When you post content on Substack, you give Substack a permanent, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, modify, and reproduce your content to operate the platform. This license cannot be revoked even if you delete your account.
This analysis describes what Substack's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
Even after you leave Substack and delete your account, the license you granted to your content remains in effect, which means Substack retains rights to content you may have intended to fully retract.
This clause means creators cannot fully revoke Substack's rights to their written, audio, or video content after posting it publicly, even following account deletion. The practical impact is most significant for creators who may later wish to exclusively license or commercialize content they previously published on the platform.
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By making available any User Content through the Service, you hereby grant to Duolingo a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, ...
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"You hereby grant Substack a license to translate, modify, reproduce, and otherwise act with respect to your Posts to enable us to provide, improve, and notify you about new features within Substack. You understand and agree that we may need to make changes to your Posts to conform and adapt those Posts to the technical requirements of networks, devices, services, or media, and this license includes the rights to do so. You agree that the licenses you grant are royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and worldwide. This is a license only – your ownership in Posts is not affected.— Excerpt from Substack's Substack Terms of Use
REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: This provision engages GDPR Article 17 (right to erasure) for EU and UK-based users, as the assertion of a perpetual irrevocable license may conflict with users' statutory right to have their personal data and creative works removed. The EU's enforcement authorities (national data protection authorities and the European Data Protection Board) could examine whether this license grant is compatible with erasure rights, particularly for content that constitutes personal data. The FTC may also have interest under unfair or deceptive practices standards if the license scope is not adequately disclosed at point of consent. GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The license is broadly worded to cover translation, modification, reproduction, and other acts, which is functionally standard for publishing platforms. However, the irrevocable and perpetual framing creates tension with erasure rights frameworks applicable to EU and UK users. The agreement's statement that ownership is unaffected partially mitigates this, but the irrevocability of the operational license remains a material point of exposure for EU-facing deployments. JURISDICTION FLAGS: EU and UK users face the most significant exposure given GDPR and UK GDPR erasure right provisions. California creators should note that the CCPA's right to deletion may interact with this provision, though the CCPA's application to user-generated content licenses is not fully settled. Creators in jurisdictions with strong moral rights protections (e.g., France, Germany) may have additional statutory rights that limit the modification license's practical effect. CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: Organizations using Substack as a publishing channel should assess whether employee or contractor-generated content posted to Substack is subject to this license and whether that creates conflicts with internal IP ownership policies. B2B procurement teams should flag that this license assignment is unilateral and non-negotiable under the standard Terms. COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Legal teams supporting EU or UK operations should evaluate whether Substack's erasure workflow in practice (referenced in the Privacy Policy) adequately addresses GDPR Article 17 requests in light of this license grant. Content creators with commercial IP portfolios should document what content they post publicly versus via paid subscriber-only tiers, as the public post license carries broader distribution rights under the Terms.
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Even after you leave Substack and delete your account, the license you granted to your content remains in effect, which means Substack retains rights to content you may have intended to fully retract.
This clause means creators cannot fully revoke Substack's rights to their written, audio, or video content after posting it publicly, even following account deletion. The practical impact is most significant for creators who may later wish to exclusively license or commercialize content they previously published on the platform.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 11 platforms. See the full comparison.
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