Cookie Policy

What a cookie is, and what we mean by it

In brief: a cookie is a small piece of text that a site stores in your browser and reads back on a subsequent visit. On this page we count everything that is stored on your device, including what technically is not called a cookie.

The web works with separate requests that do not know one another. Without something that stays in place, the site would forget who you are after every click. A cookie is the most common way to solve that: a small piece of text, stored in your browser, that goes along to the server with every subsequent request.

There are also forms of storage that are not called cookies — local storage and session storage — which are on your device, but which only the page itself can read: they never go to our server. For the law they simply count as well, so for us too. They are listed below in their own chapter.

The entire list on this page is complete. There is no category "and similar technologies" behind which something else is hidden.

What we do not do

In brief: no tracking, no profile, no other company looking on.

• No tracking cookies. There is nothing that follows you from page to page or from site to site.
• No third-party cookies. No script, no pixel and no font from another company is loaded. Everything comes from our own domain. In one place that can change, and only because you make it happen: see the next line.
• No advertising profile. We do not build up a picture of who you are or what you are interested in in order to tailor advertisements to it.
• No sale or transfer. Nothing from the list below goes to anyone else.
• Videos only play after you click. A YouTube or Vimeo video in a bubble, a reply or a blog post is first shown as a still image served by our own server. Only when you press play does the YouTube or Vimeo player load, and only then can that company see that you are watching the video and set cookies for it. If you do not click, no request goes there at all.

Cookies that keep you logged in and secure

In brief: five cookies. Without these you cannot log in or security measures do not work. They are necessary for the service you request yourself.

The first, the third and the fifth are httpOnly: only our server can read them, no script in your browser can. The CSRF cookie deliberately is not — the page must be able to read the value back, because that is where the security lies. That cookie is not a key: whoever knows it can do nothing with it.

Cookies that remember what you have chosen

In brief: eight cookies that store one thing you have set or dismissed yourself. They contain no identifier by which you can be recognised.

These store a choice, not a person. In debaty_feed_tab, for example, there is literally the word of the tab, and nothing else. They are only sent to our server because that is simply what cookies do; we use them solely to show the page correctly straight away instead of incorrectly first.

What stays in your browser and never goes to us

In brief: a number of settings are in your browser's local storage. That does not go along with a request — we do not see it.

You clear these by deleting Debaty's site data in your browser. You lose nothing by doing so except these settings.

Visitor statistics, without a cookie

In brief: we count how often a page is viewed with software on our own server. No cookie is involved and nothing is placed on or read from your device.

To know what works, we keep simple visitor figures with Umami: privacy-friendly software that we run ourselves, on our own server within the EU. Nothing goes to a statistics company and nothing is loaded from another domain.

What is counted: which page was viewed, which page you came from, your overall screen size, your browser language and your country. What does not happen: nothing is placed on or read from your device — no cookie, no local storage, no identifier that makes you recognisable on a subsequent visit. No search query is sent along either: everything after the question mark in the address bar is removed before the measurement leaves.

Why no consent is needed for this. The consent requirement that everyone knows from cookie banners is about the placing of and reading from storage on your device. That does not happen here, so that rule does not apply. The figures themselves do fall under privacy law, and the reason we may keep them is our legitimate interest in a working site — with the caveat that the measurement is set up so that no person can be derived from it. See the privacy statement.

Two things we do on top of that: if the setting "do not track" (Do Not Track) is enabled in your browser, we do not measure your visit at all. And administration pages never count.

Advertisements place nothing on your device

In brief: an advertisement on Debaty relates to the topic you are reading. Nothing is stored about you, not even temporarily.

There are advertisements on Debaty. Which ones you see depends on the topic, the language and the country of the page you are reading — never on who you are or what you did before. This is set out in more detail in the terms and in how Debaty earns money.

For this page what matters most is what does not happen: an advertisement sets no cookie and uses no storage in your browser. The fact that we do not show you the same advertisement twice in a row we remember only while the page is open; if you close it, it is gone. Nothing that is attached to you is counted: how often an advertisement has been shown, we add up per hour, without who it belonged to.

If you have Debaty+, you see no advertisements at all.

Why you do not see a consent request

In brief: the law requires consent for cookies that are not needed for the service — tracking and advertising first and foremost. We do not have those. For the cookies above it is sufficient that we describe them honestly.

Consent is mandatory for everything stored on your device beyond what the service needs. The well-known examples are tracking cookies and advertising cookies. Those are not on this page, and that is not a wording but a list you can check for yourself.

What is there falls into two groups that the law exempts: cookies that are necessary to do what you ask (logging in, security), and cookies that only store what you have set or dismissed yourself. For that second group there does have to be something in return, and that is precisely this page: each cookie with name, purpose and retention period.

This is a promise with a consequence. Were we ever to want to place something that does not fit in here — a tracking cookie, a measurement that recognises you across sites, an advertising cookie — then a real consent request comes first, with the option to say no, and Debaty works even if you say no. Until that request exists, there is nothing that needs it.

Checking for yourself

In brief: you do not have to take our word for it. The list above can be gone through with the tools of your own browser.

Every browser has developer tools (usually with F12 or via the menu). Under the Application, Opslag or Storage tab you will find "Cookies" and "Local storage" for this site. What you see there should match the lists above.

Do you see something that is not listed here? We want to know. Get in contact — it is then either an error in this page or an error in the site, and we will fix both.

Refusing or clearing cookies

In brief: you can always do that, via your browser. If you turn off the necessary cookies, you cannot stay logged in.

You can view, block and clear cookies per site in your browser's settings. For Debaty that means:

• If you clear everything, you are logged out and your preferences are back to their default value. Your account and your bubbles simply continue to exist.
• If you block all cookies for Debaty, you can read the site but not stay logged in. With every click you are an unknown visitor again.
• If you clear only the preference cookies, you stay logged in and language, theme and tab start over.

If this page changes

In brief: if a cookie is added or removed, this list changes with it. The date at the bottom says when that last happened.

This list is meant to be correct, not to appear complete. If something changes on the site whereby a cookie is added or disappears, then this page should change along in the same move. If it concerns something that requires consent, you see that not only here, but also on your screen.

Questions about this page? See contact. About your data in general: the privacy statement and your data rights.

Version and changes

In brief: this is version 1.0 of this document, established on 23 July 2026.

• v1.0 — 23 July 2026. First established, complete version of this document.

Where to take a complaint

In brief: come to us first. If that does not resolve it, the choice is yours: our Dutch supervisory authority, or the one in your own country.

We are a Dutch company. Our own supervisory authorities are therefore the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (the Dutch data protection authority) and the Autoriteit Consument & Markt (the Dutch authority for digital services). You can turn to either one, wherever you live.

If you live in the EU or the EEA, you do not have to come to the Netherlands for that. You can lodge your complaint with the supervisory authority of the country where you live or work, in your own language. That authority handles it or passes it on, and remains your point of contact. The data protection authorities are listed by the European Data Protection Board (edpb.europa.eu); the Digital Services Coordinators are listed by the European Commission.

If you live outside the EU and the EEA, you can still turn to our Dutch supervisory authorities. On top of that, the law of your own country may give you an authority of your own; a complaint that reaches us through such an authority is handled in exactly the same way.

Why no foreign authority is named here. The language you are reading this in does not say which country you live in. Which supervisory authority is yours depends on where you live, not on the language you read — and sending you to the wrong desk costs you the very time a complaint does not leave you.

And the courts are always open. If you live in the EU, that may be the court in your own country, where consumer law there allows you to do so.

Language and validity

In brief: the version you read is the one that applies to you — a translation included.

This document is available on Debaty in fourteen languages. The version in your language applies to you, and it binds us too. Where a translation differs from the Dutch text, the reading that is most favourable to you applies: we cannot hold our own translation error against you.

Dutch is the language in which we write changes and against which we check translations. That is a working arrangement inside our company, not a ranking between readers. If a translation lags behind the Dutch text, we say so at the top of the page, with both dates.

Wherever you live, the mandatory consumer law of your own country continues to apply, whatever else is written here.