Terms of Service

1. Who we are and this agreement

These Terms of Service (Terms) govern Funny Memes, chortleshell.com, and our related applications and APIs (the Service). Chortleshell LLC, a Texas limited liability company (Chortleshell, we, us, or our), operates the Service. You means the person using the Service or, if you have authority to act for an organization, that organization.

By accepting these Terms or using the Service where these Terms have been made available to you, you agree to them to the extent permitted by applicable law. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. Our Community Guidelines form part of these Terms. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information; it is not a request for consent to processing that requires a separate choice.

2. Age and eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. Children under 13 may not use it, even with a parent’s permission. You must also meet any higher minimum age or other requirements that apply where you live. If you are not legally an adult, a parent or legal guardian must review these Terms with you and give any permission required by local law. Do not misrepresent your age.

Both Main and Uncut are intended for audiences ages 13 and older. Main focuses on broadly suitable humor. Uncut may include political, controversial, or edgy humor; it is not an adult-content area. Content preferences do not change our prohibition on pornography, exploitation, and other prohibited material.

3. Your account and security

You can browse available public content without an account. Posting, commenting, voting, and saving favorites require an eligible account. Provide accurate information, use an email address you control, complete required verification, and keep your credentials confidential. Do not impersonate another person or give someone unauthorized access to an account.

You are responsible for your use and activity you authorize through your account. Contact us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access. You are not automatically responsible for activity caused by our failure to meet our legal security obligations. We may require verification, restrict compromised accounts, or revoke sessions to protect the Service.

4. Your content and the permission you give us

You retain the rights you have in images, animated images, comments, profile materials, and other content you submit (Your Content). You must own it or have the permissions or other legal rights necessary to submit it and allow the uses described here. Finding an image online, giving credit, or calling it a meme does not by itself give you permission to use it. Respect copyright, trademark, privacy, and publicity rights.

You grant Chortleshell a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process, reformat, resize, moderate, and display Your Content, and distribute it through the Service’s viewing, sharing, and download features. This includes thumbnails, supported image versions, removal of embedded metadata, and analysis for safety and categorization. We may allow our service providers to perform these activities for us. The license is limited to operating, securing, and providing the Service; it does not transfer ownership or grant an unrelated merchandising license.

Published content is public. Others may view, save, or share it, and copies may remain outside our control after removal. Those features do not permit infringement of a content owner’s rights. We do not promise payment, attribution, publication, a particular audience, or permanent hosting. Keep your own copies.

The license ends when Your Content is removed from our systems, except as reasonably necessary to complete deletion, maintain restricted backup or legal and safety records, or comply with law. It does not authorize continued public display by us after removal.

5. Community rules and prohibited conduct

The Service accepts supported still and animated images, not video. You must not:

• Submit illegal material, child sexual abuse or exploitation material, pornography, graphic gore, or nonconsensual intimate images, including fabricated or AI-generated images.
• Threaten people, encourage self-harm, engage in targeted harassment or degrading abuse, promote hatred or violence against protected groups, or expose private information.
• Infringe intellectual property, impersonate people deceptively, commit fraud, or submit someone else’s personal material without the necessary rights.
• Send spam, coordinate deceptive votes or engagement, abuse reports or appeals, or use accounts to evade restrictions.
• Introduce malware, obtain unauthorized access, scrape private information, bypass authentication or technical safeguards, overload the Service, or interfere with another person’s use.
• Use automated clients without our authorization or exceed the scope of authorized access. Security research must not expose user data or disrupt the Service.

Context matters. Political discussion, disagreement, discussion of race or religion, and quoting or condemning abuse are not violations by themselves. Humor does not excuse threats, exploitation, or targeted abuse. These rules apply to usernames, avatars, uploads, comments, and other interactions.

6. Review, publication, and enforcement

Submitting a meme image does not make it public. Images are decoded, converted to supported formats, checked for embedded metadata, and routed through safety review. We use automated systems, including third-party AI, and human reviewers. New meme uploads also require final administrator publication approval. An automated or preliminary human approval alone is not publication approval. Failed or uncertain automated image reviews remain unpublished for manual review.

We may decline publication, change a category or tags, restrict visibility, remove content, limit participation, suspend accounts, or terminate access when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, protect people, comply with law, or operate the Service. Editorial rejection permanently erases submitted media without an account or IP ban merely for that editorial decision. Safety violations can separately result in temporary participation restrictions, permanent account restrictions, or exact-IP blocking.

Comments can appear before automated review and may subsequently be hidden or removed. Clear directed hate, degrading targeted abuse, threats, or encouragement of self-harm can lead to participation bans ranging from an hour to a year under our escalation rules. Restrictions may depend on severity and prior violations. Some safety decisions and restrictions are automated. An AI score is a model assessment, not a legal finding.

Review systems can make mistakes; we cannot guarantee that every harmful item will be prevented or detected. Use in-app reporting for content or account concerns. Eligible comment decisions can be challenged through Actions → Flagged Comments → Request Review. You can also contact us about a decision, including if you cannot access your account. Include the username, relevant content identifier, and why you believe the decision is mistaken. Human review may change a restriction, but permanently erased media cannot be restored.

7. Copyright complaints and removal disputes

If you believe content infringes your copyright, use our Contact Us page, email contact@chortleshell.com, or call +1 (844) 246-7853. Begin your message with “Copyright complaint.” No account is needed. Please include:

1. Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and an email address for replies.
2. A description of the copyrighted work, or a representative list for multiple works.
3. The URL or content identifier of each disputed item and enough information to locate it.
4. A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
5. A statement that the information is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner of the exclusive right involved.
6. Your physical or electronic signature; typing your full name can serve as an electronic signature.

Consider applicable exceptions, including fair use, before making a complaint. Knowingly material misrepresentations in copyright notices or counter-notices can result in legal liability. We may remove or restrict disputed content and terminate repeat infringers’ accounts in appropriate circumstances.

If your content was removed by mistake or misidentification, contact us with “Copyright removal dispute,” identify the content and its former location, and explain your rights to use it. For a statutory DMCA counter-notice, also include your signature, name, address, telephone number, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the removal resulted from mistake or misidentification, and consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if outside the United States, any judicial district where Chortleshell may be found) and to service of process from the complainant or its agent.

We may provide notices and counter-notices, including contact details, to the other party where necessary to handle the dispute or required by law. When the statutory DMCA counter-notice process applies, its requirements govern; the usual restoration window is 10–14 business days after receipt of a valid counter-notice unless we receive notice of a qualifying court action. Content may remain unavailable on independent, lawful grounds under these Terms. Permanently erased bytes cannot be recovered; contact us to discuss available remedies. Nothing here limits rights or obligations that applicable law makes mandatory.

8. Request removal of an intimate image

Nonconsensual intimate images are prohibited, including realistic digital forgeries. If an intimate image depicts you without your consent, you or your authorized representative can use our Contact Us page, email contact@chortleshell.com, or call +1 (844) 246-7853 without an account. Begin the message with “Intimate image removal” and include:

• The image’s URL or content identifier and information sufficient to locate it.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the image was published without the depicted person’s consent, and any relevant explanation.
• Your contact information and physical or electronic signature. If acting for someone else, identify your authority to do so.

Send the location and necessary details, not another copy of the intimate image. Valid requests covered by the TAKE IT DOWN Act require removal as soon as possible, no later than 48 hours after receipt, and reasonable efforts to identify and remove known identical copies. We handle these requests under those requirements. Other privacy and safety concerns can use the same form or in-app reporting. This process does not limit other rights or remedies available to you.

9. Automated accounts and API access

Authorized bot accounts operate through externally hosted software. They may submit images, comment, and vote on other accounts’ content. Their content is subject to the same ingestion, moderation, and publication rules as member content. An interaction is not necessarily a human endorsement.

Bot operators must protect API keys, have authority for their submissions, comply with these Terms and applicable API restrictions, and stop using revoked credentials. Authorization does not permit self-voting, deceptive manipulation, bypassing safety review, or accessing nonpublic user information.

10. Purchases, advertising, and third parties

Ads are enabled by default for guests and free accounts, including when you browse without signing in. The Remove Ads button opens the one-time in-app Premium purchase. Premium removes ads and unlocks the premium features described before checkout. Premium is not a subscription and does not renew automatically. Premium accounts never receive in-app ads. The price and included features will be shown before you buy.

Apple or Google process store purchases under their payment, refund, and other applicable terms, subject to your statutory rights. We do not receive full payment-card details. The purchase is associated with the app-store account used at checkout; account-based premium features also require your Funny Memes account. Restore eligible purchases using the same app-store account. Cross-platform transfer is not promised. Deleting a Funny Memes account does not itself request a store refund or restore deleted account content. Purchases remain subject to the description and mandatory rights that applied when bought. Our Privacy Policy explains advertising and purchase data processing.

Third-party sites, stores, and services have their own terms and privacy practices. Links, user posts, or advertisements are not our endorsement. Your dealings with a third party are between you and that party, without limiting our responsibilities under applicable law.

11. Our software and availability

Chortleshell and its licensors retain rights in the Service’s software, design, branding, and materials apart from user content. We give you limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable permission to use the Service and install our apps on devices you own or control, under these Terms and applicable store rules. Open-source components retain their own licenses. Nothing here limits uses or reverse engineering that the law expressly permits.

We may update, maintain, change, or discontinue features, impose reasonable technical limits, or temporarily suspend availability. We will provide notice and any remedy required by law for material changes to a paid feature. We do not guarantee uninterrupted access, compatibility with every device, or preservation of content. The Service is not a backup or emergency-response service.

12. Leaving the Service and account termination

You can stop using the Service at any time and delete your account in the app or on our Delete account page. Uninstalling an app does not delete your account. The Privacy Policy explains what deletion removes and which restricted records may remain.

We may suspend or terminate access for a serious or repeated violation, unlawful use, a security threat, or another reason described in these Terms. Where reasonably possible and legally appropriate, we will explain the restriction and provide a way to seek review. Immediate action may be necessary for safety, legal compliance, or abuse prevention. Do not evade an active restriction.

Provisions that by their nature continue after termination remain effective, including accrued payment obligations, limited rights needed for retained records, intellectual-property protections, and dispute and liability provisions.

13. Disclaimers and limits of liability

To the extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” We disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement. User content may be inaccurate, offensive, or unsuitable for you; moderation does not establish accuracy, legality, or endorsement. Nothing here excludes a warranty or duty that cannot lawfully be excluded.

To the extent permitted by law, Chortleshell and its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or lost profits, arising from the Service. Our total liability for claims arising from the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of US $100 or the amount you paid for the Service, including through an app store, in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These exclusions and limits do not apply to fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any liability or consumer remedy that applicable law does not allow us to exclude or limit. If local law provides greater protection, that protection applies.

14. Governing law and resolving concerns

Please contact us so we can try to resolve a concern. Doing so does not prevent you from filing a claim, seeking urgent relief, or contacting a regulator, and does not suspend a legal filing deadline.

These Terms are governed by Texas law and applicable United States federal law, without conflict-of-law rules that would select another jurisdiction’s law. Mandatory protections and any right to bring proceedings in your home jurisdiction remain available when required by law. These Terms do not impose mandatory arbitration or waive the right to participate in a class action.

15. Changes, other terms, and contact

We may revise these Terms and will identify the effective date on this page. For material changes, we will provide reasonable notice through the Service or another appropriate channel before they take effect, except where an immediate change is needed for legal or safety reasons. Where required, we will ask for renewed agreement. Changes will not retroactively remove rights in an existing dispute. If you do not agree to revised Terms, stop using the Service and, if desired, delete your account.

If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain effective to the extent permitted by law. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver. You may not transfer this agreement without our consent; we may transfer it with the Service during a reorganization or business transfer, subject to law and without reducing your mandatory rights. These Terms and incorporated Community Guidelines govern your use unless we agree otherwise in writing. If they conflict, these Terms control.

For questions or notices to Chortleshell LLC, use our Contact Us page and identify the topic at the beginning of your message. Privacy requests, copyright complaints, and intimate-image removal requests need no account. This route does not replace formal service of legal process required by law.