tumblr_guidelines.md

As a global platform for creativity and self-expression, Tumblr is deeply committed to supporting and protecting freedom of speech. At the same time, we draw lines around a few narrowly defined but deeply important categories of content and behavior that jeopardize our users, threaten our infrastructure, and damage our community.

What Tumblr is for:

Tumblr celebrates creativity. We want you to express yourself freely and use Tumblr to reflect who you are, and what you love, think, and stand for. What Tumblr is not for:

• Malicious Speech. Don't encourage violence or hatred on the basis of things like race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation. We encourage you to dismantle negative speech through argument rather than censorship. We will, however, remove anything that is overtly malicious.

• Harm to Minors. Be thoughtful when posting anything involving a minor. Don't post or solicit anything relating to minors that is sexually suggestive or violent. Don’t bully minors, even if you are one. Being a teenager is complicated enough without the anxiety, sadness, and isolation caused by bullying.

• Promotion or Glorification of Self-Harm. Don't post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages others to: cut or injure themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seeking counseling or treatment, or joining together in supportive conversation with those suffering or recovering from depression or other conditions. Dialogue about these behaviors is incredibly important and online communities can be extraordinarily helpful to people struggling with these difficult conditions. We aim for Tumblr to be a place that facilitates awareness, support and recovery, and we will remove only those posts or blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm.

• Gore, Mutilation, Bestiality, or Necrophilia. Don't post gore just to be shocking. Don’t showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains. Dick.

• Unflagged NSFW Blogs. Tumblr is home to millions of readers and creators from a variety of locations, cultures, and backgrounds who hold different points of view concerning adult-oriented content. If you regularly post sexual or adult-oriented content, respect the choices of people in our community who would rather not see such content by flagging your blog (which you can do on your blog’s Settings page) as Not Suitable for Work ("NSFW"). This action doesn’t prevent you or your readers from using any of Tumblr's social features, but rather screens your blog’s content from Tumblr users who would prefer not to see NSFW material.

• Uploading Sexually Explicit Video. You can embed anything in a Tumblr post as long as it’s lawful and follows our other guidelines, but please don't use Tumblr's Upload Video feature to upload sexually explicit video. We're not in the business of hosting adult-oriented videos (and it’s fucking expensive).

• Non-Genuine Social Gesture Schemes. Don't participate in schemes to drive up non-genuine Follows, Likes, Reblogs, etc. Don’t orchestrate or engage in "follow trains," where users are encouraged to follow lists of other users to gain more followers for themselves. Don't make bulk or indiscriminate use of messaging features, like Fan Mail or Asks, to, for example, bait Reblogs/Follows or drive traffic to your blog or website. If you want people to like you, just play it cool and be yourself.

• Deceptive or Fraudulent Links. Don't post deceptive or fraudulent links in your posts. This includes giving links misleading descriptions, putting the wrong “source” field in a post, setting misleading click-through links on images, or embedding links to interstitial or pop-up ads.

• Misattribution or Non-Attribution. Make sure you always give proper attribution and include full links back to original sources. When you find something awesome on Tumblr, reblog it instead of reposting it. It’s less work and more fun, anyway. When reblogging something, DO NOT inject a link back to your blog just to steal attention from the original post.

• Username/URL Abuse or Squatting. Tumblr's usernames/URLs are meant for the use and enjoyment of all of our users. Don't squat, hoard, amass, accumulate, accrue, stockpile, rack up, buy, trade, sell, launder, invest in, ingest, get drunk on, cyber with, grope, or jealously guard Tumblr usernames/URLs.

• Spam. Don’t spam people. Don’t make spammy posts, don’t post spammy replies, don’t send people spammy messages. Be a regular human. Don't put tags on your posts that will mislead or deceive searchers. For example, don’t tag a photo of your cat with "doctor who" unless the name of your cat is actually Doctor Who, and don’t overload your posts with #barely #relevant #tags. Of course, meaningful uses of tags are always fine (for example, ironic "punchline" tags that add meaning or context to a post). Don't put dubious code in your posts, like using JavaScript to cause redirects or inject unwanted ads in blogs. Don't use deceptive means to generate revenue or traffic, or create blogs with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing. Spam doesn't belong on Tumblr.

• Mass Registration or Automation. Don't register accounts or post content automatically, systematically, or programmatically.

• Unauthorized Contests, Sweepstakes, or Giveaways. Please follow ourguidelines for contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways.

• Themes Distributed by Third Parties. To ensure the safety and stability of our blog network, it's important that themes are distributed through tumblr.com/themes. It’s easy, it’s secure, and any interested developer can use it to host and promote their work. Besides the inconvenience involved in using them, third-party theme repositories are often used to inject nefarious code that subjects users to spam, ads, or phishing attacks. Don’t use them. Creating blogs or directories that curate themes from tumblr.com/themes is a-okay.

• Copyright or Trademark Infringement. Respect the copyrights and trademarks of others. If you aren't allowed to use someone else's copyrighted or trademarked work (either by license or by legal exceptions/limitations like fair use), don't post it. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement as per our Terms of Service and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please see our DMCA notification form to file a claim online.

• Confusion or Impersonation. Don’t do things that would cause confusion between you or your blog and a person or company, like registering a deliberately confusing URL. Don’t impersonate anyone. While you’re free to ridicule, parody, or marvel at the alien beauty of Benedict Cumberbatch, you can’t pretend to actually be Benedict Cumberbatch.

• Harassment. Don't attempt to circumvent the Ignore feature or otherwise try to communicate with someone who has asked you to stop.

• Privacy Violations. Don't use Tumblr to deceptively obtain personal information. Don't post content that violates anyone’s privacy, especially personally identifying or confidential information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, unlisted contact information, or private photos of your ex's junk (no matter how remarkable).

• Disruptions, Exploits, or Resource Abuse. Our servers, and the valiant engineers behind them, work hard for you. Don't attempt unauthorized use, disruption, or exploitation of Tumblr.com or our other products and services, or otherwise abuse Tumblr's resources.

• Unlawful Uses or Content. This one's pretty obvious, but Tumblr is not a place for illegal behavior, including fraud, phishing, or illegally inciting violence. If we conclude that you are violating these guidelines, you may receive a notice via email. If you don't explain or correct your behavior, we may take action against your account. We do our best to ensure fair outcomes, but in all cases we reserve the right to suspend accounts, or remove content, without notice, for any reason, but particularly to protect our services, infrastructure, users, and community. We reserve the right to enforce, or not enforce, these guidelines in our sole discretion, and these guidelines don't create a duty or contractual obligation for us to act in any particular manner. You can report violations of these guidelines to us directly.

We also reserve the right to amend these guidelines using the procedures set forth in our Terms of Service. If you have questions or feedback, don't hesitate to let us know.

Thanks for reading all of this, by the way. Welcome to Tumblr.