaBid never sees or stores a card number. A listing goes up when Stripe confirms the payment. If a payment fails, nothing is listed and nothing is owed.

   There is no listing fee on top of the bid, no subscription, and nothing that renews. We may change the reserve, the step or the ceiling later; any change applies to bids placed after it, never to money already taken.

6. 6

   Refunds

   Bids are final. A rank is delivered the instant it is bought: the board reorders, the row goes live, and the place is taken from whoever held it a second earlier. There is nothing left to hand back, so there is no cooling-off period on a bid and no refund for changing your mind.

   Being outbid is not a refund event either. It is somebody paying more than you did, which is the entire mechanic of the board. Your listing stays up at the amount you paid.

   There are two exceptions, and both are built into the site rather than left to goodwill:

   • Outbid while your checkout was still open. If the lot climbs past your amount between the moment your checkout opens and the moment you pay, you have been charged for a rank you cannot have. That payment is refunded in full, automatically, without you asking. If the automatic refund itself fails, it is logged for a person and paid back by hand.
   • We remove your listing and you did nothing to cause it. If we take a lot down for reasons of our own, or because we got something wrong, we refund what you paid for that listing.

   What is not refunded: being outbid in the ordinary way; a listing removed because it broke these terms; a listing removed because the person behind the account asked us to take it down; and a handle that is renamed, deleted or suspended by X or Instagram after you paid. That last one we cannot control and cannot fix — tell us and we will take the dead lot off the board.

   Refunds go back to the card that paid, through Stripe. How long the money takes to appear is between Stripe and your bank.

   If a charge looks wrong — charged twice, charged with no listing, charged against the wrong handle — tell us on the contact page or write to the contact address published on this page once it is set. Send the date, the amount and the handle. We would rather fix it than argue about it.

   Please come to us before disputing a charge with your bank. A dispute takes weeks and holds the money up while it runs, and we can usually put the same problem right the same day. If you have already opened one, tell us anyway and we will work with your bank.

7. 7

   What we do not promise

   We sell a listing and a rank. We do not sell results.

   • No promise of traffic, clicks, followers or sales. What a listing earns depends on the board, on the account and on the people looking at it.
   • No promise about search ranking. Every outbound link to a listed profile carries rel="noopener sponsored", because a listing somebody paid for has to be marked as paid. The link is real, public and crawlable and it sends actual referral traffic — but it is not offered as a ranking signal and is not sold as one. Buying a lot to obtain one is buying something we do not sell, and what any search engine does with any link is its decision, not ours.
   • No promise that a rank lasts. Anyone can take it by paying more, at any moment, with no notice to you.
   • No promise that the site is always up. The board, the profile imports and the click count are provided as they are, and any of them can break.

   If an advert, a post or a person tells you otherwise, this section is the part that counts.

8. 8

   Acceptable use

   Do not:

   • list a handle to impersonate anyone, or to pass an account off as yours when it is not;
   • put unlawful, hateful, harassing or sexual content in a display name or bio, including in the fields you can edit before paying;
   • list a handle in order to harass, expose or target the person behind it;
   • bid with a script, a bot or anything else automated;
   • touch the click count — no bots, no click farms, no scripts, no paying anyone to click;
   • use MediaBid to buy, sell, rent or transfer an account, or to advertise doing so;
   • attack the site, work around its limits, or pull data from it at a volume that costs us money.

   Break any of that and the listing comes down with no refund, and we may decline to take money from you again. Where something is also against the law, we will treat it that way.

9. 9

   We can remove any listing

   We may take any listing off the board at any time, with or without a reason, and we do not have to explain the decision. The most common reason will be the simplest one: the person behind the account asked us to.

   A removed lot leaves both boards, the activity feed, Trending and the sitemap. Its page stops resolving and so does its outbound link, and the handle cannot be listed again by anyone.

   Whether a removal is refunded is set out under refunds above. We may also refuse a bid before it is taken, or stop dealing with someone entirely.

10. 10

    Liability

    Nobody should be ruined by a one-dollar directory, in either direction. So, as far as the law allows:

    • the total liability of the operator of MediaBid to you, for everything connected with MediaBid, is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim;
    • we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss — lost profit, lost revenue, lost followers, lost traffic, a missed opportunity or damage to a reputation — even if we were told it might happen;
    • we are not liable for what a listed account posts or does, for what X or Instagram do to an account, or for what somebody else chooses to list.

    Nothing here removes liability that cannot be removed by law, including liability for fraud. Where a limit above is not allowed where you live, it applies as far as it can and no further.

11. 11

    Changes to these terms

    We can change these terms. When we do, the effective date at the top of this page changes with them, so that date is the version number.

    A change that affects money — prices, how bidding works, the refund policy — goes up on the site before it takes effect. Smaller corrections take effect when they are published. Using the site after a change means accepting the version that is up.

    The version that governs a bid is the one in force at the moment it was paid. We do not apply a later change backwards to money already taken.

12. 12

    Governing law

    These terms do not state a governing law yet. Rather than print a country or a state that has not actually been decided, this section is left open until it is — so read it as unsettled, not as a choice of anywhere.

    It will be named here, and the effective date at the top will move when it is. Everything else on this page is what we hold ourselves to in the meantime.

13. 13

    The rest

    • If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest of them still stand.
    • Not enforcing something once does not mean giving it up.
    • There is nothing to log into on MediaBid and no user account: a listing belongs to a handle, not to a person, so there is nothing here for you to transfer to anyone else. If the site changes hands, these terms travel with it.
    • This page, how it works and the privacy notice are the whole agreement between us. Nothing said anywhere else adds to it.
14. 14

    Contact

    Questions about these terms, about a charge, or about a listing go to the contact page, or to the contact address published on this page once it is set.

    To take a listing down, use the takedown route. You do not have to be the person who paid, and you do not have to give a reason.

The mechanics of the board, explained at length, are in how it works. What happens to data is in the privacy notice. On the board and want off it? The takedown route is one line, and a person reads it.