Catalyst

Catalyst is under heavy development and not ready for general use.

We are aiming for a 2026 launch.

None of the information in this section should be considered legal advice. Please consult a lawyer before setting up your Small Web host.

As a Small Web host, you will have certain legal obligations.

Specifically, you must comply with:

In Europe (and in hosts servicing European citizens), this includes:

To make this easier for you, Catalyst automatically generates terms and conditions and a privacy policy for you that we believe are compliant with the DSA (for micro and small businesses; i.e., any business that has less than 25 employees and a turnaround of less than €10M) and GDPR.

You should have all legal contracts reviewed by your lawyer.

Small Technology Foundation accepts no liability for any legal costs or action arising from using the automatically-generated documents. Based on the advice of your lawyers, you can include your own manually-generated documents, either based on the automatically-generated ones or otherwise, in place of the automatically-generated ones.

On the GDPR

While Catalyst itself does not gather any personal information directly, the service providers that you use do.

So your privacy policy must reflect the privacy policy/terms/data protection agreement (if any) of your:

The automatically-generated privacy policy does this by default.

More information on the GDPR implications of each provider is available from the provider’s page in Settings → Setup.

On the applicability of the Digital Services Act (DSA)

Domain is Small Web hosting software designed for use by:

The first two use cases do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Digital Services Act (DSA) as these are for personal and internal use and no provision of intermediary services is being performed.

The last use case falls under Article 6 (Hosting) of the DSA. The relevant sections of the DSA that require action from you to comply with are the following:

Article 11: Points of contact for Member States’ authorities, the Commission and the Board

  1. Providers of intermediary services shall designate a single point of contact to enable them to communicate directly, by electronic means, with Member States’ authorities, the Commission and the Board referred to in Article 61 for the application of this Regulation.

  2. Providers of intermediary services shall make public the information necessary to easily identify and communicate with their single points of contact. That information shall be easily accessible, and shall be kept up to date.

  3. Providers of intermediary services shall specify in the information referred to in paragraph 2 the official language or languages of the Member States which, in addition to a language broadly understood by the largest possible number of Union citizens, can be used to communicate with their points of contact, and which shall include at least one of the official languages of the Member State in which the provider of intermediary services has its main establishment or where its legal representative resides or is established.

In the automatically-generated terms and conditions, the organisation’s support email address is used as the point of contact.

Article 12: Points of contact for recipients of the service

  1. Providers of intermediary services shall designate a single point of contact to enable recipients of the service to communicate directly and rapidly with them, by electronic means and in a user-friendly manner, including by allowing recipients of the service to choose the means of communication, which shall not solely rely on automated tools.

  2. In addition to the obligations provided under Directive 2000/31/EC, providers of intermediary services shall make public the information necessary for the recipients of the service in order to easily identify and communicate with their single points of contact. That information shall be easily accessible, and shall be kept up to date.

In the automatically-generated terms and conditions, the organisation’s support email address is used as the point of contact.

If you are not based in the EU, you will also have to comply with Article 13: Legal representatives. There does not appear to be a micro and small business exemption for this rule.

Article 14: Terms and conditions

  1. Providers of intermediary services shall include information on any restrictions that they impose in relation to the use of their service in respect of information provided by the recipients of the service, in their terms and conditions. That information shall include information on any policies, procedures, measures and tools used for the purpose of content moderation, including algorithmic decision-making and human review, as well as the rules of procedure of their internal complaint handling system. It shall be set out in clear, plain, intelligible, user-friendly and unambiguous language, and shall be publicly available in an easily accessible and machine-readable format.

  2. Providers of intermediary services shall inform the recipients of the service of any significant change to the terms and conditions.

…

  1. Providers of intermediary services shall act in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner in applying and enforcing the restrictions referred to in paragraph 1, with due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of all parties involved, including the fundamental rights of the recipients of the service, such as the freedom of expression, freedom and pluralism of the media, and other fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Charter.

…

The automatically-generated terms and conditions (or your manually-entered terms and conditions) satisfy this requirement.

(Points 3, 5, and 6 do not apply in general to Catalyst instances. If your instance is primarily directed at minors, you will be affected by point 3.)

As a micro or small business, you are exempt from Article 15 (Transparency reporting obligations for providers of intermediary services)

All of Section 2 applies to micro and small businesses, this includes:

Article 16 is also handled by the support email address you configured under Settings → Setup → Organisation.

Article 17 can be satisfied via a number of ways:

That the hosting service is bound by Article 18 should be mentioned in the terms and conditions (and it is in the automatically-generated terms and conditions).