It seems Fetlife have taken to editing our photos without any reference to the poster/owner! You might notice some censorship of the original image appearing here and the image above which now appears on my Fetlife profile. Yes, the little girls who appears to be Oriental (yes, it’s totally OK to say that in the UK. I know those across the Pond might recoil in horror but ‘Asian’ to us means something different) is now a pixellated blob reminiscent of Japanese porn movies. In this instance it doesn’t bother me and I can see why they might play safe by not juxtaposing kids and BDSM. Although, I can’ see any possible harm in this image and think she adds a certain charm to the image.
These days, it seems to world has gone to absurd extremes. Even posting innocent photos of your own children can lead to censorship or police investigation or, as in this case, being a single male is enough to be excluded from a public events. At this rate, the nijab will start being advocated for children in public, regardless of religious leanings 🙂 Sadly, we are often better at pointless knee-jerk reactions than doing anything constructive. Although, I am pleased to hear now that UK police are hitting paedos hard with 660 arrests in the past 6 months.
However, as a general principal, I find unilateral and unannounced editing or censorship a little disturbing. I suppose the biggest prise was not getting any kind of notification. Te fair, upon digging into the ToS, it appears they ban any images of under 18’s “however innocent”. I hear another member was asked to edit a meme which was in no way sexual because it contained two kids.
Anyway, having been pointed to the pertinent sections by people who actually plough through such interminable waffle, I’ll reproduce them for the rest of us. In Content Guidelines there’s:
“We can’t allow any images of anyone underage (no matter how innocent the image might be), cartoons that sexualize underage characters, or any discussions that might be construed as eroticizing someone that is underage.”
Clearly, sexualised or eroticised underage content is a no-brainer and that’s what I assumed would be the case but it is actually locked down much more tightly in the Terms of Use amongst an extensive list of prohibitions:
“Upload pictures or videos of that contain any children under 18 years of age.”
If you were thinking of advertising imaginary suicide-bomb belts on Fetlife, you would contravene a multitude of rules 😀
However, their undramatic way of handling such things is much preferable to the draconian systems on some sites that usually end in a frustrating exchange along the lines of “The computer says no” sketch from Little Britain or a ban/deletion with no appeal.
