I think it's great they are making a policy change, and making it retroactive even. My opinion is facing the community and the perceived entitlement people have at getting something for reporting a bug. I applaud those that have policies in place, but the community is shining a bad light on itself with the outrage.
Every act an employee takes and every word they speak while on the job is directly attributable to their employer. No exceptions, no excuses, ever. It doesn't matter if it was against policy, and it doesn't matter how many employees there are. The company must take responsibility. It reflects extremely poorly on the corporate culture of Yahoo and Tumblr that you don't recognize that.
You fail to understand two things. The first is that you have no such "right". You are speaking as a representative of your employer when others perceive you to be. What you or your employer think is irrelevant.
The second is that this isn't about you. Whether you must take responsibility internally is up to your employer. But whether your employer must take responsibility in public is not. It has nothing to do with your "rights". You don't have a say in the matter.
Could you please explain your logic there?
That's how I see things from the outside, I don't have any inside information and it could very well turn out they have most of their staff working on software testing and security.