Last Modified: 2012-03-22

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,

or 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, witness, and

believe.

What Tumblr is not for:

Malicious Bigotry.

Don't actively promote violence or extreme hatred against individuals or

groups, on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender,

age, veteran status, or sexual orientation. While we firmly believe that

the best response to hateful speech is not censorship but more speech, we

will take down malicious bigotry, as defined here.

Harm to Minors.

Be thoughtful when posting anything involving a minor. Don't post anything

relating to minors that is sexually suggestive or violent. Don't bully

minors, even if you are one. Life as a teenager is hard enough without the

fear, anguish, and isolation caused by online bullying.

Promotion and Glorification of Self-Harm.

Don't post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This

includes content that urges or encourages readers 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 to sustain Tumblr as a place that facilitates

awareness, support and recovery, and to remove only those blogs that cross

the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm.

Gore and Mutilation Content.

Don't post gore just to be shocking. Don't showcase the mutilation or

torture of human beings, animals, or their remains.

Unflagged NSFW Blogs.

Tumblr is home to millions of readers and bloggers from a variety of

locations, cultures, and backgrounds with 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

from the Settings page of each blog) as Not Suitable for Work ("NSFW").

This action does not prevent you and your readers from using any of

Tumblr's social features, but rather allows Tumblr users who don't want to

see NSFW content to avoid seeing it.

Uploading Sexually Explicit Video.

You can embed anything as long as it follows the other guidelines on this

page. But please don't use Tumblr's Upload Video feature to host any

sexually explicit videos. We're not in the business of profiting from

adult-oriented videos and hosting this stuff is fucking expensive. You can

use services like [xhamster.com] to host those instead.

Non-Genuine Social Gesture Schemes.

Don't participate in schemes to gain non-genuine gestures like follows or

reblogs. 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 scatter deceptive links to your blog or Follow pages.

Don't make bulk or indiscriminate use of messaging features like Fan Mail

or Asks to bait followers.

Username and URL Abuse.

Tumblr's URLs (usernames) are for the use and enjoyment of our users.

Don't squat, hoard, collect, trade, or sell Tumblr URLs.

Spam.

Don't abuse social gestures, send unwanted messages, or aggregate content

in a less-than-meaningful way. Don't put tags on your posts that will

mislead or deceive searchers (for example, tagging a photo of your car

with "#lady gaga" and "#britney spears"); of course, meaningful uses are

always fine (for example, ironic "punchline" tags that add to or playfully

subvert a post itself). Don't put deceptive links or dubious code in your

posts. That includes using Javascript to inject unwanted ads in blogs, or

embedding links to interstitial or pop-up ad services. 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 and Automation.

Don't register accounts or post content automatically, systematically, or

programmatically.

Unauthorized Contests, Sweepstakes, or Giveaways.

Take a look at our [guidelines] for contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways,

which are incorporated here by reference, for more information.

Third-Party Theme Distribution.

To manage the safety and stability of blog themes, the vast majority of

which are contributed by the Tumblr community, it's important that themes

are distributed through our centralized Theme Garden. Third-party theme

directories are often used to inject nefarious code that results in spam,

ads, or phishing attacks. Since anyone can host and promote their themes

in the Theme Garden, don't create or use third-party services to

distribute source code for Tumblr themes. Creating blogs or directories

that curate themes in the Theme Garden is a-okay.

Copyright and Trademark Infringement.

Respect the copyrights and trademarks of others. If you aren't authorized

to use someone else's copyrighted or trademarked work (either expressly or

by legal exceptions and limitations like [fair use]), don't. It is our

policy to respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement as per our

[Terms of Service] and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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, including 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 attractive).

Disruptions, Exploits, and Resource Abuse.

Our servers and the valiant engineers who support 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 and Content.

This one's pretty obvious, but Tumblr is not a place for illegal behavior,

including fraud, phishing, or illegally inciting violence.

And now, some words from our lawyers:

If we conclude you are violating these policies, you may receive a notice

via email. If you don't explain or correct your behavior, your account may

be suspended and/or your IP address may be blocked. 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, or community. We reserve the right to

enforce, or not enforce, these policies in our sole discretion, and these

policies don't create a duty or contractual obligation for us to act in any

particular manner.

We also reserve the right to amend these policies using the procedures set

forth in our [Terms of Service].

If you have questions or feedback, don't hesitate to [let us know].

Link to Prior Versions

You will find a link to prior versions of our Community Guidelines below.

We have stored these versions on GitHub, which will also allow you to

compare different versions and see what terms have changed:

http://github.com/tumblr/policy/commits/master/community-guidelines.txt