Tapas Media Services ("Tapas Media," "Tapas," “Tapastry,” “Tapas Community”, "Tapas Merch Shop," "Tapastic," "Service" or "Services") are provided by Tapas Media, Inc. ("We," "Our" or "Tapas").

The Tapas community is made up of diverse creative people from around the world. We value the varied perspectives each user brings and recognize that these differences have given rise to the incredible and powerful storytelling found on Tapas. Each and every person helps make our community what it is and with this in mind, together we can keep Tapas safe and fun for everyone. As a member of our community (reader or creator) you are expected to follow all conduct related guidelines on this page.

You will always keep full ownership of your work when posting on Tapas as an independent creator. Tapas will never claim ownership or rights over your intellectual property. To amplify creators' voices and bring attention to series or merchandise, Tapas may utilize assets from your series or Tapas Merch Shop for marketing and promotional purposes.

In order to post on this platform, you must follow all content related guidelines listed below. We take these guidelines seriously and must insist that you read them carefully and be mindful of them when using Tapas.

Code of Conduct

We share the responsibility of ensuring that everyone feels respected and free to express themselves on Tapas. Here are a few rules to help make that happen:

• Be Polite: Behind every story and profile is a real person. Treat everyone with respect and courtesy, whether it be in comments, wall posts, or anywhere else. We do not tolerate any abusive, demeaning, or threatening behavior within the community and will do everything we can to assure a positive experience on Tapas. Participating in these negative behaviors towards other users, creators, or Tapas staff may result in a warning or banning of your account.
  
  We encourage users to try to mediate problems on their own and to utilize the block feature. However, if harassment gets out of control, or you don't feel comfortable handling the situation on your own, please report it to us via email and attach any supporting documents.

• Be you: Tapas welcomes the use of pen names and online identities. However, it is against our guidelines to impersonate someone else or pretend to be associated with someone you are not. 

• Protect privacy: Don’t share someone's personal details without permission. This includes real names, private conversations, photos, phone numbers, home or email addresses, or other sensitive information that may compromise their safety or privacy.

• Off-platform Behavior: To ensure a positive and safe environment, Tapas reserves the right to enforce our guidelines and take action against accounts when off-platform behavior of a user affects the community. Reports of off-platform issues will be handled on a case by case basis and may result in warnings or bans.
  
  
• Don’t Spam: Tapas does its best to keep spam to a minimum. We prohibit spammy activity and the use of related services. To assist in monitoring and filtering out spam we may utilize an automatic blocking system. We may also manually identify and in turn, immediately remove content we determine to be spam. Performing activities that we deem to be spam may result in warnings or action being taken against your account. Spamming includes, but is not limited to: 
  • • Excessive posting of unsolicited content or links
    • Accounts created for the sole purpose of promoting or spamming commercial products or services. These may be banned without notice.
      
• Stay Honest: It is prohibited to engage in activities, whether it be through automatic systems or through third party services, that artificially increase metrics. The use, creation, or promotion of bots or any other automated services are prohibited. The creation of multiple accounts for the use of, but not limited to, increasing or inflating metrics, diverting traffic to external websites, abusing the Support Program, etc., is prohibited. You may not sell, gift or trade any account. Participating in these behaviors may result in the immediate banning of your account, without notice. 
  
  

Content Boundaries

Here at Tapas, our creators are our ambassadors with their conduct reflecting on themselves, their work, and Tapas. Our creators ARE: professional, inclusive, kind, and supportive. 

We expect our creators' conduct and content to reflect our rules and quality standards on and off our platform. Unless otherwise specified, the rules apply to both app and web versions of Tapas.

• Abusive or hateful content: 
  • Hateful or abusive content about or directed towards other creators, other users, or groups of people is not allowed.
    Abusive content includes any content or comment that has the purpose to incite hate or anger based on race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, political orientation, etc.
    
• Mature and sexual content:
  • Due to strict app store guidelines for user generated content, on our apps, artwork containing nudity, full or partial, or depictions of any sexual act are not allowed. This also includes artwork or photos used in novels, on series covers, banners and anywhere else it is visible on our site. Series containing any nudity may be removed from our app without notice and only be hosted on web.
  • On web, non-sexual nudity and censored sexual acts may be allowed.
  • Any novel’s intended purpose should not be to solely provide erotic satisfaction (i.e. porn without plot).
  • Any and all content intended for sexual gratification is not allowed.
  • Content including or depicting the sexualization of minors is not allowed.

• Violent or graphic content:
  • Content with graphic depictions of violence or that promotes acts of violence will not be allowed.
  • Restricted violent or graphic content includes the glorification or promotion of self-harm.
    

• No posting for violent or criminal organizations:
  • Content depicting non-fictional, violent or criminal organizations, praise for these types of organizations, or recruitment for these types of organizations is not allowed.
    • This includes a ban of any and all promotional materials for any fictional or non-fictional organization of this type.
      

• Impersonation:
  • Content that is intended to impersonate another creator or person, whether a part of the Tapas community or not, is not allowed.
  • This includes the distribution or representation of any contact or personal information of another user.
    

• Copyright, Trademarked work and AI generated content:
  
  • Content that is protected under any and all trademark or copyright laws will not be allowed to be copied into a series published through Tapas.
  • Fan Art (artwork based on popular works of fiction (such as books, movies, etc.) that is created by fans) that infringes on another’s copyright is never allowed to be sold within the Tapas Merch Shop.
  • Stock photography or stock artwork is not considered original artwork and can not be used in the Tapas Merch Shop, as licensing can be extremely difficult to track.
  • AI generated content is not allowed on Tapas, as it may be an unauthorized derivative of existing, trademarked content while also being unable to receive copyright protection by the United States Copyright Office.   

• Advertisements
  • Any noticeable attempt to place an advertisement or redirect traffic from Tapas to third-party websites unrelated to the content, and/or harm the user experience of our community (determined at Tapas’ sole discretion) is prohibited. 
    

Tapas Merch Shop Policy

The Tapas Merch Shop offers creators the ability to sell apparel and merchandise related to their series on Tapas.

All orders are printed and fulfilled on demand by our partner Printful.

Our Content Boundaries apply to all artwork used within the Tapas Merch Shop. The designs used should be your original artwork and can’t contain any nudity, fan art or stock imagery, just like your series’ covers, thumbnails and banners.

Any item that does not follow our guidelines may be taken down without notice, and your account may be subject to further review. You may not receive any creator share for merchandise not following our guidelines and we may terminate your ability to sell items in the Tapas Merch Shop for repeat or extreme offenses.

Reporting and Enforcement

Banned Accounts

Tapas reserves the right to take action against any account at any time for behavior determined to be a detriment or harmful to the community, determined at Tapas’ sole discretion. Once a user has been banned, any attempt to circumnavigate the ban will not be tolerated. Any and all accounts associated with the user may be banned without notice.

Reporting

At Tapas, we believe in the creator's right to freedom of expression in the stories that they wish to tell, with allowance for many varied points of view. However, if you encounter content that breaches our guidelines, you can flag it for review using the Report button found at the end of every episode.

Reports will be reviewed by Tapas staff, where we will evaluate potential policy violations to determine if the content is inappropriate. Please do not report content in bad faith. Falsely reporting content in a spammy manner may result in action being taken against you, the reporting account. 

Feedback

Our policies may evolve or expand in the future - we want to make sure we are constantly adapting to the needs of the community and the company to ensure that Tapas continues to be the best it can be. This page will always host the most current set of Tapas’ guidelines and policies. 

Any and all policy regulations are open to review. Suspensions of content and or account access can be contested by contacting us.

Last Modified : March 09th, 2022

For archived versions of our Community Guidelines, please visit Prior Versions.