A couple of month ago Flickr implemented a censorship – called the „safety level“. The point behind this idea is to ensure that people can only see „safe“ content – depending on there safety-settings. I really understand that this is a good idea for protecting children from viewing content they are too young for!
But what happened? Last Friday I uploaded my photos from the World Bodypainting Festival 2008 in Seeboden (Austria) to my Flickr-page. Basically all of the models are naked and painting – but those photos are surely not porn-related!
And the day after I received an e-mail from the Flickr-support team telling me the following:
As per our Community Guidelines, content like that in your account is not considered „safe“ for everyone to view. You may or may not be aware that Flickr has a Safe Search system. When people browse or search on Flickr, they can filter what they see based on a safety level that they are comfortable with – either Safe Search is on, set to moderate, or off. In order for Safe Search to work, we relying on *you* to filter your content appropriately. As you upload stuff to Flickr, you need to make sure that you’re applying appropriate filters (safe, moderate or restricted) and telling us what sort of content it is (photos, video, screenshots, art & illustration). If you don’t apply filters correctly, there’s a very good chance another member will let us know – in fact that’s why we’ve taken action today. (No need to be upset – it’s every member’s right to let us know if they ever feel uncomfortable. Yours too.)
So; from now onwards my whole photostream isn’t accessable for anonymous users any longer.
If you wanna see my photos – pls. feel free to check them out on my homepage using the following link: http://www.wedenig.com/gallery/03/default.htm
