The terms, read

What the platforms' own words say.

These are readings of what each platform's own current privacy policy or terms say — not legal advice, not a summary of a summary. Every line quotes the platform's own words and links to the page it came from. The three lines under each platform answer the same three questions: what it keeps, whether it trains on or sells what you give it, and how you get your data out or delete it. Seven platforms were retrieved 10 September 2026; X, Amazon, and Reddit — whose sites refused the tool used that day — were retrieved 14 September 2026 through a real, locally-run browser instead. Policies change, so treat each date as part of its claim. Where a "we do not sell" line comes from a page scoped to one jurisdiction's law, or sits beside a sentence that narrows it, both sentences are quoted side by side, each with its own link — we resolve neither, so the reader can. Where a policy was silent or a page could not be reached, that is written down as plainly as the rest.

Google

Keeps: "We keep some data until you delete your Google Account, such as information about how often you use our services."policies.google.com/privacy

Trains or sells: "Google does not sell your personal information." That sentence, and the one after it — "Google also does not 'share' your personal information as that term is defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)." — both sit under a section titled "U.S. state law requirements," not a global claim. It does use some information to train its own AI models: "we may collect information that's publicly available online or from other public sources to help train Google's AI models."policies.google.com/privacy

Export or delete: "You can export a copy of content in your Google Account if you want to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google."policies.google.com/privacy

Meta (Facebook and Instagram)

Keeps: "We keep Personal Information, including sensitive Personal Information, as long as we need it to provide our products, comply with legal obligations or protect our or other's interests."facebook.com/privacy/policies/uso

Trains or sells: "We also don't sell any of your Personal Information, and we never will." The sentence immediately before it, on the same U.S.-only notice: "We don't 'share' your Personal Information, as defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act ('CCPA')."facebook.com/privacy/policies/uso. Separately, Meta's page on how it uses information for generative AI says a combination of sources trains its models, including "Information shared on Meta Products including things like posts or photos and their captions, and your interactions with features that are part of AI at Meta." — with a stated carve-out that "We do not use the content of your private messages with friends and family to train our AIs unless you or someone in the chat chooses to share those messages with our AIs."facebook.com/privacy/genai

Export or delete: "To submit a request to exercise your rights, and as applicable, to appeal a consumer rights action, please visit this webform."facebook.com/privacy/policies/uso

Apple

Keeps: "Apple retains personal data only for so long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including as described in this Privacy Policy or in our service-specific privacy notices, or as required by law."apple.com/legal/privacy

Trains or sells: "Your private personal data is not used to train our foundational AI models." And: "Apple does not sell your personal data including as 'sale' is defined in Nevada and California" — the qualifier is Apple's own, printed in the same sentence, not added by us. — apple.com/legal/privacy

Export or delete: "To exercise your privacy rights and choices, including where a third-party service provider is acting on Apple's behalf, visit the Apple Data and Privacy page at privacy.apple.com"apple.com/legal/privacy

TikTok

Keeps: "We retain information for as long as necessary to provide the Services and for the other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy."tiktok.com/legal/page/us/privacy-policy/en

Trains or sells: "we do not sell your personal information or share your personal information with third parties for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising where restricted by applicable law." — a conditional statement, not an unconditional one; this is the tail of a sentence that opens "We are committed to maintaining your trust, and while..." Separately, information is used to "train, test, and improve technology, such as machine learning models and algorithms."tiktok.com/legal/page/us/privacy-policy/en

Export or delete: "Through your in-app settings, you can directly update your account information, request a copy of your data, or deactivate or delete your account."tiktok.com/legal/page/us/privacy-policy/en

Microsoft

Keeps: "Microsoft retains personal data for as long as necessary to provide the products and services you use and to fulfill the transactions you request."microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/privacystatement

Trains or sells: "Microsoft does not 'sell' personal data as defined by those laws, so we do not offer this opt-out choice." That line sits on a U.S. state-law notice, and the sentence immediately before it narrows what counts as a sale in the first place: "Please note a 'sale' does not include when we disclose your personal information at your direction or where otherwise permitted by law." It does use data for its own models: "we may use your data to develop, train, and fine-tune our AI models, including large language models (LLMs)."microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/usstateprivacynotice and microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/privacystatement

Export or delete: "You can request access to, erasure of, and updates to your personal data."microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/privacystatement

LinkedIn

Keeps: "We generally retain your personal data as long as you keep your account open or as needed to provide you Services."linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Trains or sells: "We do not sell your personal information." That line lives on LinkedIn's California-scoped disclosure page, and the sentence immediately before it, on that same page, reads: "If you are a member, we may also share your personal information with Microsoft to personalize the ads they show you off of LinkedIn." It does train its own models: "develop and train artificial intelligence (AI) models, develop, provide, and personalize our Services, and gain insights with the help of AI."linkedin.com/legal/california-privacy-disclosure and linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Export or delete: "You can ask us for a copy of your personal data and can ask for a copy of personal data you provided in machine readable form."linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Spotify

Keeps: "We keep your personal data only as long as necessary to provide you with the Spotify Service and for Spotify's legitimate and essential business purposes"spotify.com/us/legal/privacy-policy

Trains or sells: the only sentence in Spotify's main policy containing "sell" is about selling the company, not user data: "If we were to sell or negotiate to sell any part of our business to a buyer or possible buyer." Spotify's separate California disclosure page is reported elsewhere to say it does not sell personal information, but we could not load that page ourselves — twice on the day this page was first drafted, and again today with a browser-style request that returned Spotify's own error page instead of the disclosure. So we print nothing from it. Whether personal listening data feeds Spotify's AI DJ and AI playlist features, versus aggregate data only, is also not addressed in the text we could retrieve. — spotify.com/us/legal/privacy-policy

Export or delete: users are pointed to the "'Download your data' tool on your Account Privacy page."spotify.com/us/legal/privacy-policy

X (Twitter)

Keeps: "We keep different types of information for different periods of time, depending on how long we need to retain it in order to provide you with our products and services, to comply with our legal requirements and for safety and security reasons." Profile information — display name, username, password, email — is kept "for the duration of your account." Email and other support communications are kept "for up to 18 months, unless it is necessary for us to retain it for a longer period to comply with our legal obligations or to exercise or defend our legal rights."x.com/en/privacy

Trains or sells: "We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy." Separately, X may pass shared data to outside parties who use it for their own purposes: "including, for example, to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise." And: "no, we don't sell your personal information."x.com/en/privacy. X's Terms of Service go further than the Privacy Policy on X's own use of your content: "this license includes the right for us to (i) analyze text and other information you provide and to otherwise provide, promote, and improve the Services, including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type."x.com/en/tos

Export or delete: "You can download a copy of your information, such as your posts, by following the instructions here." Deletion is not immediate: "your account will be deactivated and your data will be queued for deletion… For up to 30 days after deactivation it is still possible to restore your X account if it was accidentally or wrongfully deactivated."x.com/en/privacy

Amazon

Keeps: (the policy is silent on this). Amazon's retail Privacy Notice, read in full, has no section on how long personal data is kept — every other platform in this reading has one. We looked for it under all thirteen of the Notice's own headings and it is not there. — amazon.com Privacy Notice

Trains or sells: "Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and we are not in the business of selling our customers' personal information to others." That sentence continues, in the same breath: "We share customers' personal information only as described below and with subsidiaries Amazon.com, Inc. controls" — and the page goes on to name transaction partners, service providers, and business-transfer recipients as further sharing categories. It does train its own AI: "we use machine learning and artificial intelligence to support and enhance the customer experience across our products and services. This includes using data to develop or deploy our generative AI models and services."amazon.com Privacy Notice

Export or delete: "You can submit a request for us to close your Amazon account and delete your personal information permanently," titled "Request the Closure of Your Account and the Deletion of Your Personal Information." Closing an account closes it everywhere: "will also close your account on amazon.com, amazon.fr, amazon.com.mx, and all other global sites that use the same credentials."Amazon's account-closure page

Reddit

Keeps: "We store the information we collect for as long as it is necessary for the purpose(s) for which we originally collected it. We may retain certain information for legitimate business purposes and/or if we believe doing so is in accordance with, or as required by, any applicable law." One concrete figure: "Except for the IP address used to create your account, Reddit will delete any IP addresses collected after 100 days."reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy

Trains or sells: "We don't sell your personal data to third parties, including data brokers." — this sits in Reddit's own plain-English summary, not tucked into a state-law page, though a narrower restatement appears later: "Reddit does not "sell" personal information as those terms are defined under applicable state privacy laws."reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy. Reddit's User Agreement is direct about training: "This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. For example, this license includes the right to use Your Content to train AI and machine learning models, as further described in our Public Content Policy."redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement

Export or delete: "You can also request a copy of the personal information Reddit maintains about you." Deleting the account is not deleting the posts: "When you delete your account, your profile is no longer visible to other users and disassociated from content you posted under that account. Please note, however, that the posts, comments, and messages you submitted prior to deleting your account will still be visible to others unless you first delete the specific content. After you submit a request to delete your account, we initiate a deletion process to safely and completely remove your data from our servers or retain it only in anonymized form. After running our process, Reddit will not be able to provide access to deleted data."reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy

This page reads what each platform currently publishes; it is not legal advice, and it is not a summary of a summary.

An open project, not affiliated with any company.

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