On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com wrote:
Depending on the settings of the user some kind of Javascript will hide the images. This "passed along" labels could simply be used to exclude the image as the whole, making the "show image" button disappear.
That would depend on the implementation, but even if the 'show image' button were not present, the caption (which includes a link to the image description page) would still be there, indicating that an image had been blocked.
The provider itself isn't able to filter the image or the content, since this is a lot of working time and time costs money. But if we choose to label the content for no fee, we open a new field for partial censorship.
Blocking of HTTP requests to images subject to any filters by an ISP or some other intermediary would be fairly trivially avoided by requesting the image from a mirror, or via a proxy etc. The community has plenty of talented javascript coders who could implement such a workaround.
Moreover as above, the caption will still be present (and, depending on the implementation, the 'show image' button will be present but ineffective) and so the user will know that an image has been blocked. To avoid this, the ISP or intermediary would have to alter the HTML in transit to remove the caption to conceal the censorship. But if they have the capability and the desire to do that, then there are many more potent avenues for censorship they could already engage in, particularly avenues involving modification of the article text. The marginal risk presented here does not seem to be high.
On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 6:32 AM, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com wrote:
What would someone living inside such a group think if the content is already labeled that way, that he should not look at it. Isn't it social pressure put on the free mind, especially if other members of the group are around?
I find this 'social pressure to activate filters' line of argument quite flimsy. If a person would be under such social pressure, how are they not at present under enough pressure to avoid using Wikimedia projects (or at least articles where such pictures would be expected to be present) entirely?