Flickr is renowned as one of the best photo sharing sites on the web. But there’s a less wholesome side to what can be found on its service too, seemingly in direct breach of its parent company Yahoo!’s terms of service.
We’ve been alerted to a number of public Flickr galleries containing adult material, which can easily be accessed by Flickr’s search tool, either by searching for specific content or by innocently looking for images by device.
A reader tipped us off after he searched innocent-sounding body parts to create a home-made birthday card, and was surprised when innocuous searches, such as “feet” and “mouth”, brought back full frontal nudity and graphic close ups of genitalia, even with Flickr’s SafeSearch feature enabled.
The tip off prompted us to replicate his searches, and delve a little deeper. What we found surprised us. Even with Flickr’s SafeSearch filtering enabled, plenty more nude photos as well as groups for sharing lewd images popped onto our screen. Even the text of group names contained explicit language, and was not blocked by Yahoo!’s security measures.
In its terms of service, Yahoo! states: “You agree to not use the Services to… upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.”
We asked Yahoo! what its view on the situation was, and were told by a spokesman: “Yahoo! has a number of measures in place to make sure that using our hugely popular Flickr service is a safe and fun experience for everybody.
“When you first sign up for Flickr, the SafeSearch function (http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/#249 ) is turned on. This protects you from Restricted images on Flickr. You can only get access to Restricted images if you’re over 18.
“SafeSearch works by checking the flags that users add to their photos – ‘Safe’, ‘Moderate’ and ‘Restricted’ (http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/#258 ) .
“With over four billion images uploaded to Flickr by our community, there may still be pictures you feel are inappropriate. To report them, you can click the ‘Report Abuse’ link which can be found at the bottom of every Flickr page. The queue is manned 24/7 and every request will be assessed.
“It’s worth pointing out that our terms of service make it clear that users will find a broad range of content on Yahoo!, and the responsibility for what children may see rests with their guardian. Term Number 3 states: Please remember that the Services are designed to appeal to a broad audience. Accordingly, as the legal guardian, it is your responsibility to determine whether any of the Services and/or Content are appropriate for your child.”
Yahoo!’s terms state that it “has no obligation to monitor Content”. And while we’re not coming over all prudish, or were surprised at adult content being shared, we were surprised at just how easy it was to find, especially with SafeSearch on our side.
The photos we stumbled across were certainly vulgar and, we considered, obscene, which should put them in Flickr’s bad books. Some even appear to have been taken without the subject’s knowledge. That raises questions of whether they are also invasive of another’s privacy. Only two of the groups groups we saw were hidden behind an age check.
You’ve got to expect it on the interent, but you’re right – I just did a search for a rude word (probably the first my teenage son would type in) and found a topless pic straight away. I don’t use Flickr so I wasn’t logged in but I looked under groups too, and there are places there for people (I guess) swapping photos too… and that rude word was in the title of the group too – not being blocked at all! [Link removed]
Thanks Winnie, as we say in the article above, that’s what surprised us: being able to find it so easily. I’ve removed your link, as we don’t want to highlight individual cases, but as you say: it’s not hard to do your own search and see the problem.
If their filter doesn’t screen out all objectionable content they shouldn’t be calling it SafeSearch. Who decides what is restricted content and who monitors that it is being correctly implemented?
Any follow up comment from Yahoo? This does seem to be a pretty basic lack of control on their part.
How about asking the Daily Mirror/Mail or perhaps Home Office for a comment as well – that should stir them up!
There is indeed! Full response here: http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/11/18/flickr-adult-content-yahoo-responds/
Although what I’d really love is an update on how SafeSearch is being improved, and how users are helping to make the site better.
[...] [ElectricPig] [...]
The problem with SafeSearch is that it’s dependent on users adding correct designations to the photos on Flickr – when you upload something it’s up to you to determine if the content is “objectionable”, and up to you to mark it so.
I can see how SafeSearch is easily fooled by image contents, but I’m surprised Yahoo! doesn’t seem to be filtering group names for dodgy keywords. We also tried all our searches in Google Image Search, to check we weren’t being overly sensitive, but it stubbornly refused to show us anything rude, even when we used naughty search words!
[...] surprise Flickr porn we reported on yesterday raises questions about adult material being easily available, even when [...]
[...] Flickr has had its fair share of issues this week, but it remains the king of photo sharing sites. All you need is a Yahoo! ID and you can [...]
Porn is everywhere on line. Did think you’d find it elsewhere first though. Just found porn models on Flickr – looks like they’re using it to show off and get more work! HA!
Interesting! We never thought of searching for particular names! Although, to be fair, that’s hardly stumbling across it now, is it Viper1f1c?!
Self-publicists!
[...] stories on adult content being easy to find on Flickr had readers telling us of similar experiences, and catapulted the topic into our most [...]
[...] UK Mirror Reports on Pornography in Flickr Posted on November 29, 2009 by filteringfacts Earlier this month, the UK publication Daily Mirror reported on the growing issue of the large amount of easily-accessible pornography found in Yahoo’s popular photo sharing site Flickr: [...]