Upcoming Changes: Mature, and Flagging

please translate:

Hi,

Following on today's announcement about privacy controls, we wanted to drop a note to everybody who currently has a Mature profile. That's because on or about 12/20, we’ll make the following changes that affect you:

1) We’re implementing Community Flagging. To ensure that all posts are respectful, and to respond to concerns from our users about some of the content on the site being offensive, we’re going to allow members to flag content (photos and listings) for removal. In our judgment, at least some of your photos are likely to be flagged for removal by other tribe.net members.

2) We’re updating our Terms of Use (“TOU”). This update is to reflect changes in the legal environment facing us and our members. In particular, posting content that portrays obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct is for practical purposes illegal for members like ours under U.S. federal law. So it will be prohibited in our TOU, and we will drop the “Mature” designation from your profile and site wide. Your profile will be viewable to any visitor or member, except for content that you’ve designated Friends Only.

3) We’re switching all the photos in your photo album to Friends Only status. This is to give you time to decide which ones need to be removed, and which ones don’t.

What to do now: we suggest you remove all photos that you think are likely to be considered in violation of the new TOU. Then remove the mature mark (before 12/20) on your profile, at

www.tribe.net/template/ac...reProfile.vm

Doing this now will save you a lot of work down the road.

This is an important transition for Tribe, one we’ve had to think through long and hard. We appreciate your help and patience as we all get through this. If you have questions, we’ll be discussing this online at tribeideas.tribe.net

Thanks,

Wade Lagrone
VP Marketing
www.tribe.net/template/pub%2CAbout.vm

P.S. If you have so many photos to remove that it’s a big chore, let us know and we’ll figure out a way to help.
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It may see obvious to staff but it is not that clear to me.

So I can't have what I want (because it might offend) in a friends only view?

Will all nudity be considered obscene and prohibited?
For instance.
Will pictures of folks naked at Burning Man now be banned?
and
Will art photographyof nudes now be banned?

I have a somewhat famous picture of Tom Waites in the dressing room of what appears to be a burlesque theater and behing him is a topless woman. there is no interaction between the two. Would this picture be banned?

In your definitions of mature content. You state nudity is subject to the mature designation, that is clear but in your new T.O.U. you only use "obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct.". Itis kinda vague. Please define obscene, pornography and sexually explicit conduct. would two nudes kissing be explicit as in images from greek mytholgy?
Please be more "explicit" in your defintions.

This new policy makes things much more confusing rather than adding any clarity. I think the Mature Profile designation made a lot of sense. Beyond the questions already asked, I have significant concerns about this "community flaggin" piece. It seems like that now people in Podunck, Kansas; Hicktown, Alabama and Godly, Texas will be able to proscribe content on profiles and tribes that originate in San Francisco, Portland and New York. They ain't exactly got the same community values, you know!

Mark