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Zed new terms required to be 18 years old

56 points by keyle

by TranquilMarmot

1 subcomments

They did send out a follow-up email about this earlier this week:
---
Our email yesterday was imprecise relative to our actual new Terms. To be specific:
- You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service (Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering, including features like account creation/sign in, Zed Free and Zed Pro, and collaboration). See https://zed.dev/terms#21-eligibility. We set the threshold at 18 due to children's data privacy obligations under COPPA, equivalent international frameworks, and an increasing number of state and regional laws that extend protections to anyone under 18. Those regulations require parental consent verification, age-gated data handling, and separate retention policies for minors. Building and maintaining that infrastructure is a real cost for a small team, and getting it wrong carries regulatory risk. Setting the line at 18 lets us maintain a single privacy framework for all account holders without carve-outs.
- Zed's Software (open source code editing software) is governed by our open source licenses. In cases where the open source license can govern, it will over the Terms. See https://zed.dev/terms#24-restrictions.
If you have questions, reply to this email or reach us at legal@zed.dev.
---

by serial_dev

1 subcomments

I am not sure I have the same definition of “love my editor again” (from their landing page) as the Zed team… my definition is PG. I don’t see a reason that I need to be 18 to use a code editor.

by throawayonthe

2 subcomments

"...along with our downloadable Zed software (the “Software”) and related subscription service (the “Service”). "
"Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service"
this pretty clearly refers to the subscription service and not to the 'downloadable software' or source code

by throwa356262

22 subcomments

Are people really happy with zed or is this the vocal minority we see on HN?
I have tried zed multiple times and always uninstalled it after a few days because of the ugly font rendering, slow response time (!), high memory usage (!!) and being very buggy in general. And don't even get me started on their AI-first shenanigans.
This is on Linux, maybe it works better on other platforms.

by ThePowerOfFuet

0 subcomment

>ARBITRATION NOTICE. Except for certain kinds of disputes described in Section 15.2 (Dispute Resolution and Arbitration), you agree that disputes arising under these Terms will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration, and BY ACCEPTING THESE TERMS, YOU AND ZED ARE EACH WAIVING THE RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY OR TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY CLASS ACTION OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. ALTERNATIVELY, CUSTOMER MAY OPT OUT OF ARBITRATION PER SECTION 15.2(a).
That's gonna be a no from me, dawg.

by kalterdev

1 subcomments

/bin/ed wouldn't ask your age. It would simply deduce it.

by koolala

0 subcomment

Next they just need to 'verify' that which will make the requirement suck.

by PonyoSunshine

0 subcomment

Tried Zed, never could get into Zed, I found it too slow and cludgy. These days I use Tabby, Neovim, with Lazyvim, and the Victor Mono Nerd Font. It works well enough for me. I have yet to explore connecting it to Claude, that might be an interesting thing. I don't think I'm ever going to be ok with age restrictions within an IDE.

by feverzsj

0 subcomment

So, it's the First 18+ Code Editor.

by HackerThemAll

0 subcomment

Zed has lost its momentum for me. I will stick to VSCode and its various incarnations, then Notepad++ and vim for other needs.

by janalsncm

1 subcomments

Zed is open source. Would be nice if someone forked it and ripped this out.

by AnonHP

1 subcomments

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240158 from yesterday

by lukaslalinsky

0 subcomment

I'm probably missing something. Are there some new laws requiring age checks for LLM-related services?

by rvz

0 subcomment

What's next? You must be 18+ years old to use a Raspberry Pi.

by mrsssnake

0 subcomment

It is for their online service, not the editor software.

by notenlish

0 subcomment

I don't get the reasoning behind this.

by charcircuit

1 subcomments

Why aren't they willing to break the law while they are still a small company? Such drastic risk prevention seems unnecessary.

by postepowanieadm

2 subcomments

Make it 21. Better safe than sorry.

by bigyabai

2 subcomments

Sigh, for the umpteenth time this week:

  Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service”)

  Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service.

by deafpolygon

0 subcomment

wonder if they’re getting ready to showcase a series of ‘gone wild’ llm’s.

by mastermage

0 subcomment

That seems odd

by blitzar

1 subcomments

Zed's dead baby