[Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

[Nathan]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:14 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30 September 2011 18:24, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bishakha, call it editorial-content, call it censorship or any other
>> euphemism - at the heart of it, it is deciding what someone gets to see and
>> what not.
>
> That is just completely untrue. The image filter will allow people to
> choose what to see and what not to see. We won't be making the
> decisions...


Since the filter doesn't exist yet, nor are there any technical
descriptions of how it might work, it's impossible to make definitive
pronouncements. Even so, readers won't be the ones making the crucial
decisions about categorization - and readers might be at the mercy of
libraries, schools, workplaces, governments, etc. that make use of the
filter non-optional.

We should assume that any system that relies on editor-generated
categories will be a long-term battleground; as we've always seen,
those with the most extreme positions come to dominate the most
contentious areas - requiring the intervention of many others over
extended periods of time to reach incremental compromises. The image
filter will likely be no different.

Nathan