DarrenBarefoot.com

Darren, I have seen some *nasty* and extremely explicit stuff on the public areas of flickr in the last few months. I mean not just ordinary porno or nudity. I don’t care if people want to look at it, but maybe it’s just me, I think that people should keep that stuff where only the people who appreciate it can see it. And really, that is all that it says. It’s easy to set up private groups and I am quite certain that almost anyone can find groups to suit their tastes without looking too hard for them. But if I am sitting here looking at birthday party photos with my kids, the last thing I want to see show up in the “everyone else” pictures is some hardcore animal porno or something equally shocking. Naked people don’t bother me, but I don’t really wish to have to explain what “that man has in his ass” to my five year old.

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Somehow I became an administrator for the Narcissists group on Flickr (I didn’t create the group, I swear), where the posting guidelines state that the photos are to be self-portraits of one’s face. Specifically,

This is narcissism, NOT exhibitionism. Please keep the photos safe for work, as anything that crosses the line of decency will be removed. After all, if Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in a pool, he was probably looking at something he couldn’t normally see by glancing downward.

But still, I see quite a few “here’s a close-up of my penis” pictures posted to the group pool. I feel like a prude when I delete them from the group, but seriously, eww. If, however, a person posts a nude shot, but it’s tastefully done (I realize this is just my opinion), I’ll usually let it slide.

I guess we’ll see in the next while what Flickr does with this new policy. I, like you, would like to see the artsy nudes stay up (for educational purposes, of course), and though I won’t miss the “isn’t my genitalia massive?” crotch shots, I agree that maybe there should be an adult section specifically for this sort of thing. I’d pretend to be 17 so I don’t accidentally see anything that burns its image onto my retinas.

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Absolutely it is Flickr’s prerogative. Why should they be expected to pass judgement on what is art or porn? What expertise do they have to do so? What if they err in their judgement and get nailed for distributing pornography?…

BTW: it is spelt prerogative, not perogative

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Censorship is stupid.

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‘nee - Flickr is a private website, so they have every right to censor. There are plenty of other places on the net where people can upload any kind of photo they want.

Censorship only bugs me when it’s done by the government, and then it REALLY pisses me off.

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Chris: That doesn’t make it any less stupid.

Besides, what if they were the only place? Then would it be wrong? Private companies are within their rights to censor, but what it means in practice, a lot of the time, is that they make the decision for clients who have no other place to go. Just look at the huge monopolies in all other sectors to see this sort of thing in practice: Walmart’s censorship has led many great artists to not be available at all in small towns, for instance. Granted it’s far-fetched to consider the Internet ever succumbing to such a state, but that’s not the point: it’s still stupid.

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In a way I’m not surprised flickr took this route rather than implementing a “adults only” area which has been talked about for quite awhile now.

On another note I see it is now verboten to, “Vent your frustrations, rant or bore the brains out of other members” on flickr (talk about subjective!)

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We’re not trying to shaft anyone. These guidelines are intended as just that: guidelines. General tips for living in a “large, diverse, active user base”.

If you read the point you’re talking about it says this:

[Don't] “Upload photos that include frontal nudity, genitalia or anything else that your bathing suit should cover in public areas of Flickr.”

I’m just not sure what’s unreasonable about saying that Flickr would rather not be full of full-frontal nudity and explicit images in public areas of the site.

(This is partly because we don’t have any “safe search” functionality available, though this is something we’re working on.)

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George: Thanks for stopping by. The addition of the guideline suggests a change in existing policy. If there won’t be a change, then there’s no problem. If there will be a change, then I think that’s unfair to existing users who may have been uploading nude photography over the past two-plus years.

I wouldn’t have complained about this addition if it had been accompanied by a note like yours, saying that Flickr is working on ’safe search’.

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Stewart: Thanks for the feedback, and I appreciate that you’re evolving your ways of dealing with these issues. Does this information, or a discussion related to it, appear somewhere on Flickr’s site?

I see no harm in implementing a self-selecting ‘adults only’ check box. That, combined with the existing ‘May offend’ link, enables both photo owners and browsers to determine what they want to show and see. If there’s ‘adult material’ (that is, photos that breach the aforementioned policy) that’s not flagged as such, then you could take whatever steps you deem appropriate.

Of course, I have little understanding of how easy or difficult such an addition would be. It’s pretty easy for me to muse on such feature requests, but you guys are actually faced with implementing them.

By the way, I hope you appreciate my Tag Police efforts (scroll down to the bottom of that entry).

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Euh, well,

Human genitals? :-o
I thought everyone has them, or did I miss something somewhere?

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