50501 Veterans | 50501vets.com and election-watch.50501vets.com
Effective: October 2, 2026 | Last updated: October 3, 2026
1. Who we are
50501 Veterans, Inc., a Florida nonprofit corporation (“50501 Veterans,” “we,” “us”), is a nonpartisan veterans advocacy organization.
This policy covers two websites:
- 50501vets.com, our main site, including The Smoke Pit pages, the All Call, and the Ask and news tip forms.
- election-watch.50501vets.com, our Election Watch site: Rumor Control, voter resources, and field reporter recruiting.
Crayon Eater Media LLC builds and runs these sites and The Smoke Pit production portal for us as a service provider. It handles your information only to operate these services for 50501 Veterans.
Questions or requests: contact@50501vets.com.
2. The short version
- We collect only what each form needs. Most forms work without your name.
- We do not sell your information. We do not share it for advertising. We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site trackers.
- We never store your raw IP address with what you submit. When we need to spot abuse, we store a salted, one-way hash of it instead.
- Some things you send may end up on air or on our sites: a question, a news tip, a comment, or a field reporter’s report. Each form tells you how, and most let you keep your name off it.
- You can unsubscribe from any email, and you can ask us to delete your information.
3. What we collect and why
3.1 When you visit either site
Like every website, our hosting provider (Vercel) receives standard request data when you load a page: your IP address, browser and device type, the page you asked for, the referring page, and the time. Vercel uses this to deliver pages, keep the sites secure, and fix errors. We do not combine it with anything you submit.
Both sites and The Smoke Pit portal: we use Vercel Web Analytics to count page views, and Vercel Speed Insights to measure how quickly pages load. Neither uses cookies or identifies you. We see totals, not individuals. On 50501vets.com, Web Analytics also counts clicks on a few buttons (for example, RSVP links to Mobilize). On Election Watch and the portal, we send only the page’s address, never what follows it (such as a search you typed) and never the private part of a sign-in or invitation link.
Election Watch also checks for new Rumor Control rulings, alerts, and results every 15 to 60 seconds while the tab is open. Those checks carry no personal information.
3.2 Forms on 50501vets.com
| Feature | What we collect | How we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke Pit email alerts | Email address | Emails when The Smoke Pit goes live, show announcements, and updates. Every email has an unsubscribe link. |
| Ask the panel | Your question Your name (optional) Whether to keep your name off it | The panel may read your question on air or put it on a graphic. Your name goes with it unless you tick “Don’t use my name” or leave it blank. |
| Send a news tip | The link Why it matters Your name (optional) Whether to keep your name off it | Producers review tips for the show. If we cover it, your name is used only if you gave it and did not tick “Don’t use my name.” |
| Episode comments | Your comment Display name (optional) A salted hash of your IP address | A producer reviews each comment before it appears publicly. Approved comments show your display name (or “Anonymous”), the comment, and the date. The IP hash is for spotting spam and repeat abusers. We do not collect your email. |
| All Call registration | First name or Signal handle Email address Service member, veteran, or family Branch (service members and veterans) or relationship (family) Signal chat status and whether you want an invite Whether you want the mailing list A salted hash of your IP address | To send the Zoom link and calendar invite, check arrivals against the list, and send a Signal invite if you asked. Every registration is deleted at 4:00 PM ET on the day of the call. If you tick the mailing list box, we copy only your email address and first name to our mailing list. Your service details never go on the list. |
3.3 Forms on Election Watch
| Feature | What we collect | How we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Tell us about a rumor | What you saw or heard What you think it is Platform, link, where you saw it, date, and state (all optional) A salted hash of your IP address | To check the claim against official and primary sources and publish a ruling. New tips are emailed to our producers so they can review them quickly. We do not ask for your name or contact details, and we do not reply to tips. |
| Field reporter application (Serve One More Time) | Contact: full name, on-air name, email, Signal username Location: state, city or county, reporting area, time zone Availability and callback availability Vetting: how you heard about us, who referred you, a social profile link (optional), whether you work for a campaign, whether you are a poll worker Military connection and branch Whether you are a 50501 member Phone type, data reliability, comfort on camera Your agreement to the five terms on the form | To review your application, run training, schedule reporting slots, contact you by email and Signal about Election Day coverage, and broadcast your reports. The vetting questions protect the coverage’s nonpartisan integrity. Your time zone is pre-filled from your browser so slot times read right; you can change it. |
If you are approved as a field reporter, you get an account on The Smoke Pit portal. We keep a record of your training progress, reporting slots, review decisions, notes from producers, and the emails we send you. By applying, you agree that The Smoke Pit may broadcast, record, and share your reports, including your on-air name, voice, and image. Your full name, email, and Signal username are never broadcast.
Approved field reporters can also send field reports from the portal: what happened, where and when, and photos or videos. Field reports go to our producers only. They are stored privately and are not published unless producers use them in the show.
3.4 Signal
Signal invites and field reporter coordination happen in Signal, which is run by the Signal Foundation under its own privacy policy. People in a Signal group can see your Signal profile. Unless you hide it, they may also see your phone number. To hide it: Settings, Privacy, Phone Number, Who can see my number, Nobody.
4. Spam and abuse protection
Our public forms use three checks:
- Cloudflare Turnstile on comments, All Call registration, rumor tips, and field reporter applications. Turnstile checks your browser to tell people from bots, usually without showing you anything. Cloudflare receives technical data from your browser to do this and handles it under its own privacy policy and the Cloudflare Turnstile Privacy Addendum.
- A hidden honeypot field that people never see and bots fill in.
- Rate limits by IP address, so one source cannot flood a form. The counter stores a salted hash of the address, never the address itself, and is cleared after two days.
Where we keep a record of who submitted something, we store a salted, one-way hash of the IP address, never the address itself. It cannot be turned back into your address without a secret key we hold.
5. Cookies and local storage
We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.
- When you dismiss the All Call banner on 50501vets.com, your browser remembers that choice in local storage on your own device. We never see it.
- Cloudflare Turnstile may set a cookie that it needs to work.
- If you sign in to The Smoke Pit portal as a field reporter, it uses cookies to keep you signed in.
- Embedded players (below) may set their own cookies.
6. Third-party content on 50501vets.com
- YouTube: episode videos load only when you click play, from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced (youtube-nocookie.com) domain. Once you press play, YouTube’s privacy policy applies.
- Twitch: when The Smoke Pit is live, the page loads Twitch’s player. Twitch receives your IP address and may set cookies under its own policy.
- Google Fonts and Simple Icons: fonts and platform icons load from Google’s and Simple Icons’ servers, which receive your IP address and browser type.
- Substack and podcast feeds: blog post images may load from Substack’s servers.
- Links out to Mobilize, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, social networks, and official election sites (vote.gov, NASS, FVAP) take you to sites with their own policies. Election Watch links to official sources only and loads nothing from them until you click.
7. Who we share it with
We do not sell or rent your information. We share it only with the services that run our sites, and only so they can do that job:
| Provider | What it does for us |
|---|---|
| Crayon Eater Media LLC | Builds and operates both sites and The Smoke Pit portal |
| Vercel | Hosting, request logs, Web Analytics, and Speed Insights |
| Supabase | Database that stores form submissions, and file storage for field reporters’ photos and videos. Both are hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany). |
| Resend | Sends our emails |
| Cloudflare | Turnstile bot checks |
| Zoom | Hosts the All Call. Zoom sees your display name when you join. |
| Riverside | Records field reporter and Smoke Pit broadcasts |
Inside 50501 Veterans, only the people who need it see your information: producers for show submissions, rumor tips, field reporter applications, and field reports, and the organizers running the All Call. Our daily All Call summary to the membership director contains counts only, never names or emails.
We may disclose information if the law requires it, such as a valid subpoena or court order. Where the law allows, we will tell you first.
8. How long we keep it
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| All Call registrations | Deleted at 4:00 PM ET on the day of the call |
| Mailing list (email, first name) | Until you unsubscribe. When you do, we delete your address right away. |
| IP hashes on comments | 30 days |
| Comments | Approved comments stay with the episode until removed. Rejected comments are deleted 14 working days after they’re rejected. |
| Questions and news tips | 12 months. If we used your question or tip on air, it stays part of that episode’s record, without your name. |
| Rumor tips | When we publish a ruling on your tip, we remove anything that could identify you (the hashed IP address) at the same moment. Otherwise we remove it 30 days after you send the tip, which gives our team time to review it, and keep the tip itself as a record of what was circulating. Published rulings are a permanent public record. |
| Field reporter applications and records | If you have signed in to The Smoke Pit portal since March 1, 2027, your account and records stay while your account is active. Everything else, including applications that never became an account, is deleted on May 30, 2027. Broadcast reports remain part of the published show. |
| Field reports | Deleted after January 6, 2027, with their photos and videos, unless our producers keep one for the show. Anything used on air remains part of the published show. |
| Hosting logs | Per Vercel’s standard retention |
9. Your choices and rights
- Unsubscribe with the link at the bottom of any email. We delete your address from our list right away.
- Stay anonymous. Leave the name field blank or tick “Don’t use my name.” Rumor tips never ask who you are.
- Access, correct, or delete. Email contact@50501vets.com. We will answer within 30 days. Field reporters can also update their profile in the portal.
- Withdraw a field reporter application at any time by emailing us. Reports already broadcast stay in the published show.
Depending on where you live, state privacy laws may give you additional rights. We honor access, correction, and deletion requests from everyone, wherever you live.
10. Security
Submissions travel over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Database tables holding your information are locked to our servers only; the public cannot read them. Our sites never hold a key that lets a visitor’s browser write to the database. No system is perfect. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you as the law requires.
11. Age
These sites are for adults. Field reporters must be 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has sent us information, email us and we will delete it.
12. Changes
If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new “Last updated” date. If a change affects how we use information we already have, we will say so on the site.
13. Contact
50501 Veterans | contact@50501vets.com | 16083 Garrett Grove Court, Jacksonville, FL 32218