Notice

Terms of use

Block by Block is a free public demonstrator, not an official service of the City of New York.

These terms explain what Block by Block is, what you can do with it, and what you agree to when you use it. They are short on purpose, and written to be read.

This is a demonstrator, not a City service

Block by Block is a public demonstration project. It is not an official service of the City of New York. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or operated on behalf of the City or any of its agencies. Nothing you submit here reaches any city agency, any elected official, or 311.

If you need a pothole filled, a street light repaired, a landlord inspected, or anything else actually acted on, contact 311 or the responsible agency directly. Filing a report here does not create a service request, does not open a case, and does not put you on any list. A banner says this on every page of the site. We repeat it here because it is the most important term on this page.

Who may use it

Anyone can read Block by Block. Anyone can file a report or tap “same here” on someone else’s. There is no sign-up, no login, no e-mail address, and no password for residents. The site is built for New York City residents and for the district staff who use the protected administration area, but nothing stops a visitor from anywhere else from reading it.

The service is not directed at children, and it collects nothing that would identify anyone, of any age. The administration area at /admin is reserved: it may be used only by district staff who have been given an access key.

What you may submit

A report is up to 280 characters in your own words, a category, a sentiment (a problem, or something working well), and an approximate location. That location is snapped on our server to a grid of roughly 150 meters before it is stored, so the exact point you tapped is never kept. Write about the block, not about people.

What you must not submit

• Personal data about other people: names attached to accusations, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, apartment numbers, or links to someone’s profile.
• Threats, incitement to violence, or anything that could put a person in danger.
• Targeted harassment of an identifiable individual, or slurs aimed at people for who they are.
• Spam, advertising, repeated identical submissions, or automated flooding of the service.
• Text you do not have the right to publish.

Public write endpoints are rate limited: six reports a minute and four alert subscriptions a minute per client. That limit exists to keep the service usable. It has nothing to do with what you say.

How submissions are screened

Every report passes an automatic screen before it appears publicly. The screen looks for two things, and only two things: personal data about identifiable private individuals, and abuse — credible threats, targeted harassment, slurs.

Opinions are never moderated. Criticism of the City of New York, of any agency, of any elected or appointed official, of any policy or any decision, is explicitly permitted. Strong language about conditions on your block is permitted. Disagreement is the point of the exercise.

A report caught by the screen is not deleted. It is stored with a pending status and simply not displayed publicly until it has been reviewed. The screening step is also able to send the text of a report to the Anthropic Claude API to double-check an automated flag, but only where an API key is configured for the deployment. No key is configured in production today, so that path is inactive. We disclose it in advance rather than after the fact; the privacy notice describes it in full.

The license you give us

You keep whatever rights you have in your own words. By submitting a report you grant Arcano Zero – AI Lab Srl a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to display that text publicly on this site, to include it in counts, clusters, maps and statistics, and to show it in the district administration area, for as long as the demonstration project runs. The license covers the text, the category, the sentiment and the snapped location, together with the technical fields stored beside them — the block identifier, the district, the interface language, a status and a timestamp. Nothing else, because nothing else is collected.

Because reports carry no identifier of any kind, we generally cannot tell which report is yours. If you want something taken down, write to us and describe it — its wording, and roughly when you filed it — and we will help where we can identify it.

Who owns the platform

The Block by Block platform — its interface, design and code — belongs to Arcano Zero – AI Lab Srl. Nothing here transfers those rights to you. Names such as “New York City”, “311” and the city agency names belong to the City of New York and are used only to describe publicly available data.

The data behind the figures

The statistics come from NYC Open Data: 311 Service Requests (dataset erm2-nwe9) and the adopted Expense Budget for the current fiscal year (dataset mwzb-yiwb), both published by the City of New York as open data. Provenance links on the About page take you to the source so you can check any figure yourself.

Two things are labeled on the site and worth repeating. The budget figures are a per-capita estimate derived from citywide agency budgets, not an actual district allocation. And a small number of example “working well” reports, together with the AI-assisted cluster briefings, are illustrative content rather than resident submissions or official statements.

What this service does not promise

Block by Block is free and is provided as it is. We do not promise that it will be available, complete, accurate, or uninterrupted.

Priority scores are calculated by a published deterministic formula. No machine-learning model ranks priorities. A score is an analytical aid — a way of ordering attention — and nothing more. It is not an official determination by the City of New York, it does not reflect any agency’s assessment, and it does not predict what will be fixed, or when.

Reports are what residents say, not verified facts. Read them the way you would read a neighbor’s account.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent Italian law allows, Arcano Zero – AI Lab Srl is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of this free demonstrator, for decisions taken on the basis of anything shown here, or for content submitted by other users. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for intent or gross negligence and for harm to life or health.

Changes to these terms

We will update these terms as the demonstrator develops. The current version always lives at this address, with its date. If a change is substantial we will say so on the site rather than quietly swapping the text. Continuing to use Block by Block after a change means you accept the new version.

Governing law and contact

The operator is Arcano Zero – AI Lab Srl, a company based in Rome, Italy. These terms are governed by Italian law, and the Italian courts have jurisdiction over disputes arising from them. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of your own country of residence.

Questions about these terms, or about anything on this site: a.megacreator@gmail.com. That is the only contact address we have today; a dedicated address will replace it.

Last updated: July 27, 2026