Imgur Terms of Service Update [April 19, 2023]
We recently announced some changes to our
Terms of Service that will be effective May 15, 2023. This help article aims to provide some clarifications on what this change entails and what those changes mean for Imgur as a whole. This change to our ToS will bring closer parity to our
Community Rules and will not change anything for public posts. There are a couple of reasons we wanted to make this change, which we'll outline below.
"What are we doing?"
Our
new Terms of Service will go into effect on May 15, 2023. We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account from our platform as well as nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content. You will need to download/save any images that you wish to save if they no longer adhere to these Terms. Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content.
We will not be making any changes to our Community Rules - this means content in the public gallery will not change. However, we will need to employ automated detection software to assist in identifying explicit content. We are aware of the limitations and issues with using automated detection means exclusively, so we will continue to use human moderators alongside automated detection. All content submitted to the public gallery will continue to be subject to human review - as always. For more information on how moderation on Imgur works, please refer to this handy dandy
moderation article.
With a mix of automated detection and human review, we hope to minimize any negative impacts this change may have on the Imgur community. As always, please continue to
report and flag content that you deem should be reviewed by our moderation team
"Why we are doing this?"
Previously, Imgur's Community Rules and Terms of Service applied to all community interactions on the site, while the Terms of Service applied to all content on Imgur as a whole.
This caused some confusion among Imgurians, we hope this change will make policies more clear and more consistent across Imgur. Namely:
- Explicit/Pornographic content was previously permitted to be on Imgur, but not when submitted as a comment or as a gallery submission. This caused frustration with users who received content violations for the content they have seen posted elsewhere off-site. Aligning our Terms of Service more closely with our Community Rules should help clearly define what is and isn’t permitted on Imgur.
- Explicit and illegal content have historically posed a risk to Imgur's community and its business, disallowing explicit content will allow Imgur to address these risks and protect the future of the Imgur community.
- Artistic nudity will continue to be permitted, as it was permitted under the Rules previously - however, since we're calibrating automated detection in these early stages, some content that may have been permitted under "artistic exceptions" previously may not apply here. We will not be issuing any warnings, account suspensions, or bans in relation to these automated flags - but this may impact what is allowed to be submitted or uploaded. Should there be any issues preventing you from uploading content that is falsely flagged as explicit content, we want to hear from you.
"How will this work?"
In an effort to make this as clear to Imgurians as possible, we’ll outline exactly how these changes will go into effect. If you are signed in to your account and upload content that is detected as being in violation of our Terms, you will be notified of this and it will be automatically deleted soon after. Once the content has been removed, it will no longer be visible with a direct link and will not be visible in the post you've created.
If the flagged content is part of a post with other content that is not flagged, only the flagged content will be removed.
We will not be issuing account warnings or suspensions relating to these automated flags.
We understand that these changes may be disruptive to Imgurians who have used Imgur to store their images and artwork. These changes are an important step in Imgur’s continued efforts to remain a safe and fun space on the internet. As always, we welcome and value your feedback to help us refine our efforts toward this goal. Please accept this puppy as a token of our thanks.