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Zulip Rules of Use

Last updated: December 13, 2021. View change history.

Zulip is designed to help thoughtful people work on difficult problems together, whether they work from a shared office or from all over the world. Zulip offers an ideal platform for businesses, as well as communities of all types, including open-source projects, research collaborations, volunteer organizations, and other groups of people who share a common pursuit.

This document lays out rules of appropriate behavior that apply to all Zulip organizations. Owners of Zulip organizations are expected to manage their organizations to help avoid problematic behavior. Open organizations are additionally encouraged to write a Code of Conduct and link to it from their organization profile, to provide further guidance on expected behavior in their communities.

If you encounter a Zulip message or behavior by a Zulip user that appears to violate these rules, please report it to us. We aim to be thoughtful and judicious in handling reported content. Depending on the severity and scope of the problem, our response may include issuing a warning, removing the content, deactivating user accounts or organizations, and/or reporting the behavior to law enforcement. Capitalized terms used below but not defined in these rules have the meaning set forth in the Terms of Service.

Safety

You may not engage in, promote, organize, incite, induce, encourage, or support any of the following:

  • Violence, including terrorism, violent extremism, animal cruelty, suicide, and self-harm.
  • Bullying, abuse, or harassment of any individual or group of people. This includes threatening anyone or wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.
  • Distribution of content that violates the privacy rights of any other person. This includes personal information about any other person that you do not have permission to share (“doxxing”).
  • Hateful content. You may not attack, threaten, or harass any individual or group on the basis of attributes such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity, age, disability, or disease.
  • Harmful misinformation. This includes misinformation that has the potential to cause imminent physical harm, or that is defamatory. Deceptively sharing synthetic or manipulated media is also prohibited.
  • Human trafficking and exploitation, including child sexual exploitation. This includes sharing content or links which depict minors in a pornographic, sexually suggestive, or violent manner, and includes illustrated or digitally altered pornography that depicts minors. If we become aware of apparent child exploitation, we will report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
  • Sexually explicit content and pornography as well as commercial sexual services. This includes requesting, offering, or asking for rates for sexual or escort services.
  • Fraud and deception, including financial scams such as fake loans, multi-level marketing schemes, get-rich-quick schemes, money-laundering schemes, gambling scams, insurance scams, and “money mule” businesses.
  • Distribution of content that violates the intellectual property rights, privacy rights, or other rights of anyone else (including Zulip).
  • Cybercrime, hacking, cracking, or distribution of pirated software or stolen accounts.
  • The sale of banned or dangerous goods such as weapons, drugs, or other illegal substances. Attempting to provide material support or resources (or to conceal or disguise the nature, location, source, or ownership of material support or resources) to any organization(s) designated by the United States government as a foreign terrorist organization pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act or other laws and regulations concerning national security, defense or terrorism is strictly prohibited.
  • Any other illegal behavior. Activities that violate any applicable law, including, but not limited to, all intellectual property, data, privacy, and export control laws and regulations promulgated by any government agencies, including, but not limited to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and any rules of any national and other securities exchanges, are prohibited.

Security

  • Do not attempt to compromise the security of other users of the Services, such as attempting to obtain the password or other security information of any other user, or to gain access to their account.
  • Do not attempt to compromise the security of the Services themselves. This includes violating the security of any computer network or system, cracking any passwords or encrypted communications, or compromising, breaking, or circumventing any of the technical processes or security measures associated with the Services. Do not attempt to test for vulnerabilities in our systems or networks without explicit prior consent.
  • Do not exceed or circumvent rate limits, run automated processes that interfere with the proper working of the Services, place an unreasonable load on the Services’ infrastructure, or otherwise cause excess or abusive usage.
  • Do not permit any third party to access your account or the authentication credentials you use to access the Services. This includes selling, reselling, sublicensing, or time-sharing Zulip accounts.
  • Do not share viruses or malware, or attempt to hack, phish, or DDoS others.
  • Do not automatically create or access accounts for the Services (a.k.a. “scraping”) by means other than our publicly supported interfaces. If you wish to embed Zulip as the chat backend for your own product, you must self-host your own Zulip server, rather than using Zulip Cloud.

Spam and deception

  • Do not send spam, including unsolicited communications, promotions, or advertisements.
  • Do not target other accounts with notification spam by mentioning someone or sending them direct messages that they do not want.
  • Do not use other accounts to contact a user who has muted you or create a new account in an organization that has deactivated your account for abusive behavior. Do not circumvent features we offer to enable users to protect themselves from abusive behavior.
  • Do not impersonate someone else (individuals, groups, organizations, Zulip staff or organization administrators, or other users) in a manner that is intended to or does mislead, confuse, or deceive anyone, such as “spoofing” or “phishing”.
  • Do not submit false reports of abusive behavior by other users.
  • Do not contact users outside of the Services using contact information obtained from the Services (including email addresses) without their consent. Do not create or distribute mailing lists or other collections of contact or user profile information for use outside of the Services.

Third-party clients

Zulip is 100% open-source software, and we welcome third-party clients that work with Zulip’s API or that allow Zulip users to connect to Zulip as well as other chat services from a single client. Developers of third-party clients marketed as working with the Zulip Cloud service are required to follow these additional rules to protect our users:

  • Third-party clients must comply with global privacy laws, including GDPR and CCPA, in their processing of any user data, including telemetry and error-reporting data.
  • Use security best practices to protect Zulip users who use your client. For example, if your client uses the Electron browser framework, you should implement the Electron Security guidelines. Projects that are early in development and potentially not yet secure must be advertised as insecure and not intended for general use.
  • Do not sell data collected from Zulip users to third parties.
  • Do not sell third-party advertisements for display within a Zulip client.

If you have any questions about the Zulip Rules of Use or would like to report a violation, please contact us at support@zulip.com.

Please contact support@zulip.com with any questions about Zulip's policies.