Filter Feeding

Daily Ink

Stored in: In Situ

Posted On: April 02 2007

By: Bryan Partington

"Take me to the kittens!" announced the jolly blue button, perched awkwardly above an engorged phallus.

"Kittens AHOY!" said I, testing flickr's new content filtering functionality.

There have always been insistent, seemingly endless debates about 'censorship' on flickr. In the past, these debates have revolved around NIPSA, the not-in-public-search-areas system which removed all manner of softcore pornography, art nudes and erotica from flickr search results. This meant everyone's search results, regardless of age or outlook. NIPSA also excluded illustrations and screenshots from searches, making it a very awkward one-size-fits-all approach to maintaining a "family friendly" and "photo based" feel to the site.

I still think that NIPSa was a good thing for flickr. There was a time, a long time ago, when flickr primarily contained drawings and screenshots. Most of these were lifted off various websites all over the web and represented a heavy copyright liability. Flickr's . There was chat as well. PRIVATE chat and everything that implies. Indeed, a notorious porn blog once described flickr as 'premium wankware'.

Given those starting conditions, a heavy hand was required to shape the nature of the site, and NIPSA was that heavy hand. It worked, of course, and now flickr is heavily photo-centric and outwardly family friendly. There's still plenty or drawings and porn on flickr, but it was relatively difficult to find any unless you were actively looking for it.

But such a system has no nuance. Some felt that nudity shouldn't be visible on flickr at all, others felt that there was nothing wrong with a more liberal attitude. Flickr was banned in the UAE. Promises were made for a system where users could control for themselves what they could or could not see.

... and then two years passed.

Now we have filters. Three, in fact. Four if you count the mandatory filter for users under the age of 18. We have filters for searching and filters for publishing, filters for art and filters for screenshots.

It's a very nuanced system, so long as you're logged in, and everyone who can log in seems to be very happy with it.

The problem is with people trying to view 'moderate' or 'restricted' content from the outside.

Photographers with 'restricted' content benefit under the new system. "Restricted" content is pornographic enough that NIPSA didn't apply to it under the old regime. Such works had to be marked as private instead, or else the owner risked account termination.

Under the new system such works may be fully public so long as they are flagged as unsafe. Though they won't be seen by most flickr users who are browsing 'safely', they'll still be seen by a lot more people than before.

Photographers with "safe" content, and those wishing to avoid nudity or pornography also benefit. Even if they land on a photostream with nudity or porn via a link, it is unlikely they'll see anything. Previously, they'd only be shielded while looking at search results, now they're shielded everywhere they go.

Photographers with "moderate" content have the most to complain about. Their work, unlike the more pornographic 'restricted' content, was accessible via google searches or or by people viewing their work via links from blogs. Visitors from the outside could see their work without signing in, and the photographers could get a lot of attention and views that way. Now, users attempting to view this content are forced to sign in first, which has a strong effect on view counts.

I think that this is unfortunate. moderate content could be viewed from the outside after placing a 'warning' page before the content. This would be much 'safer' than the previous NIPSA system, while maintaining the current flow of traffic from outside flickr. Personally, I think people should still be forced to sign in to flickr in order to view 'restricted' content .. but this attitude is overkill for cheesecake and art nudes. A surpassable content warning should suffice.

Overall, the system is a vast improvement for both the porn hounds and the prudes. I believe some tweaks are in order, but for the most part I find it amazing that such a system could leave people with seemingly diametrically opposed attitudes content.

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