[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[David Levy]

Andreas Kolbe wrote:

> The way it is supposed to work is by creating categories that simply describe
> media content. A bit like alt.texts, I guess. Examples might be:
>
> Images of people engaged in sexual intercourse.
>
> Videos of people masturbating.
>
> Images of genitals.
>
> Pictures of the prophet Muhammad.
>
> Images of open wounds.
>
> In other words, the idea is to give the user objective definitions of media
> content (not a subjective assessment of any likely offence).

As has been mentioned numerous times, deeming certain subjects (and
not others) "potentially objectionable" is inherently subjective and
non-neutral.

Unveiled women, pork consumption, miscegenation and homosexuality are
considered objectionable by many people.  Will they be assigned
categories?  If not, why not?  If so, who's gong to analyze millions
of images (with thousands more uploaded on a daily basis) to tag them?

And what if the barefaced, bacon-eating, interracial lesbians are
visible only in the image's background?  Does that count?

David Levy