Policy
Coverage & corrections policy
Descout is an independent record that projects can pay to have kept current. That only works if two things are written down and kept: what money can and cannot buy, and what we do when we get something wrong. This page is both — the same text whether you're a buyer, a reader, or a grant committee doing diligence on us.
Coverage isn't endorsement.
What paying buys
Watching. A paid tier puts the desk on your project at a set cadence — weekly or daily — so your dossier stays current, coverage runs as you make news, and that coverage gets distributed. What varies between tiers is how closely we watch, never what we conclude.
What paying never changes
Our conclusions. Coverage is written from sources, not from the relationship: we report what the record supports, including developments a paying project would rather we skip. No tier buys a kinder story, edits a conclusion, or removes an unflattering fact. Being covered is not the same as being endorsed.
The decline-right
We review every application before any payment happens, and we decline the ones that would sell credibility — chiefly pre-launch projects seeking a legitimacy they haven't earned, and known scams. Declining to take a project's money is not the same as ignoring it: something that matters to an ecosystem we cover may still be covered editorially, as exactly what it is.
Sponsored placement is labeled
Amplified placement — the Featured spotlight and anything like it — is always labeled as sponsored. Readers can always tell the difference between coverage that earned its position and placement that was paid for.
Cancellation
Cancel anytime. The watching cadence stops, and your entry returns to the free, community-kept Listed tier — your record stays; it just stops being kept current. We never delete a record because a subscription ended, and we never delete one because someone asked.
Readers never pay
Everything we publish is free to read, for people and for AI agents. All revenue comes from the entities we cover — under the terms above.
We update the record. We never scrub it.
Published means published
Everything we publish keeps its URL and its history. We do not silently edit published content, and we do not delete it — not for a paying project, not for our own convenience.
When we get something wrong
An error gets one of two visible treatments. It is corrected — fixed in place, with a dated correction note on the piece saying what changed and why. Or it is superseded — replaced by a new item, with the original left standing and pointing forward to it. Past events stand as reported, with their original dates; time reframes them, it doesn't erase them.
How to report an error
Point us at it — the piece, the claim, and what the sources actually say. Reach us on X @descoutxyz or through any of the contact forms on the site. Every report is reviewed against the sources; what survives review becomes a dated correction under the terms above.
Why corrections are public
This record is cited by people and by AI agents, and a record that gets cited has to show its repair history. A dated correction tells the reader exactly what to re-check; a silent fix tells them nothing and asks them to trust us anyway. We'd rather be checkable.