Last Update: May 23, 2025
Welcome
The Free Press is built on Substack Inc.’s publishing platform (“Substack”). In general, Substack collects and controls all the identifiable personal information you may provide when you use our website and mobile app. All logins, accounts and subscriptions are created through and managed by Substack. Subscriptions are governed by Substack’s Terms of Service.
This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) supplements the Substack Privacy Policy to provide clarity about the personal data we receive from Substack and collect or process independently of Substack, whether through www.thefp.com, The Free Press app or anywhere else we say this Notice applies (the “Services”). Runaway Media, Inc. dba The Free Press is referred to in this Notice as “TFP”, “we”, “our” or “us”.
Please review the Substack Privacy Policy to learn how Substack handles your name, email and any other identifiable information you provide when you use the Services. Contact Substack with any questions or requests about that information.
This Notice is grouped into these sections:
Scope of Notice;
Information we receive & why we use it;
Our exchanges of information to others;
Your privacy options.
Updates: Because the Services change often, this Notice may change over time. Anytime we modify the Notice, we will post a revised version on the Services as noted at Last Update above. If we make material changes to how we collect or process personal information, we will try to notify you, so you have time to review them. If we have your contact information (such as your email), we’ll try to notify you that way. We may also post a temporary notice on the Services, or notify you by other means to the extent required by law.
Check the Last Update periodically to ensure you’re aware of the current Notice.
We encourage you to read this Notice carefully. By using or accessing the Services, you signify that you have read, understand and agree to the processing described in this Notice.
Scope of Notice
This Notice is designed to explain the information we receive, whether from Substack or a service provider, and provide direction about where you can control your privacy. Because we collect very little personal information, we begin with an explanation of the data that falls outside of our control on the Services:
Substack & account providers
As a reminder, TFP doesn’t collect any identifiable information from you. Substack, the content platform that administers and manages user access and subscriptions, may collect your name, contact information or billing or payment information. While we may receive some of that information, Substack controls it, and the Substack Privacy Policy explains that collection and your rights and choices in that information.
Analogously, if you are presented with the opportunity to subscribe to TFP through another platform like the Apple App Store or Google Play, your subscription will be administered and controlled by that provider, and we may receive some of it from the provider who controls it.
Outside services
The Services also link to, embed, integrate or otherwise connect you with third-party websites, services or other events or activities that are not owned or controlled by TFP (“Outside Materials”).
Outside Materials are not part of the Services. This Notice doesn’t encompass information you may exchange with providers of Outside Materials. Those third parties have their own policies and practices about data. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with their privacy notices and applicable contractual terms.
For example, the Services may embed outside content like YouTube videos and X posts. Unlike our videos and podcasts, that third-party content is Outside Materials
For example, YouTube controls the embedded player containing a YouTube video. If you interact with the YouTube video, YouTube decides the data it will require before YouTube will serve its video to you.
When you interact with embedded Outside Materials, the player that contains the content may request information about you, such as your originating IP address or preexisting identifiers the provider has placed on your device.
For example, YouTube’s container may pull Google identifiers and data about you from cookies placed on your device by other web activity (like the Google Doc you looked at yesterday). The player may also collect information about your current URL of your browser (a page on our Services), without the involvement of our Services.
In practice, although our Services don’t use your information to facilitate targeted advertising, Outside Materials may do that. As a result, their providers may use information about your interactions with Outside Materials on www.thefp.com to inform the ads presented to you elsewhere online.
Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns that relate only to personal information we control, contact us at product@thefp.com.
Information we receive & why we use it
We receive information that Substack, its third-party service providers and our service providers collect and process when you interact with the Services. This includes:
Information you submit or provide directly
Data collected automatically by various technologies (which we call “Usage Data”).
The following tables describe, comprehensively, the information we receive through the Services, how we use it and why we process it.
Information You Submit
Usage Data
Any personal information that TFP obtains from third-party sources, including our service providers, will be processed by TFP in accordance with this Notice and all applicable laws. For example, our use and transfer of information via Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Notice, including its Limited Use requirements.
Technologies we use
When you use and interact with the Services, software automatically collects Usage Data. The Substack Privacy Policy describes software like cookies and pixel tags deployed on all Substack-administered websites. The TFP app also includes technologies to collect Usage Data:
App Technologies, Customization, and Usage
Our apps collect information about your installation, use, and updating of our apps as well as information about your device, including your unique mobile device identifier (“UDID”) and other technical identifiers. More specifically, these tracking technologies allow us to collect data about your device and your use of our apps and content you interact with.
These app-based technologies cannot be controlled by browser settings. For example, our apps may include third party SDKs, which is code that sends information about your use to a server, and is in effect the app version of a pixel. These SDKs allow us to track our conversions and communicate with you across devices, bring you advertising both on and off the Services, customize the app to your interests and preferences and link such across platforms and devices.
Information exchanged with others
This section describes how and why we exchange personal information with contractors and third parties. It also describes exchanges made for certain purposes, like legal reasons and consensual direct marketing. We may also disclose deidentified and/or anonymized data for these purposes.
We do not ‘sell’ or ‘share’ personal information
That means TFP doesn’t provide or exchange your personal information with others to facilitate behavioral ads (i.e., ads targeted to you) or otherwise sell it, except as described under With your consent or at your request below. For clarity, we haven’t shared or sold any personal information for that purpose in the past twelve (12) months.
Functional disclosures
We also contract with other businesses to provide certain services related to the functionality and features of the Services, including payment processing, email and hosting services, software development, shipping and fulfillment, data management, and administration of contests and other promotions. We refer to them as “contractors.”
Contractors may collect information about you on our behalf, such as Personal Identifiers, Commercial Information, Internet Activity and Device Information, as necessary for them to perform their services. At other times, we disclose information about you to contractors.
Contractors are not permitted to use information about you for any purpose other than performing their services for us. In the past twelve (12) months, we have exchanged these types of information with the following types of contractors:
Analytics providers, namely Google Tag Manager and Mixpanel, to tell us how the Services and our content are performing, such as which articles interest visitors and how long they visit before leaving. Among other data, they may receive your IP address and generate identifiers associable with your visits.
Various hosting services and data processors to provide the infrastructure of the Services, such as Sentry and Cloudflare, which ensures that traffic is from real people, not computers. Among other data, they may receive your IP address.
With your consent or at your request
We may periodically ask for your consent to share your contact information to third parties. Whenever we ask your consent for this reason, we will summarize the purpose and scope of the disclosure. For example, we may offer discounts to you if you consent to join our mailing list or participate in a promotion involving direct marketing communications.
In those cases, the Services will display a tickbox near an email-entry field explaining that by submitting your information, you agree to share your email with the content provider.
To be clear, we only exchange information about you with third parties for direct marketing purposes if you opt in, and will only do so until you opt out.
For legal reasons
Finally, we may disclose personal information:
In response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required by law. In such cases we reserve the right to raise or waive any legal objection or right available to us;
When we believe it is appropriate to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal or suspected illegal activities; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of our company, our users, or others; and in connection with the enforcement of our Terms and other agreements; or
In connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
How long we retain your information
We retain your information only as long as we need it for the purposes described under Information we receive & how we use it, except when longer retention is required by our compliance policies and efforts toward applicable legal, tax, accounting and regulatory requirements. Most usage data, as received by us, is deidentified to begin with.
How long we need information for those purposes varies by category, and even within categories. These retention determinations always consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from its unauthorized use or disclosure and whether we can achieve those purposes without using the personal information.
Use by minors
The Services are intended for adult users. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 16, and we do not share or sell information about anyone under 16 without affirmative authorization. If we learn that we have collected information from a person under age 16, we will delete that information as quickly as possible.
If you are under 16: sorry, but please leave the Services. If you are a parent or guardian of a person under 16 years of age and you believe that person provided identifiable information while using the Services, please contact Substack.
Privacy options
As a convenience, we want to remind you of the Substack options and general tools you can use to control personal information on and off the Services:
Substack account controls: You can update the personal information in your Substack Account as described in Substack’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Any updated information will be reflected in our records and throughout the Services once the updates are reflected in Substack’s systems.
Marketing opt-outs: You may opt-out of any marketing communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions in the communication you receive. Substack administers our marketing communications and newsletters, and changes will be effective once reflected in Substack’s systems. We may continue to send you other communications regarding the Services through Substack, such as notices about administrative updates and changes to the Services or this Notice.
Push notifications: If you’ve chosen to receive mobile or browser push notifications, you can change those through the notification preferences you have set on your device or browser, including to turn them off entirely.
Personal data requests: Contact Substack to make any privacy or data requests relating to your identifiable personal information. Because we do not maintain any identifiable personal information independently of Substack, we cannot verify what laws may apply to you and are unable to effect deletion or correction requests or otherwise match or tie any data to your identity.