p2pnet - rss feed: Censorship on Flickr
p2pnet.net news:- Be warned, all ‘loose cannons’ on Flickr. You’re being watched!
In March, “We’ve placed your account under the category ‘public’/'restricted’,” Terence told Malingering “with kind regards”. He went on:
You’re welcome and encouraged to moderate your content on a photo by photo level, while keeping our Community Guidelines and FAQ for content filters in mind.
Your account has been classified as “restricted” by the Flickr team given the sexualized nature of the content in your photostream.
“I just had a flickr friend have her account declared unsafe. She takes street photos, no nudes, nothing offensive, just street photos of people, baseball shots, and cats. So we’re all confused here.”
That’s part of the first post on a Flickr forum zeroing in on what’s apparently company policy of censoring certain kinds of images.
Flickr is owned by Yahoo, already, “deeply on the hook for alleged human rights violations under which its Hong Kong arm is said to have released material to Chinese police authorities which directly resulted in local Yahoo subscribers being jailed”.
“If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service,” it says.
“First of, NO I cannot ‘moderate my content on a photo by photo level,’ said Malingering angrily, and the caption to the pic above reads:
You know what Flickr? If Zumi could give you the middle finger, she would right now.
The post continues:
Apparently when an entire account is marked restricted, you are not allowed the option to change any of the flags on your photos. The “safe” and “moderate” radio buttons are grayed out so you can’t use them. So that doesn’t really work, does it?
Second of all, every photo I have of a human being is taken IN PUBLIC. So please tell me how this applies:
Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn’t show to your mum, and definitely shouldn’t be seen by kids
Guess what guys. My “mum” sees these people on the street. So do their mums. So do their dads. And so do their kids. Are you telling me the stuff I see every day in the shopping mall should be hidden from my mother? Dear lord.
“My account has been reviewed as unsafe,” says Malingering, wondering, “What does that mean?”
States a section on filtering:
An “unsafe” account is something we think of as a loose cannon. It’s not clear to us that you’re moderating your own content at all, or if you are, you’re not bearing in mind that there are other people using Flickr and that it’s up to you to not be overtly offensive.
Triggers to flagging an entire account as “unsafe” include staff receiving an unusual number of complaints about your photos, or photos in your stream receiving an unusual number of votes, or if there are an unusual number of blocks against your account. All of these factors can be remedied by you: you simply need to moderate your content using the Safety Level & Content Type categories, so people don’t unexpectedly stumble upon content which they may find offensive or otherwise inappropriate.
You should re-read our Community Guidelines to see what’s OK and what’s not on Flickr, and moderate your content accordingly. Once you’ve done done that - and not before - you can request a review.
If your account is also “NIPSA”, you may be one of the people caught up in the transition between the old system of moderation (public, pending, private accounts etc) and the new way (safety level/content type filters). It’s fairly likely that if your account is NIPSA, it’s because your account was NIPSA pre-transition, and that it may require a review by staff. You can request a review if you wish. It’s fairly unlikely that staff would flag an entire account in the new system, given that you have more fine-grained control over the images in your account.
NIPSA, stands for Not In Public Site Areas, Flickr explains. “This is a flag that staff used before we released filters to stop photos that were going against the Community Guidelines from showing up in searches on the site.”
Meanwhile, “If it turns out that you judge ‘the right thing’ poorly, the community will probably speak out’,” says Flickr sternly, adding, “If we receive complaints about your content, we will take action, in line with the Community Guidelines.
Old stuff, and probably irrelevant, by now, given that it dates back to March?
“I’m CEO of Zooomr,” says a post which went up on Flickr Wednesday. Slugged Flickr = Censorship, it goes on:
Well it is with great disappointment that I found myself yet again a victim of censorship on Flickr. Earlier today while engaging in a debate about Flickr’s recent censorship in Germany I had over a dozen of my comments permanently deleted out of a debate by Flickr staff.
You can see the references to my involvement in the debate here and here among other places.
It’s ironic that of all places that Flickr would choose to censor me would be in a thread protesting their censorship. And without any warning even or explanation.
This is not the first time I’ve been censored by Flickr.
The points that I was making in my debate about censorship on Flickr had a lot to do with what I see as problems at Yahoo. The fact that their CEO is the highest paid CEO in the United States, the fact that Yahoo 2 days ago rejected an important shareholder proposal denouncing censorship. And yes this most recent issue of censorship where people in Germany can only access Flickr in “safe mode.”
(Cheers, Alter_Fritz)
Also See:
deeply on the hook - Yahoo nixes online reforms, June 13, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 17th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
http://idisk.mac.com/barrybdoyle/Public/Flickr/zumifingerSM.jpg
from here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/malingering/502728143/comment72157600227847664/