[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Andrew Garrett]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc at uberbox.org> wrote:
> And that's the best argument *against* the filter I've seen in a while
> because it reiterates that it has - at its core - the insurmountable
> problem that it attempts to provide a method by which "objectionable"
> material can be filtered without being able to define what
> "objectionable" means in any meaningfully culturally-neutral way.
> (Hint:  the answer is "it cannot be done").
>
> It wouldn't even be possible to define a meaningful "nudity" category,
> and that's arguably the simplest of all.

That's not a sensible assertion. The fact that being in or out of a
category is inherently a matter of degree rather than a binary thing
doesn't mean that there's no difference between a picture of a rabbit
and a screengrab from (freely licensed, of course) hardcore
pornography.

Sure, there'd need to be some understanding of what's in and what's
out of various categories, and it's not possible to make that
completely objective. But that doesn't mean it's not a useful or
worthwhile exercise.

-- 
Andrew Garrett
Wikimedia Foundation
agarrett at wikimedia.org