I started using the photo sharing service Flickr last November as the request of my sweetheart; I started really maximizing my use of the site as I enjoyed its social networking features, and at the urging of my host Laughing Squid to integrate my photoblogging and regular blogging.
In my Flickr photostream I have pictures of my book covers, my cat, my recent trips to Vienna and Mexico, the only nice Christmas I’ve ever had in my life, and mostly my close friends — you’ll find casual photos of Eddie Codel, Jonno, Irina Slutsky, Xeni Jardin, Sean Bonner, Scott Beale, Lori Dorn, Jonathan Moore, Carol Queen, Jason Schultz, Eon McKai, Schlomo Rabinowitz, Mark Pauline, Phillip Torrone and many more. You’ll also find artsy photos of my tattoos, machine art, pin-up photos of me in panties with cupcakes (by me and professional art photographers) and even more photos of my cat. You will not find frontal nudity of me (and certainly no “full” frontal), and only if you are signed in (and deemed a ‘friend’ and ‘family’) will you see a human nipple from the front — and I have carefully removed them from public searches as well. Anything racy I put in my Fotki photo account, where I can be sure to have an age-check page for visitors.
At least, that was yesterday. Today, unless you’re a member of the site, my account has been erased. Except, confusingly, right now you can go to my page and see *only* the nipple-tastic photos I removed form public searches. And if you’re a member but unaware of the changes Flickr has quietly made (and unevenly enforced) to their users’ search levels, my photos look like a fuzzy TV screen. 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 fuzz. (Where is that in your account profile? Good question.) 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”. This is above all my photos, and you can imagine how fun this is to deal with if you just want to look at one of my photos of SRL machines or Maker Faire.
If you’re been aware of the problems Flickr’s been having lately with their new filtering system, then you know that they’ve told no one but have been making some pretty egregious errors in administering the policy. Over at LAist, Malingering (who just had the same thing happen and *isn’t* a sex writer) writes,
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.
Link.
Photographer Thomas Hawk has had the same problem.
The difference in my case is that unlike the LAist blogger, while the majority of my photographs are of people and places and things, I do — and will — have the occasional photo that will need to be restricted from the Flickr search pool, or made visible only to people I’ve personally approved.
Did any Flickr members get emails explaining this new policy? I didn’t. This morning I got this, when they took my account out:
Hello violet.blue,
We wanted to let you know that your account status has been
changed to “moderate”. As per our Community Guidelines,
frontal nudity is inappropriate for “safe” areas of Flickr:
http://flickr.com/guidelines.gneThere’s more information about safety levels and filters in
our FAQs:
http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/If you would like to have your account reviewed, we will be
happy to do so after 30 days. Between now and then, please
take the opportunity to self-moderate what you upload in
such a way that you’re in compliance with the Yahoo! Terms
of Service and our Community Guidelines.Regards,
-Terrence
So, my account is down for at least 30 days — a month that I can’t use it (and I use it daily for everything from blogging to Chronicle photos to…). But, then I sign out to see what it looks like and I get my most recent (self-selected) search-restricted photos ONLY, screencap:
I want to play by Flickr’s rules — I’ve been doing so to the best of my knowledge all along. But Flickr isn’t telling me how I broke their rules, just that I broke them. They won’t even tell me what the rules *are*. I don’t know which photos I need to amend to get back on their good side — they’re not telling me. So, I visit the Community Guidelines link Terrence sent me to see exactly what those guidelines are, to understand how I broke them and what photos I might have overlooked somehow (or what has changed). I find out, well, nothing except vague wording about being responsible to who might see my photos, and that nudity is forbidden in my “buddy icon”:
Next, I want to see how I violated, or screwed up, use of their safety filters. And I get more vague language about self-policing the filters:
But then I get my answer — in “how do I know I’m doing the right thing?” the answer is basically, “never”:
And then, when I sign out again and search for my own name, I get the same front page result I’ve been getting for a year, of an image I’ve been trying to have removed for — over a year. It’s the woman who’s been using my name to make porn, with her tits out:
Ugh.
Thanks, Flickr. Tonight I’m downloading all 1800+ of my images (only 152,307 views because I don’t blog my stream very often) and moving them to Fotki, where I know they’ll be visible. I really want to be able to share my silly cat photos with friends. And I’m sick and tired of these social networking sites screwing everything up for individuals within communities with their latest thoughtless, user-inconsiderate policies. Consider me no longer a fan, Flickr.
Update, blogger response: Worldmegan wrote an email to Flickr on my behalf (thank you!) and made this post which says, “I’m a huge proponent of Flickr. I adore Flickr. Flickr has always been exactly what I wanted in a photo sharing site and even when they’ve fallen short, they have continued to develop and polish and improve in ways that fill my heart with glee. So when someone has something less than brilliant to say about them, I notice. And in this case, having long been a reader of Violet’s blog and other writings, knowing that her material is, as I say later, reliable and fact-driven as a rule, I have really noticed. And what I have found has greatly alarmed me.” Link.
And Samantha Wolov emails, “Funny you mention Flickr–I just found out Aries1952 stole six of
my photos, changed the titles, claimed they were his, and posted them
as his beautiful art. He apparently had quite a following. Since I
wasn’t a “friend”, I wasn’t allowed to see these pages, but a friend
sent me screen shots. Bastard even had the nerve to make up a date
when he took them all! I just don’t understand the appeal of Flickr.
It seems easy to get into trouble, and now there are censorship issues.
What am I missing?”
Update: I received an apology and explanation email from Stewart Butterfield; and another thoughtful follow-up email from Stewart about Flickr’s guidelines that is well worth reading.
