Is Flickr "safe"?
Jun. 26th, 2007 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusRight now there's an annoying notice blocking the top of my Flickr account. It's only using 20% of allowable bandwidth, but my account has hit the magic -- and maximum -- number of 200 photos.
"You've run into one of the limits of a free account," the message says. "Your free account will only display the most recent 200 photos you've uploaded. All of your photos beyond 200 will remain hidden from view until you either delete newer photos, or upgrade to a Pro account. None of your photos have been deleted, and if you upgrade, they'll all come back unharmed."
So I go to upgrade, but they don't allow you to do it by Paypal, and I don't have a credit card. Yes, in an age filthy, slushy and sloshy with credit I don't have a card. In fact, I'm apparently such a bad credit risk that I got turned down for credit cards by two banks this year. Which is odd, because I'm pretty responsible -- I currently don't have any personal debt at all, whereas the average British adult currently owes £28,189, including mortgage debt. Keeping debt-free keeps me free in lots of other ways.
Anyway, I considered doing some cyber-begging here on Click Opera and asking some kind benefactor to spend $24.95 on a one-year Flickr Pro Gift Account so that I can keep on dazzling you with silly outfits and scenes of arme aber sexy Berlin.
Hmm... Berlin... Berlin... that rings a bell. Oh yes, it's the capital of Germany. And Germany is one of the countries that Flickr is currently censoring by preventing anyone located here from seeing anything even vaguely controversial -- from nude bodies to swastikas. No searches on Flickr in Germany can be run in anything but "safe" mode.
Apparently this lamentable situation is down to pressure from Flickr's parent company Yahoo, but it fits all too neatly into a global picture in which groovy creative internet startups get bigger, get bought by less groovy, less creative global moguls, who in turn knuckle under -- for reasons of realpolitik -- when trigger-happy judges or authoritarian governments grumble about people enjoying just a little too much of that groovy, creative personal freedom that got the whole thing started. Web 2.0 meets World 1.0, and World 1.0 wins.
What happens then is that newer, groovier startups sense a vulnerability in the megaliths, and attack the Achilles heels on their pigeon-toed rivals' feet of clay. Hence the person most vociferously attacking Flickr for censorship at this moment happens to be Thomas Hawk, CEO of rival service Zooomr.
Confession: I like Flickr better than Fotolog, which I somewhat absurdly wrote a book in support of last year, despite finding the service clunky as fuck (it may very well have improved since). I like the implementation of the Flickr slideshow, for instance. I like that I can find The Tate Gallery in a Flickr group, requesting photos of Britain to show on screens in current exhibition How We Are Now. That's democracy in action!
I think Flickr is probably better -- and certainly easier for me to use -- than Fotologue, Picasa and Photozou, the Japanese photo-sharing sites I blogged about in April (just as the Japanese now have more personal blogs than any other country, they've also overtaken us with the number of good photo-hosting sites).
But I have to say there's a lot about Flickr that troubles me, and it isn't just this censorship issue. I was annoyed when Yahoo bought Flickr, and I was forced to log into my account with a Yahoo ID. And I was annoyed to be told that my account had been reviewed and pronounced "safe" by Flickr staff. I was almost insulted -- had I neglected to post enough naked pictures of myself, or ancient Hindu religious symbols?
"Having a "safe" account," Flickr explained, "means that you are good at moderating your own content. Awesome!" Patronizing bastards! "Having a "moderate" flag on your account probably means that you are generally a good self-moderator, but occasionally things pop up in your photostream that may be in the wrong categories..."
As a relativist I baulk at the very idea of there being "wrong categories". I don't even use fucking categories, you fucking goons! I don't want to be a safe moderator, a moderate moderator, or whatever stupid phrases you come up with. And I don't rate the "safety levels" of my pictures because, honestly, tell me the last time a photo killed someone or invaded Iraq? Photos are all safe. Crossing the road is not. And clamping down on deviants, decadents and degenerates -- or collaborating with the judges and governments who do this -- is definitely not safe. See history.
"An "unsafe" account," Flickr continues, in the same infuriating school-marmish tone, "is something we think of as a loose cannon." Wikipedia defines that as "an irresponsible and reckless individual whose behaviour (either intended or unintended) endangers the group he or she belongs to". The implication is clear: you will attract attention from the authorities and we will all suffer. We have forestalled this by encouraging you to self-censor, and also by restricting your access to the content of fellow users in territories where we think the authorities might be strict. By, in other words, collaborating, in the spirit of "most puritan common denominator".
Flickr doesn't point to the vertical relationship with those authorities, though. It points to the horizontal relationship with other Flickr users, as if self-censorship were all a question of helping your friends by not rocking the boat. "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."
I'm sorry, I don't see Flickr as a "community". It's just a big hard disk where I store images, just like my Photobucket account (which, to its credit, has never asked me to flag my images -- although they did once censor a Ryan McGinley image, this one).
But even if Flickr were a community, why would its standards get set by the least tolerant corporations, judges and governments (hello, Singapore!) out there? What kind of community lets corporate caution, puritanism, fear of litigation and misinformation set its values? The wild American misconception that nudity, for instance, might somehow be offensive to Germans? We sit naked in public parks here, dudes!
So the question for today has to be, in the light of the way Flickr rates us and asks us to rate ourselves, and how it passes off realpolitik as "community values", and dubious collaboration with the world's worst judges and governments as "safe", and its users as "loose cannons", and photographs themselves -- its stock in trade -- as potentially, somehow, "unsafe", should we give this company a safe rating? And should we give Flickr our money?
"You've run into one of the limits of a free account," the message says. "Your free account will only display the most recent 200 photos you've uploaded. All of your photos beyond 200 will remain hidden from view until you either delete newer photos, or upgrade to a Pro account. None of your photos have been deleted, and if you upgrade, they'll all come back unharmed."
So I go to upgrade, but they don't allow you to do it by Paypal, and I don't have a credit card. Yes, in an age filthy, slushy and sloshy with credit I don't have a card. In fact, I'm apparently such a bad credit risk that I got turned down for credit cards by two banks this year. Which is odd, because I'm pretty responsible -- I currently don't have any personal debt at all, whereas the average British adult currently owes £28,189, including mortgage debt. Keeping debt-free keeps me free in lots of other ways.
Anyway, I considered doing some cyber-begging here on Click Opera and asking some kind benefactor to spend $24.95 on a one-year Flickr Pro Gift Account so that I can keep on dazzling you with silly outfits and scenes of arme aber sexy Berlin.
Hmm... Berlin... Berlin... that rings a bell. Oh yes, it's the capital of Germany. And Germany is one of the countries that Flickr is currently censoring by preventing anyone located here from seeing anything even vaguely controversial -- from nude bodies to swastikas. No searches on Flickr in Germany can be run in anything but "safe" mode.
Apparently this lamentable situation is down to pressure from Flickr's parent company Yahoo, but it fits all too neatly into a global picture in which groovy creative internet startups get bigger, get bought by less groovy, less creative global moguls, who in turn knuckle under -- for reasons of realpolitik -- when trigger-happy judges or authoritarian governments grumble about people enjoying just a little too much of that groovy, creative personal freedom that got the whole thing started. Web 2.0 meets World 1.0, and World 1.0 wins.
What happens then is that newer, groovier startups sense a vulnerability in the megaliths, and attack the Achilles heels on their pigeon-toed rivals' feet of clay. Hence the person most vociferously attacking Flickr for censorship at this moment happens to be Thomas Hawk, CEO of rival service Zooomr.
Confession: I like Flickr better than Fotolog, which I somewhat absurdly wrote a book in support of last year, despite finding the service clunky as fuck (it may very well have improved since). I like the implementation of the Flickr slideshow, for instance. I like that I can find The Tate Gallery in a Flickr group, requesting photos of Britain to show on screens in current exhibition How We Are Now. That's democracy in action!
I think Flickr is probably better -- and certainly easier for me to use -- than Fotologue, Picasa and Photozou, the Japanese photo-sharing sites I blogged about in April (just as the Japanese now have more personal blogs than any other country, they've also overtaken us with the number of good photo-hosting sites).
But I have to say there's a lot about Flickr that troubles me, and it isn't just this censorship issue. I was annoyed when Yahoo bought Flickr, and I was forced to log into my account with a Yahoo ID. And I was annoyed to be told that my account had been reviewed and pronounced "safe" by Flickr staff. I was almost insulted -- had I neglected to post enough naked pictures of myself, or ancient Hindu religious symbols?
"Having a "safe" account," Flickr explained, "means that you are good at moderating your own content. Awesome!" Patronizing bastards! "Having a "moderate" flag on your account probably means that you are generally a good self-moderator, but occasionally things pop up in your photostream that may be in the wrong categories..."
As a relativist I baulk at the very idea of there being "wrong categories". I don't even use fucking categories, you fucking goons! I don't want to be a safe moderator, a moderate moderator, or whatever stupid phrases you come up with. And I don't rate the "safety levels" of my pictures because, honestly, tell me the last time a photo killed someone or invaded Iraq? Photos are all safe. Crossing the road is not. And clamping down on deviants, decadents and degenerates -- or collaborating with the judges and governments who do this -- is definitely not safe. See history.
"An "unsafe" account," Flickr continues, in the same infuriating school-marmish tone, "is something we think of as a loose cannon." Wikipedia defines that as "an irresponsible and reckless individual whose behaviour (either intended or unintended) endangers the group he or she belongs to". The implication is clear: you will attract attention from the authorities and we will all suffer. We have forestalled this by encouraging you to self-censor, and also by restricting your access to the content of fellow users in territories where we think the authorities might be strict. By, in other words, collaborating, in the spirit of "most puritan common denominator".
Flickr doesn't point to the vertical relationship with those authorities, though. It points to the horizontal relationship with other Flickr users, as if self-censorship were all a question of helping your friends by not rocking the boat. "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."
I'm sorry, I don't see Flickr as a "community". It's just a big hard disk where I store images, just like my Photobucket account (which, to its credit, has never asked me to flag my images -- although they did once censor a Ryan McGinley image, this one).
But even if Flickr were a community, why would its standards get set by the least tolerant corporations, judges and governments (hello, Singapore!) out there? What kind of community lets corporate caution, puritanism, fear of litigation and misinformation set its values? The wild American misconception that nudity, for instance, might somehow be offensive to Germans? We sit naked in public parks here, dudes!
So the question for today has to be, in the light of the way Flickr rates us and asks us to rate ourselves, and how it passes off realpolitik as "community values", and dubious collaboration with the world's worst judges and governments as "safe", and its users as "loose cannons", and photographs themselves -- its stock in trade -- as potentially, somehow, "unsafe", should we give this company a safe rating? And should we give Flickr our money?
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Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 04:15 pm (UTC)I don't want to break up the U.S.-bashing party here, but you're all jumping to some pretty off-base conclusions about Flickr and Yahoo here. (Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo Research, and I know many of the people behind the decisions re: Germany and Paypal.) I too am concerned about the concentration and abuse of power that can occur when companies merge, but I don't think Flickr is a case of that.
Here's basically what happened: Flickr decided it would be nice to finally offer localized interfaces internationally. Big mistake. Why? Because if you offer a localized service, you are then subject to local laws. And that, my friends, is a clusterfuck. Countries around the world have all kinds of retarded laws. The issues you're complaining about above are all the result of these retarded local laws—NOT U.S. laws. We don't have any laws about online nudity and age verification here; if you can click a mouse you can see the hardest of hardcore. Not so in Germany. Germans have a law (Jugendmedien-Staatsvertrag JMStV) that sets very stringent age-verification requirements for anything deemed possibly harmful to minors, including nudity. Now you might object that that law is hardly ever enforced, or that it is counter to German cultural norms, but none of that matters in a court of law. All it takes is one local politico who decides that he's going to make a name for himself and take down the big American company, and Flickr is screwed. This is the real difference between the groovy startups and the global moguls: the latter make far more attractive targets, for hackers and politicians alike.
The Paypal decision is similar—international payment processing using straight Paypal while keeping in line with myriad international finance laws was turning out to be impossible. They're now in the process of negotiating new deals with local payment providers in various countries that will all easy non-credit card payment in line with local laws, but its taking some time. While that's underway, if you're unable to renew your Pro account due to this, the Flickr staff will happily extend your account for free in the meantime.
Moral of the story? Pay attention to the laws your local politicians are passing, because even if they're rarely enforced they may come bite you in the ass. It isn't the job of U.S. companies to decide which local laws can be safely ignored (that job is reserved for our Vice President).
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 04:39 pm (UTC)Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 04:43 pm (UTC)"The data storage policy and anti-censorship proposal was defeated by a vote of 15% in favor to 74% in opposition, with the remainder abstaining. A separate proposal advanced by a single shareholder - a John C. Harrington of Napa, California - that would have established an independent human rights committee of the Board of Directors, went down in something less than a blaze of glory: 4% in favor, 80% opposed. Both proposals were argued down by Yahoo annual proxy statement, whose recommendations shareholders do tend to follow."
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 04:47 pm (UTC)I'm also wondering if this is unavoidably true. If I, for instance, translated this blog into Serbo-Croatian, would I have to adhere to Serbian laws?
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 05:43 pm (UTC)I would have thought that most large companies offering localised service would have different server locations — I could be wrong though.
[You'd just about get away with writing click opera in Serbo-Croatian, but to be truly authentic you'd probably want to illicitly shift the livejournal servers from California to Serbia.]
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 07:24 pm (UTC)Possibly--it would depend on whether Serbo-Croation law enforcement considered you to be publishing for or providing a service to Serbo-Croats in Serbo-Croatia. In Flickr's case, they can't really deny that the purpose of localization is to serve locals in other countries. Inncidentally, this is why they chose not to localize for India, because the censorship laws there are so extreme that it wouldn't have been possible for Flickr to meet them even with the current moderation system.
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 08:20 pm (UTC)By having a Pro account, one already proved to be of adult age, as all the payment methods require you to be 18+.
isn't quite the case. You can also be gifted a Pro Account, and for that you can be any age.
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 09:04 pm (UTC)Just so it doesn't get lost in this almost-PR thing: Google does not only have a localized German interface, but also a German top level domain, and a business residence in Germany.
And yet I'm able to find fine female genitalia via Google image search.
So while I still see why Yahoo! - in "vorauseilendem Gehorsam" - censors its German accounts, the reasons aren't very pleasing.
The language a site was made in DOES NOT force you to respect the laws of the respective country. That'd be a pretty chaotic thing, anyway. What if I make a website in English - do I have to watch out for British laws or for American? What if it's in French? Can I share copyright-protected songs because Canada is a francophone country (they still are liberal on this, right?)?
It has to do with the top level domain, and with the location of the servers.
Now while you're still right about Germany having an eye on pornography not being accessable without any age verification, there's no need whatsoever to completey censor content tagged as "restricted". By having a Pro account, one already proved to be of adult age, as all the payment methods require you to be 18+. Or they could implement a simple identity card number check when registering. There are many ways to do a legally accepted age verification, and all of those ways are so much better than bland censorship.
What Yahoo/Flickr has done to their German costumers, is this:
"Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off. If your Yahoo! ID is based in Germany you are not able to view restricted content due to your local Terms of Service."
Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Germany
It seems like it's taken from a "cross the wrong term out" IQ test, doesn't it?)
And yes, sorry, you are right, I forgot about that option. It's still merely a minor detail, I'd say. At least, I'd rather have this feature removed from German accounts than all of the "restricted" photos.
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-27 10:14 pm (UTC)Your comparison doesn't hold: Google isn't hosting those pictures of female genitalia. Flickr is. That makes all the difference in the world, as Google discovered when it bought YouTube.
The language a site was made in DOES NOT force you to respect the laws of the respective country.
Actually, this is not clear-cut. The issue is whether the case can be made that you are targeting users in Germany. It doesn't matter if you don't have a .de domain name. And not having servers in Germany may preclude German authorities from subpoenaing your server logs, but it doesn't mean that the German authorities can't still arrest your German employees (of which Yahoo has many).
I don't want to be an apologist for Yahoo as a whole--like any big company they make a lot of dubious decisions that I don't like.
In this particular case, though, I think the Germans should be spending their time and energy getting their own laws changed, rather than attacking the Flickr staff.
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-29 02:16 am (UTC)The point is that the solution flickr has in place now does not meet the requirements of the German law anyway (since it can easily be circumenvented by using an international Yahoo ID), that flickr was not forced to implement the solution the way they did (they are only obliged to remove a photo from the view of the German public once they were officially contacted from the authorities regarding particular content since they are being treated as a hosting provider and not as a content provider, as Friedemann Schindler, head of jugendschutz.net mentioned in a SPIEGEL article online), and, finally, flickr broke another German law by changing the service in a remarkable manner for paying customers without informing them in advance and giving them the opportunity to cancel their payment, and since this remarkable change of the service had not been communicated in any way and confused users had to find out for themselves (and the restrictions went far beyond what was needed, now at least the moderate stuff is accessible) the brand flickr was damaged a lot in the German (and even European) market. With about 36.000 new users flowing in each day (as mentioned by Stewart Butterfield in a forum post) this may in the end not really affect Yahoo's business, but some competitors gained advantage by a remarkable influx of new members due to this PR disaster.
As you mentioned already, the whole localization was maybe not a good idea, at least regarding the affected countries (not only Germany, but also Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea). Given, you care for a certain community spirit, of course. If you see your paying users just as replacable numbers, it may not be that important.
Greetings
Claudia
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 07:40 pm (UTC)I don't expect the shareholders to be looking out for anything except their return on investment. I would love it if Yahoo pulled its servers out of China, but I think that pressure needs to come from government, not the market. One American thing I will gladly bash is the idea that free-market capitalism will eliminate oppression and injustice.
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 08:01 pm (UTC)Hurrah for that! (And for the fact that some kind person has just given me a gift Flickr Pro account.)
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-27 07:01 am (UTC)Re: Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2007-06-26 07:17 pm (UTC)