WordPress.com strongly believes in freedom of speech. We have a vast audience spread across many cultures, countries and backgrounds with varying values and our service is designed to let users freely express any ideas and opinions without us censoring or endorsing them. That being said, there are a few categories of content and behavior that we don’t permit because we consider them harmful to the community.
To be transparent aboutwhat is and isn’t allowed on your site, we’ve put together this set of guidelines. The following activity/material isn’t allowed on WordPress.com.
Illegal content and conduct.
Self-explanatory.
Intellectual property infringement.
WordPress.com is a publishing, rather than a file sharing platform, so we recognize that copyrighted materials are often used infair usecontext. We strongly support this and urge copyright holders to take this into consideration before submitting complaints. If you’re not sure, a good rule of thumb is to always ask the rights holder for permission before republishing their content.
Sexually explicit material.
We know that there may be different definitions of this, but generally, we define sexually explicit material as visual depictions of sexually explicit acts. Nudity, in and of itself, isfine.
Gambling.
Discussing gambling on your site isn’t a problem. However, operating an online gambling service (including poker)? No dice. Please also be aware that if your site is primarily designed to link to other gambling sites, we consider this spam, and a breach of the user guidelines.
Technologically harmful content.
Please don’t uploador link to malware, spyware, adware, or other malicious or destructive code.
Impersonation.
Don’t claim to be a person or organizationyou’re not. (Parody and satire are ok though!)
Directly threatening material.
Do not postdirect and realisticthreats of violence. That is, you cannot post a genuine call for violence—or death—against an individual person, or groups of persons. Thisdoesn’t mean that we’ll remove allhyperboleoroffensive language.
Posting private information.
Don’t share someone’s personal informationwithout their consent. This includes collectingsensitive information inContact Formssuch as account passwords and credit card numbers, to name a couple.
Advertising.
Advertisingisn’t permitted unless you useWordAdsor have aWordPress.com Planthat allows ad networks.
Hotlinking to WordPress.com.
Your WordPress.com site shouldn’t host files that will only be used on other sites.
Spam or machine-generated content.
You know what this is, but in general, sites such as those primarily dedicated to drive traffic to third party sites, boost SEO, phish, spoof, or promote affiliate marketing aren’t cool. We don’t want you to pollute the web outside of WordPress.com either, so we ask you to please avoid sending unwanted or unsolicited promotions or emails about your site, even if it’s not on WordPress.com.
Bear in mind that these are just guidelines —interpretations are solely up to us. These guidelines are not exhaustive and are subject to change. If you use ecommerce services on your WordPress.com site, our Store Guidelines also apply.
If you believe a WordPress.com site has violated our Terms of Serviceor any of these policies, pleasereport the site.We aim to promptly review and investigate all complaints that we receive, but if and howwerespond will depend on a variety of factors, such as the information available to us andthe typeof violation. Wemay also contact the site owner to inform him/herof the complaint.
If we’re not in a position to make a determination (for example, whether something is defamatory or not), we defer to the judgment of a court.
