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May 18, 2007
Flickr's new censorship system
As most people in the blogosphere know, Flickr is a very (very) popular photo sharing site. It contains over half a BILLION images taken by people from every corner of the earth, and has become a meeting place for professional photographers, photo enthusiasts, and people who just want to share photos of their cats and kids.
Recently, Flickr decided to invoke a new filtering system, which rates photos according to their level of safety: basically rating your images G, PG-13, or XXX. Then you choose what sort of photos you want to look at (are you there for looking at kitty cats or genitalia?) and Flickr will filter them out for you.
Unfortunately, Flickr seems to be getting a bit carried away with their censorship powers. One of Flickr's most popular (and fabulous) photographers Rebekka recently had an experience where her photos were stolen and people were selling them to make a (rather large) profit. She posted her dismay on her Flickr page, and it 100,000 views later it was deleted without warning. You can hear her personal account of this story here. This was infuriating, to say the least, though they did at least admit their wrongs.
But now, Flickr, you have upset Malingering. And Malingering isn't as nice as Rebekka, and she doesn't take photos like Rebekka, and she's much more bitter when she gets screwed over. So Malingering gets home from work yesterday to find that her photos have been deemed unsafe. Including ones like this:
Yes, go ahead. Try to look at it on Flickr. It will tell you this image is unsafe and not for public view.
So Malingering emailed Flickr. Four times. Asking nicely and politely for review of her account as she does not feel that her images fit into the category of unsafe/restricted, which is described as:
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.
Well, yes, I am a loose cannon, but I certainly moderate my content. I even block the people who leave comments along the lines of "wow, I'd really like to put my __adj.__, __adj.__ _noun_ into her __adj.__ __noun__" because it offends people and kitty cats and such and doesn't contribute all that much to the discussion.
Another photo not visible to the public. Maybe PETA works for Flickr and they're trying to save the bunnies. Or maybe we cannot put up photos of shoes because they could be smelly and offensive to our mums.
So I asked Flickr (repeatedly) what they found so offensive. I asked for examples or guidelines. This is what they said:
Thanks for contacting Flickr Customer Care.Oh, in case you were wondering, this is the criteria for "restricted."
Your account has been classified as "restricted" by the
Flickr team given the sexualized nature of the content in
your photostream.
Oh, right. Now I get it. Los Angeles should not be seen by kids. The Grove should not be seen by kids, and for the love of God, the American Girl Doll should not be seen by kids.
Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn't show to your mum, and definitely shouldn't be seen by kids.
I protested, again. This time my photostream itself was determined to be "safe," but several hundred photos have the following message on them and are not visible to the public, nor do they appear in searches.
This image was moderated as RESTRICTED, PHOTO by Flickr Staff.
This means that without a Flickr account you cannot see the photos, and even if you have a Flickr account, the thumbnail is all snowy until you decide that you will break the "safe" barrier and click into "unsafe" territory to see what is behind the black pixels. It could be a photo of my cat. Or it could be hardcore back door porn. At the top of the screen it says "if you've changed your mind about wanting to see this content, you can ESCAPE." Then there is a button that says "take me to the kittens" and you click and you get a bunch of photos of cats. Unfortunately, this banner is above all of my photos, even then ones of, well, my cats. Oh the irony.
Here are a few more examples of my photos which Flickr considers to be "restricted content,"
While I wouldn't necessarily condone this behavior and it can be rather offensive, I think it's okay for kids to see, as long as when they see it Mommy and Daddy say, "this, son, is the work of a jackass."
Families shopping together are obscene!
This "woman" was at Disneyland. I hope none of the kids saw her.
This car here was driving down the freeway. If Flickr is going to start censoring political messages randomly observed out in public, well, I don't even want to go there.
Well, after several appeals to Flickr, I'm not sure what to do. Apparently my account has been reviewed and this is what I'm left with, and I feel very certain this has happened many other Flickr users as well (a few have emailed me to sympathize). I am considering asking for a refund of my $48 membership fee. I would also encourage people to explore the rules and regulations and terms of service of various photosharing sites before uploading 11,000 photos only to find them censored a year later. There are a number of sites other than Flickr which may or may not be as censor-happy and it may save you a great deal of time and money should you ever find yourself deemed "unsafe" as my little kitty cats were (see below).
Then again, maybe Flickr just finds images of Los Angeles to unsafe and offensive. With our boots and boobs and oceans and highlighted hair and multi-ethnic cuisines and wild concerts and hoards of actors and crazy pets, maybe we really should be quarantined off from the rest of the world.
Update: the excellent San Francisco photographer Thomas Hawk is also being censored by the Yahoos so maybe it's not just an LA thing.
All photos by Malingering, shield your eyes.
UPDATE
Flickr has apologized.
Hello Malingering,
First off, we're very sorry!
I've gone through and remoderated your photostream as safe
(except for those that you've moderated yourself).
We owe you an explanation. It seems that your photostream
attracts quite a bit of attention from the community, and
when this happens you turn up for review by staff again and
again. I'm afraid when this happens, we start feeling
compelled to "do something". In your case, it was clearly
the wrong thing.
As you rightly point out, the photos have been taken in
public. We've taken steps to prevent your account being
marked restricted for this type of content again.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to
respond to this email, and I'll do my best to address them.
Kind Regards,
Michelle
Well, interesting. People complain about me, so they try to hide me from public view and, what, hope I don't notice? Flickr is apparently going with the guilty until proven innocent philosophy. I don't know how long this will hold up.
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Well, your cats are obscenely cute.... :-)
You've got my support and the support of a lot of other Flickr users, Mal. It looks like some asshole specifically targeted you and your Explore pictures. I didn't join Flickr for it to turn into the MySpace of photography, where other photographers do stupid shit to other people's pictures just out of spite. That's immature.
I'm considering asking for a refund of my account that I just re-upped for the year. And I would suggest to anyone that's thinking of paying for a Pro Account on Flickr to hold off for now, until Flickr fixes their filtering system so that this crap doesn't happen.
Unless, of course, you want the same thing to happen to you and your pictures of your kids or your pets somewhere down the line.
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Dammit, I went to that guy's blog and flickr hoping for some porn, and I couldn't find a single salacious thing--not even a quick link to kitten photos! I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY FOR THIS KIND OF THING!!
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time to return to buzznet
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Shit, I was just about to leave buzznet for flickr.
Fuck that. Nothing makes a lethal dose of emo go down easier than the threat of censorship...
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great post! i've always liked the idea that you can share anything on flickr, but as a photographer i don't put photos up that i don't want people stealing (even though they aren't supposed to). as for censoring people, i hope flickr can get it together. i want to see more pics of uggs and butt cracks.
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still disturbed by the "feel compelled to 'do something'" rationalization in Flickr's quasi-apology. This country is no longer run in any part by Jack Valenti, nor should the so-called "moral majority" be given any credibility in their efforts to shield good people from reality.
Malingering, Michelle says they "owe you an explanation." I hope you print it here when and if you get it.
Thomas Hawk did Flickr -- and its community -- a huge favor by cross-posting photos there. After all, he's the CEO of Zoomr. For a site that relies on user-generated content, it would be nice to see a little more respect for the user/creator at least look before you "do something."
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although i want to hate them for their reasoning, i have seen it a bunch of times
- person gets power
- person gets complaints about someone
- person thinks that the only thing to do with power is to censor
- person forgets that you can always tell the complainer(s) to shut the fuck up
glad youre back and uncensored on Yahoor
hopefully LAist and Digg helped get this resolved as quick as it did
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Gail Orenstein, Google her, had her entire site deleted by Flickr without warning. 1,000,000 views and 10,000 of discourse on politics.
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I think what they are trying to say is that they didn't get complaints, rather that they have an automated way to tag pornography, but don't have to actually look at the pornography.
The Algorithm, is that an image gets higher than normal traffic, from a certain type of viewer. Then it must be pornography, therefor they mark it restricted.
But they found in your case that it doesn't work, your images have wide appeal into the marketplace even though it isn't pornography, congratulations, they are marking your account as being that rare of an account, were your popular kitties can be watched without harm.
No biggie, now that they have fixed it.
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Flickr only apologises / fixes things when they get loud enough complaints back at them. What a way to treat (usually) paying customers.
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A lot of this censorship comes not from the supposed power-hungry photo editors as postulated above, but rather from all of us. Our greedy society has become litigious to the point of insanity. People will sue for anything they can for the cash. When you photograph people in public, that puts you on a fine line between art and invasion of privacy.
While I feel Flickr may have painted the censorship with too wide a brush, they were right to look out for themselves and the public in whole. You included faces and license plates in your photos. If you watch TV you'll see all kinds of things fuzzed out for legal reasons. If you watch the news, you'll find several stories of people being questioned or arrested for taking pictures of public places (one event happening at the Santa Monica Pier) due to the knee-jerk reaction still with us from September 11th. Technically that is censorship, but not in the way you have presented your case.
You're playing in Flickr's yard. You've gotta follow their rules. Unless of course you want to open a site of your own that no one will notice, That's your fine line to ponder.
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This is why I use my own website for hosting photos and sharing photos. You can moderate it yourself, and there's no higher management than you to censor your images. Unless, of course, you want to restrict your own access.
Livin' the independent life ;).
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Why don't you rather focus on all the good things flickr does? They outweigh the things they get wrong by a zillion to 1.
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Wow, glad you pointed this out. Especially since they don't own the website you're posting pictures on. How dare they take photos off their website that they allow everyone to use free of charge!
Oh wait, they do own the website, and they have every right in the world to do whatever they want with whatever is posted on it.
If I were you I would expect more than an apology, especially since you pay them so much money to use their site. Demand a refund.
Moron.
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Wow, glad you pointed this out. Especially since they don't own the website you're posting pictures on. How dare they take photos off their website that they allow everyone to use free of charge!
Oh wait, they do own the website, and they have every right in the world to do whatever they want with whatever is posted on it.
If I were you I would expect more than an apology, especially since you pay them so much money to use their site. Demand a refund.
Moron.
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And I thought Canadians were more tolerant of free speech than the American fear mongrels. Wha happened, flickr?
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Their explanation is pretty unclear as to what exactly "attention from the community" means. It does not necessarily mean people are complaining or marking the photos offensive. From reading the Flickr response, it sounds like they could just have an automatic valve that cuts a user off if their photos become suddenly popular. If there are recurrent spikes of popularity maybe the staff is just lazy and does not bother looking on the assumption that that is the same pattern of activity as porn so it too must be porn.
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To make the whole censorship issue even stupider, Flickr marked one of my private pictures of my 20 month old playing with toilet paper as "restricted." First off, the kid is sitting on the floor, fully clothed and is trying to put toilet paper back on a roll. Second, it was private! No one could see it (you can now) and two other pictures I had taken the same day of a sunset that were also marked private were also marked as "restricted."
Be forewarned - Sunsets and toddlers are now the new Flickr moral menace. What bullshit.
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Why is everyone so surprised? Yahoo! bought Flickr some time ago. You're all still acting like Flickr is some little mom-and-pop site, when the real news is that Yahoo! has decided to drop their existing photo service in favor of Flickr.
You can continue to imagine that your photos are being managed by an innovative Web 2.0 site, when in reality you're being managed by the future Yahoo! Photos.
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More and more websites are doing this. If people don't like these restrictions, go find another service that doesn't. Losing customers will have more of an impact.
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More and more websites are doing this. If you don't like these restrictions, start your own service or find another one.
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Uh, yeah, okay, you can censor me when my account is free. But if I'm gonna pay to use flickr, they damn well better leave my work alone. Man, oh man, what is going on with this society. If it offends someone, our first inclination is to censor? That's it, I'm posting a photo of Piss Christ on flickr! (Er, probably not, I don't even like that piss, er, piece, piss or not)
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Don't blame Flickr. It's the crybaby Christain watchgroups that want to shove their ideals on the rest of us.
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Rock On Malingering*
Yeah having Photos deemed Unsafe kinda Sucks or having 1 Photo Deleted like Rebekka did - but these Pale in comparison to the Travesty of Gail Orenstein*
Yeah it's Sad n Pathetic*
Twits + Hypocrites are Flickr!!
Whattabout Gail Orenstein + Flickr Deleting her entire Account & amazing Body of Work of over 3,400 Photographs + over 1 Million Views + over 20,000 Comments from all her Flickr Fans!! A bloody outrage!!
Gail's Work incorporated behind the scenes Photos of Strippers in their Work environment so yes that meant shots of bOObies but nothing Pornographic* She would post the Top World Headlines of the Day concerning things that All People should Care about like Bush's Illegal War in Iraq + the Pope banning Condoms for African Women etc. Like Rebekka said - this sparked lively Political + Social Discussion - some of the Smartest insights to be found anywhere on Flickr & poof it's all gone!!
A bloody outrage!!
Even Professional Recreationalist who tried to setup a Flickr Customer Union had the Group Deleted + all the comments!!
ridiculous*
It goes right to the Top of Flickr with Stewart ButterMyAsshole + his SheWolf of the SS sidekick Heather Chump! Their Arrogance knows No Bounds!!
I was actually gleeful with scheudenfreude to hear Miss Chump got the Boot from JPG Mag!! Pompous Twit!! ;))
atanyrate i've been NIPSA + none of my Photos show up Publicly on Flickr for over a year - yeah i've posted about 12 Nudes (fer a Joke) but I also Speak my Mind - last I heard Freedom of Speech was still a good thing in America!!
The ONLY reason any of us still stay at Flickr is cuz all our Friendz our there & frankly it is still an awesome Web2.0 website*
Otherwise people would be over to Zoomr in a heartbeat*
Cheers Hawk + Malingering + Everybody fer having the Courage to SPEAK UP!! Billy Warhol ;))
SILENCE IS NOT AN OPTION*
Peace*
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What Flickr has done is simply a matter of protecting itself from the same sort of liability suffered by CBS when forced to come up with a considerable amount of money to settle a case brought by someone who felt ridiculed in a David Letterman comedy bit a few years back.
The regularly appearing comedy bit which featured silly multiple choice questions juxtaposed alongside people filmed randomly and unknowingly
was quite funny but occasionally rude and insulting
many of which venturing an area where it put CBS' vulnerable to liability.
The case involved a spectator,an older woman with
a dowdy matronly look, attending the annual
tennis tournament held in Queens, NY as the merciless butt of Letterman's inccesant ridicule
at her expense.the camera focusing on an woman voraciously chomping on a peach in as unflattering manner imaginable, repeatedly shown again and again throughout the sketch. The story of the woman's lawsuit and CBS out of court settlement making news
as the time.
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Malingering
Good for your ....i mean it has become a nightmare...i got so scared after they made me UNSAFE...that i actually deleted many photos and quit many groups i used to belong to.....as i did not want to get my account deleted!
I think i will take solace in the fact that there are people like you who wont put up with this Orwellian bullshit........keep up the good fight!
Best Regards
Tim
www.people.com/tantrictim
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I wouldn't dare use a yahoo company for anything I would be afraid to lose. Three years ago they deemed my yahoo hosted web page inappropriate and locked me out of my whole account, but continued to bill me for hosting. I lost everything, my site, my yahoo page, my wallet, my bill pay. I will never ever trust them again. And while I do have a flicker account, I don't keep any photos there.
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Well two of the photos have license plates visible in them, which seems like fair ground for restriction.
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[I am CEO of Zooomr]
Malingering,
Thanks for telling your story as well. Even though higher profile cases like yours and Rebekka's, Kris Krug's (Flickr took down a cease and desist letter he got from a photographer who was ripping him off), mine etc. get attention, just imagine how many people this happens to all the time at Flickr who have no recourse.
The problem is that Flickr just does not take their responsibility of censoring seriously. They censor willy nilly and your case is but another example. When it's a high enough profile case they fix and issue but another hollow apology as they have done in your case.
Flickr says that in the future that they will err on the side of "caution" with regards to censorship but refuses to outline what steps they will specifically take to ensure that they follow through with their promises. Heather Champ, Flickr's Community manager says that because you agree to Flickr's terms of service that when they delete your stuff that it "is not and cannot be viewed as censorship."
Heck, they refuse to even admit that they censored me despite sending me a threatening email threating to shut down my account.
What makes it worse is that rather than have a serious debate about how to make Flickr a better and less censored place, Flickr Chief Stewart Butterfield would rather write PR spin comments on my blog "challenging" me to write that child porn would be ok into Zooomr's TOS.
You know I have a blog on blogger (owned by Google). I'm sure somewhere in their TOS I've agreed to give them some power over my blog. But you know what? If blogger ever came and deleted a blog post I wrote I'd be just as pissed. Blogger is every bit a platform for ideas as Flickr is.
Thanks for blogging your story and raising more awareness on this important topic.
Power to the people.
Thomas Hawk
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I think the important thing was that my photos were restricted NOT BECAUSE OF THE CONTENT, but because people were flagging them because they don't like ME. If it were the content, and I were offered an explanation then fine, but this was a reaction to people's petty attempts at revenge, and that's what concerns me.
I do have my own site and my own domain name, but I like the idea of the Flickr community and I've learned a great deal about photography as well as perspective from being a part of it. I have no problem sticking to my own blog, but I would miss the community aspect of things and that's why I'm not taking my photos and running away.
After I brought this up, several people found their photos were restricted, photos of trees and children and flowers. There's clearly something wrong with the system and it needs to be evaluated.
If Flickr decided that the streetphoto type images I post are inappropriate, then I would live with that. But they did this because of people who were trying to get to me. And that's the difference.
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Flckr now owned by YAHOO...
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Malingerlin
It is great of you to stand up for your rights!! & get the deserved response.
My Experience on flickr is right from the beginning in May 2005. My pro account was suspended because I have too many contacts.
I was accued for using scripts to make flickr members to knee down & become my contacts!!
The management team & the egangsters in the forum have using abusive XXXX language on the flickr Central forum & my sites to harrass, bully, oppressive....etc to both me & my daughter.
There is one quote, we voted you out you XXXX off, there is no human right for you here!!
I do notice that with the messengers & emails, all ganged up to against me & my daughter. Subsequently, those abusive & racist & ...were deleted by the team.
I have wrote to Terry Semel sent by Fedex, & called his office but no answer.
I am not even know what is NIPSA till later this year. But I do get feed back from contacts that my contacts are not able to views mysite or people search for "CharlieBrown8989"
Few months back, when one of my photo which is a macro shot, was deleted after nearly 250 comments, I then send a email to flickr team. the reply later they told me a unbelieable reply that, their record shown , I delete it myself.
I have never post any artsy nude till Mar 4th 2007 to conducts the flickr view rates & behaviourals Science.
Been brought up in a close society I know what is the do & don't in my mind.Especially on porn & frontal; genital parts. However, I was accued for posting frontal nudity & expose genital parts of a human body, which in the whole truth, I never be!!
Then my site is moderated & totally black out from public. After along appeal then now is OK. But the people search for "CharlieBrown8989" on flickr remains un founded.
On the experience of Rebekka, she is very fortunate to get covered by many blogs & internet medias, the most remarkerable is she get coverage
by BBC news.
Gail Orenstein case is a classic significant on the internet history among all, her account is totally deleted with over 1 millions views & over 15X testimonials. However, her case is not covered by the major news medias.
As a person having many years of experiences with fortune 100 corporations. I have ever seen the unbelievable events like these. But I did predicted that the internet would be experiencing the same as the happening in real life back in the early 90's.
Yahoo bought over flickr, infact there is no change on flickr management, as we all love flickr & the community that is why we are here, by voicing out is with the hope of the management should think possitively to improve rather then the negative feeling & thus the follow-up detrimental actions.
It is not only Yahoo senior management should reviews those happening, it is major search engines like MSN, Google & Alta-Vista alike to learn from the community as the masses are with the ecommunity.
It is the people who make an intiatives or business successful. Not the other way!!
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I Blogged this on
corporate-leadership-culture.blogspot.com
ebusiness-ecommerce.blogspot.com
Thanks....
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Content filtering systems are very, very unreliable. There's no such thing as a catch-all, and there's no such thing as a catch-only. I think the fairest way would be to cache questionable content and put it on review, not removing anything until it's reviewed. Of course some people prefer the not adding anything until it's reviewed (when your reputation as a company depends on your content, for instance). I guess this system is kind of half-way between. Obviously, however, no one has thrown has thrown up many well-formed heuristic checks, just trying to review you more often.
Wow, I'm definitely a computer scientist.
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Your photos are stupid and offensive. They should ban you for good.
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Amazing to see what amounts to neing "appropriate". Especially if what's "approrpiate" and "art" to one person is "inappropriate" amd "offensive" to another. If we then let things like the deep political divide in the US ("You're Republican - I hate you" - "You're Democrat - I hate you even more") creep into this then there's no end to censorship.
What bothers me most here is that Flickr is a commercial service - and yet they seem to hold the censor's own personal values and political opinions higher than customer satisfaction. This is exactly the "We Know What's Best For You" attitude that turn governments into totalitarian regimes. If we allow this to happen in commercial enterprises - or worse, accept it as being "normal" - then it's only a small step to accept this as an acceptable way of life in society as well. Scary.
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The thing that people seem to be forgetting here is that Flickr is not a democracy - and that they aren't bound by some sort of moral code. There is no 'due process' in Flickr, it's a service that you use, free of charge.
That said, if they offend too many people - they will lose their audience, and open up the playing field for a better service to come along and steal their market - but that's beside the point. There's no implicit "contract" between you and Flickr, and you have no "rights" when things don't go your way.
I will admit, your post was funny - and there seems to be no reason for what happened to you...
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Your photos are stupid and offensive. They should ban you for good.
Great argument. We should ban all stupid and offensive people from expressing themselves. In fact, we should reconsider if they're even worthy of participating in society. Maybe we should put them into camps or something. In fact we should do that we everyone we disagree with. What a fabulous idea, I bet that's never been done before!</