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redsageRose is a friend of a friend, and she's super fabulous. This is the second time we've met. My wireless is down right at the moment, so not sure if I'll be able to get links or not.
Rose is speaking about Flickr perverts - people who use Flickr to find erotic images that the photographer may or may not be intending for such. One day, she found that a self portrait of hers had been added as a favorite by someone she didn't know. One person who had added it was a partner of hers, but the other was someone she didn't know at all. She looked at his favorites and saw that they were all images of women in silk scarves or bondage. It appears to be a fetish for this guy. This has happened to her with knee-high socks, which is apparently also a fetish for some. Among her photos, socked feet have been the most popular. Someone is going to jack off to her photos. As often happens... someone else's fetish turned into a paper, and here we are at AE.
These people finding and favoriting her photos are doing nothing wrong. In fact, they are model images of Flickr - they post photos of their own, look at other people's images, comment, friend people, etc etc. That said, a number of people find this creepy. A girl whose image was favorited by someone who appears to have a fetish of pretty girls wearing seatbelts in the backseats of cars got upset and blocked the guy. Similarly, a site called Plumpr uses Flickr's API to take public photos of plump women and posts them to admire because he finds them attractive. The creator of the site says he removes images when requested, but people are still upset about it. A woman who was upset by it responded by saying that the man should have asked first. Someone else said that it's public, but she responded that even publicly posting a picture to her Flickr account is different than publicizing it, and someone else publicizing it falls into the realm of creepy.
Posting pictures to Flickr is not like posting them to a personal webpage, but the whole Web 2.0 thing turns this into a social question.
There were Brazilian users of Orkut scouring the site looking for images of children, and then creating new accounts and posting these images claming that the photographed child is the creator of the profile. A lot of parents found this deeply disturbing, and essentially friends-locked their images so that "bad people" would not use their childs' images. Similarly, an active user of Flickr locked all her images because "perverts, weirdos and thieves" have been using her images. She had tried not to use child-related tags, but found that this did not change things.
Most users of Flickr enjoy sharing their images, a way of making new contacts, etc. Tagged content is visible content, and even if it's not tagged - if it's titled or described at all, it's searchable. Several people told Rose that they don't tag or comment on their own images at all so that perverts don't find them. With Web 2.0, security through obscurity loses any relevance as everything becomes searchable.
The sock people are having quite the controversy over some people finding these issues sexual. Another group has a rather interesting discussion: FOOT - No Kids, No Animals, No Objects, No Penises / Discuss - one foot fetishist suggests that others should not make sexual comments on non-sexually-intended images of feet, while others disagree.
She's yarnivore at Flickr, and invites anyone to contact her on this, rwhite@gc.cuny.edu.
Someone asks, "I've often seen the attitude that porn is bad, so looking at it is bad, but these pictures of socks are Not Porn so it's ok - your wife won't hate you, God still loves you, etc. Have you explored this?" Rose responds saying that a lot of these people are at least aware of their sexual interest in the images that they add as favorites, and if they are pretending to others that this is not an erotic interest, it's not apparent. A member of the audience asks if some people may be protesting innocence with the presumption that there won't be an issue with their Flickr account, a fear that admitting to sexual interest would potentially cause one's account to be reviewed or deleted. Rose says that Flickr seems not to do this, so while it might be a general sense of wanting to deflect attention, it's not from a specific experience.
What is interesting is that users of Flickr sometimes behave as if it is a somewhat private space, like a salon or a living room - but it's still the public web. In person, it would be inappropriate for someone random to approach you and say "I want to lick your boots" - but we've seen people on websites think that this is an absolutely acceptable thing to comment on someone's photos.
Rose is speaking about Flickr perverts - people who use Flickr to find erotic images that the photographer may or may not be intending for such. One day, she found that a self portrait of hers had been added as a favorite by someone she didn't know. One person who had added it was a partner of hers, but the other was someone she didn't know at all. She looked at his favorites and saw that they were all images of women in silk scarves or bondage. It appears to be a fetish for this guy. This has happened to her with knee-high socks, which is apparently also a fetish for some. Among her photos, socked feet have been the most popular. Someone is going to jack off to her photos. As often happens... someone else's fetish turned into a paper, and here we are at AE.
These people finding and favoriting her photos are doing nothing wrong. In fact, they are model images of Flickr - they post photos of their own, look at other people's images, comment, friend people, etc etc. That said, a number of people find this creepy. A girl whose image was favorited by someone who appears to have a fetish of pretty girls wearing seatbelts in the backseats of cars got upset and blocked the guy. Similarly, a site called Plumpr uses Flickr's API to take public photos of plump women and posts them to admire because he finds them attractive. The creator of the site says he removes images when requested, but people are still upset about it. A woman who was upset by it responded by saying that the man should have asked first. Someone else said that it's public, but she responded that even publicly posting a picture to her Flickr account is different than publicizing it, and someone else publicizing it falls into the realm of creepy.
Posting pictures to Flickr is not like posting them to a personal webpage, but the whole Web 2.0 thing turns this into a social question.
There were Brazilian users of Orkut scouring the site looking for images of children, and then creating new accounts and posting these images claming that the photographed child is the creator of the profile. A lot of parents found this deeply disturbing, and essentially friends-locked their images so that "bad people" would not use their childs' images. Similarly, an active user of Flickr locked all her images because "perverts, weirdos and thieves" have been using her images. She had tried not to use child-related tags, but found that this did not change things.
Most users of Flickr enjoy sharing their images, a way of making new contacts, etc. Tagged content is visible content, and even if it's not tagged - if it's titled or described at all, it's searchable. Several people told Rose that they don't tag or comment on their own images at all so that perverts don't find them. With Web 2.0, security through obscurity loses any relevance as everything becomes searchable.
The sock people are having quite the controversy over some people finding these issues sexual. Another group has a rather interesting discussion: FOOT - No Kids, No Animals, No Objects, No Penises / Discuss - one foot fetishist suggests that others should not make sexual comments on non-sexually-intended images of feet, while others disagree.
She's yarnivore at Flickr, and invites anyone to contact her on this, rwhite@gc.cuny.edu.
Someone asks, "I've often seen the attitude that porn is bad, so looking at it is bad, but these pictures of socks are Not Porn so it's ok - your wife won't hate you, God still loves you, etc. Have you explored this?" Rose responds saying that a lot of these people are at least aware of their sexual interest in the images that they add as favorites, and if they are pretending to others that this is not an erotic interest, it's not apparent. A member of the audience asks if some people may be protesting innocence with the presumption that there won't be an issue with their Flickr account, a fear that admitting to sexual interest would potentially cause one's account to be reviewed or deleted. Rose says that Flickr seems not to do this, so while it might be a general sense of wanting to deflect attention, it's not from a specific experience.
What is interesting is that users of Flickr sometimes behave as if it is a somewhat private space, like a salon or a living room - but it's still the public web. In person, it would be inappropriate for someone random to approach you and say "I want to lick your boots" - but we've seen people on websites think that this is an absolutely acceptable thing to comment on someone's photos.
