Yesterday, Tumblr published a draft revision to its terms and policies to Github for reading by the public before it updates them on the site. The company said in a blog post that the updates mark the first time in two years that the service will be updating its terms of service, as well as the first time they’ve been tweaked since the company was acquired by Yahoo last year.
The updated terms are mostly just tweaks to the legal wording but the company has reworked their recommendations on how to be a good Tumblr user. Notable additions include the company asking that users attribute each other when reposting content, rules against impersonating companies, personalities or other users and encourages users to discuss hateful content rather than have the company remove it.
The company obviously hasn’t had its fun side squashed by coming into the Yahoo corporate fold, since the documents still contain the occasional expletive and even calls those that torture animals ‘dicks‘.
These ‘guidelines’ are more like rules. Tumblr says that if users are caught repetitively breaking the guidelines, they may have their accounts suspended or be blocked entirely. It’s interesting that Tumblr has added them now, as it appears that the company is attempting to clean up user habits across the site going forward.
You can see the changes for yourself compared with the current version of Tumblr’s terms of service here on Github.
Feature Image: Gil C/Shutterstock
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