If you’re a Flickr member, feel free to favorite this photo.

I started using the photo sharing service Flickr last November as the request of my sweetheart; I started really maximizing my use of the site as I enjoyed its social networking features, and at the urging of my host Laughing Squid to integrate my photoblogging and regular blogging.

In my Flickr photostream I have pictures of my book covers, my cat, my recent trips to Vienna and Mexico, the only nice Christmas I’ve ever had in my life, and mostly my close friends — you’ll find casual photos of Eddie Codel, Jonno, Irina Slutsky, Xeni Jardin, Sean Bonner, Scott Beale, Lori Dorn, Jonathan Moore, Carol Queen, Jason Schultz, Eon McKai, Schlomo Rabinowitz, Mark Pauline, Phillip Torrone and many more. You’ll also find artsy photos of my tattoos, machine art, pin-up photos of me in panties with cupcakes (by me and professional art photographers) and even more photos of my cat. You will not find frontal nudity of me (and certainly no “full” frontal), and only if you are signed in (and deemed a ‘friend’ and ‘family’) will you see a human nipple from the front — and I have carefully removed them from public searches as well. Anything racy I put in my Fotki photo account, where I can be sure to have an age-check page for visitors.

At least, that was yesterday. Today, unless you’re a member of the site, my account has been erased. Except, confusingly, right now you can go to my page and see *only* the nipple-tastic photos I removed form public searches. And if you’re a member but unaware of the changes Flickr has quietly made (and unevenly enforced) to their users’ search levels, my photos look like a fuzzy TV screen. This means that without a Flickr account you cannot see the photos, and even if you have a Flickr account, the thumbnail is all snowy until you decide that you will break the “safe” barrier and click into “unsafe” territory to see what is behind the fuzz. (Where is that in your account profile? Good question.) At the top of the screen it says “if you’ve changed your mind about wanting to see this content, you can ESCAPE.” Then there is a button that says “take me to the kittens”. This is above all my photos, and you can imagine how fun this is to deal with if you just want to look at one of my photos of SRL machines or Maker Faire.

If you’re been aware of the problems Flickr’s been having lately with their new filtering system, then you know that they’ve told no one but have been making some pretty egregious errors in administering the policy. Over at LAist, Malingering (who just had the same thing happen and *isn’t* a sex writer) writes,

As most people in the blogosphere know, Flickr is a very (very) popular photo sharing site. It contains over half a BILLION images taken by people from every corner of the earth, and has become a meeting place for professional photographers, photo enthusiasts, and people who just want to share photos of their cats and kids.

Recently, Flickr decided to invoke a new filtering system, which rates photos according to their level of safety: basically rating your images G, PG-13, or XXX. Then you choose what sort of photos you want to look at (are you there for looking at kitty cats or genitalia?) and Flickr will filter them out for you.

Unfortunately, Flickr seems to be getting a bit carried away with their censorship powers. One of Flickr’s most popular (and fabulous) photographers Rebekka recently had an experience where her photos were stolen and people were selling them to make a (rather large) profit. She posted her dismay on her Flickr page, and it 100,000 views later it was deleted without warning. You can hear her personal account of this story here. This was infuriating, to say the least, though they did at least admit their wrongs.

Link.

Photographer Thomas Hawk has had the same problem.

The difference in my case is that unlike the LAist blogger, while the majority of my photographs are of people and places and things, I do — and will — have the occasional photo that will need to be restricted from the Flickr search pool, or made visible only to people I’ve personally approved.

Did any Flickr members get emails explaining this new policy? I didn’t. This morning I got this, when they took my account out:

Hello violet.blue,

We wanted to let you know that your account status has been
changed to “moderate”. As per our Community Guidelines,
frontal nudity is inappropriate for “safe” areas of Flickr:
http://flickr.com/guidelines.gne

There’s more information about safety levels and filters in
our FAQs:
http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/

If you would like to have your account reviewed, we will be
happy to do so after 30 days. Between now and then, please
take the opportunity to self-moderate what you upload in
such a way that you’re in compliance with the Yahoo! Terms
of Service and our Community Guidelines.

Regards,
-Terrence

So, my account is down for at least 30 days — a month that I can’t use it (and I use it daily for everything from blogging to Chronicle photos to…). But, then I sign out to see what it looks like and I get my most recent (self-selected) search-restricted photos ONLY, screencap:

I want to play by Flickr’s rules — I’ve been doing so to the best of my knowledge all along. But Flickr isn’t telling me how I broke their rules, just that I broke them. They won’t even tell me what the rules *are*. I don’t know which photos I need to amend to get back on their good side — they’re not telling me. So, I visit the Community Guidelines link Terrence sent me to see exactly what those guidelines are, to understand how I broke them and what photos I might have overlooked somehow (or what has changed). I find out, well, nothing except vague wording about being responsible to who might see my photos, and that nudity is forbidden in my “buddy icon”:

Next, I want to see how I violated, or screwed up, use of their safety filters. And I get more vague language about self-policing the filters:

But then I get my answer — in “how do I know I’m doing the right thing?” the answer is basically, “never”:

And then, when I sign out again and search for my own name, I get the same front page result I’ve been getting for a year, of an image I’ve been trying to have removed for — over a year. It’s the woman who’s been using my name to make porn, with her tits out:

Ugh.

Thanks, Flickr. Tonight I’m downloading all 1800+ of my images (only 152,307 views because I don’t blog my stream very often) and moving them to Fotki, where I know they’ll be visible. I really want to be able to share my silly cat photos with friends. And I’m sick and tired of these social networking sites screwing everything up for individuals within communities with their latest thoughtless, user-inconsiderate policies. Consider me no longer a fan, Flickr.

Update, blogger response: Worldmegan wrote an email to Flickr on my behalf (thank you!) and made this post which says, “I’m a huge proponent of Flickr. I adore Flickr. Flickr has always been exactly what I wanted in a photo sharing site and even when they’ve fallen short, they have continued to develop and polish and improve in ways that fill my heart with glee. So when someone has something less than brilliant to say about them, I notice. And in this case, having long been a reader of Violet’s blog and other writings, knowing that her material is, as I say later, reliable and fact-driven as a rule, I have really noticed. And what I have found has greatly alarmed me.” Link.

And Samantha Wolov emails, “Funny you mention Flickr–I just found out Aries1952 stole six of
my photos, changed the titles, claimed they were his, and posted them
as his beautiful art. He apparently had quite a following. Since I
wasn’t a “friend”, I wasn’t allowed to see these pages, but a friend
sent me screen shots. Bastard even had the nerve to make up a date
when he took them all! I just don’t understand the appeal of Flickr.
It seems easy to get into trouble, and now there are censorship issues.
What am I missing?”

Update: I received an apology and explanation email from Stewart Butterfield; and another thoughtful follow-up email from Stewart about Flickr’s guidelines that is well worth reading.

Snip from Shopping For Sex At The Supermarket: Marina Safeway: Hot or not?:

In the Market Street Safeway, the cucumbers are really big. I don’t know if that’s because they’re genetically modified with elephant cells or if that’s because it’s the Safeway closest to the Castro. I’m guessing it’s a bit of both.

I was in the Market Street Safeway about 2 the other night, trying to make a salad. I was dressed as I normally am for side-dish preparation: high heels, black satin skirt and top and plenty of lip gloss. I had all the necessary ingredients for a delicious salad in my hand basket: Reddi-wip and extra-large Trojans. OK, maybe it was a slightly more regional dish I was preparing, but I found myself lingering over the cucumbers long enough to draw someone’s attention.

It was my friend Michelle. “Dude, did you score yet?” Conspiratorially, I leaned in while dropping a cuke in my basket. “No,” I whispered. “Let’s make another circuit and meet in the wine section for provisions.”

I figured that if my friend Michelle and I were going to see if there was any truth to the urban legends about San Francisco Safeways being the place for some after-hours amour, then I’d better at least be honest about what I was shopping for. The items in my basket weren’t subtle, even if I thought my cucumber was modest for the Castro. But what would you expect? Trying to communicate a complex personality and desire for deep connection with Hot Pockets, Cheeze Doodles and bourbon just wasn’t going to yield phone numbers, which is what Michelle and I were gaming for. Any gender would do.

Link.

Update, a few choice reader responses:

Shame on you for not mentioning the architectural significance of the
Marina Safeway. It’s one of the only original Safeway buildings left in
California, with its signature round storefront. Kind of like the golden
arches at McDonald’s. And it survived the Loma Prieta earthquake. But
I’ll forgive you because you use condoms and subtly promote STD awareness
and safe sex.

By the way, it’s been a meat market for ages. Armistead Maupin used it as
a backdrop for cruising and hooking up in his “Tales of the City”
series/novel. Go get ‘em girl, with your can of instant Reddi-whip
(careful not to get it in your eyes, dear, it’s not real whipped cream and
it will burn like a mo-fo).

*

Subject: The Marina Dateway was built over..

Gaslight cove.

A Victorian era bathing spot. So called because the turbine in the Gaslight building (that pretty little brick and iron-work two story behind the Dateway on North Point) was open to the water there. Natural cooling for the turbine, and honest to G-D warmth for the bay waters. It was quite popular in its day, as the story goes… and that’s the psychic source of the sexually charged atmosphere at the Dateway.

Repressed Victorians in their skivvies.

Hot.

*

The urban legend, I believe, was spawned by the Tales of the City books.

*

Hilarious! Some friends and I were debating this last night. Your
article supported my argument. Market Street Safeway is a meatmarket
for dudes and the produce section at the Marina Safeway is cruising
central!

*

Damn, the covers are *so* hot I want to write them all over again… Yaayyy!

testing mobile posting from the helio…

Oh, Bacchus!

Click To Play

Another fun GETV episode from our weekend efforts at Maker Faire it’s above and on this show page. I was really happy to interview my pals Kimric and Shannon about the Neverwas Haul. Talk about working overtime that weekend… phew!

Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

This is a great primer on kissing: Gala’s Kissing Boot Camp. Mwah!

I just found out that a friend of mine was in a bad motorcycle accident last night. She’s been a big part of many amazing underground art events, communities and she’s always been there with energy and wickedly playful enthusiasm (and her camera) throughout many years of SRL shows, Burning Man events and more.

If you have any extra good thoughts, candles, meditations, prayers, good deeds or even a scratch behind a cat’s ear, think of my pal Amacker for a second when you do it. Her community — we — love her very much. She’s in the ICU right now and will be for a while, with more surgeries to come.

Her
condition is described as critical, but the lead trauma surgeon informed
us clearly that her injuries, while life threatening, are all
survivable. The surgeon stressed this word ’survivable’. She had an
amazing team of surgeons working on her for several hours into this
morning. Her list of injuries include all ribs broken on one side,
nicked aorta, a nick to her liver, broken left shin, left kidney
removed, spleen removed, and a fracture around the base of her skull.
Despite all that she was lucid and (as described by the paramedics) “a
bit combative” going into surgery.

That’s our girl.

Updates after the jump.

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Said to me over dinner, none the less:

“‘Free speech’ is like anal sex. You never quite know what you’re getting into.”

–a friend who works in, you guessed it, law.

I don’t know why I love the girls and tables thing. But I do. Gallery here; my table dance it still here. Also, FYI: Hegre’s new “teen” site promo gallery, which is both good and bad.

Image of dangerous e-lesbians: Gilles Berquet, via, also.

But he better not try to “cure” mine. Silent as a fart, Bush released his nomination for Surgeon general, Joseph Holsinger, which Daily Kos points out,

Holsinger and his wife:

…founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a “very vital recovery ministry.” It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor. […]

Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.

“We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle,” he said. “We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.”

Link.

And, I’ve sideswiped eHarmony for being hetero-biased in the past… But it looks like I’m *not* the only one who thinks this is a problem. Snip from SFGate/AP:

Linda Carlson was looking for a partner and decided to try eHarmony, the Pasadena-based online dating service that advertises its ability to “deliver matches that have the foundation of compatibility based on a lifetime of joy.” When the San Mateo County woman tried to log in, she was given two options: “man seeking a woman” or “woman seeking a man.”

Neither suited Carlson, who was seeking another woman. Her complaint to the company this February got nowhere, and on Thursday, she filed suit in Los Angeles accusing eHarmony of violating a California law that prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

“The case is about moving gay rights into this century,” Todd Schneider, a lawyer for Carlson, said Friday. “It could not possibly be OK to say no black people allowed, or no Chinese people allowed, but for some reason, this Web site thinks it’s OK to say no gay people allowed.”

But Lanny Davis, a lawyer for eHarmony, said the company isn’t violating California law by excluding gays and lesbians. He said the law prohibits only arbitrary discrimination that lacks a legitimate business purpose.

“Our rational business basis is that our research database comes from a clinical psychiatrist observing successful marriages vs. non-successful,” observations based entirely on opposite-sex marriages, Davis said. He said a claim of discrimination against same-sex partners is comparable to a suit against a Japanese restaurant “for discriminating against people who like French food.”

Link.

Yipes — it looks like I’ve been selected for a scary New Media breeding program: Casey McKinnon’s media superbeing franken-child-making Bene Gesserit breeding program. Help! (thanks Praemedia!)

Image by Samantha Wolov.

Two developments of note this week:

* As you may have read on Fleshbot yesterday, Max Hardcore (Paul Little) has been indicted on federal obscenity counts, as revealed in a freshly unsealed (Florida-based) document on Smoking Gun. Now, this doesn’t surprise me at all considering the stomach-churningly “extreme” nature of the porn Little makes, and it’s the kind of stuff I’d never review, or even link to, from here. That said, there are sex acts listed in the DoJ’s release that are, well, just sex acts that a lot of people enjoy in their course of healthy and adventurous sexual expression — like “anal penetration, urination, insertion of an entire hand into a vagina or anus”. Also, what’s concerning about this news (besides my revulsion that Little might suck up valuable free-speech resources for his *very* lame porn), and is getting no notice at all — is that several of the counts are for distributing files via his website.

* Did you know that today is the day new 2257 regulations are supposedly up for comment? Or that an injunction was won regarding secondary producers? I thought not. Hardly anyone does. In an April 30 newsletter, the Free Speech Coalition told subscribers that On Wednesday, April 25th in Colorado, Federal District Court Judge Walker Miller held a status conference with the Free Speech Coalition and Government attorneys. This applied to 2257 and so-called “secondary producers” of adult content. The FSC’s litigation team stated,

We have no reason to anticipate imminent inspections of secondary producers. The reasoning underlying Judge Miller’s preliminary injunction remains valid; that is, prior to July 27, 2006, there was no statutory authority for record-keeping by secondary producers. We are awaiting regulations which will announce the Department of Justice’s position on what secondary producers’ responsibilities are under the July 27, 2006 amendments.

The FSC basically got an injunction against 2257 for so-called secondary producers; the DoJ’s new regulations are supposed to be released today and will be open for a 60-day comment period. But with the comment period and process timeframe, the FSC estimates that any new 2257 regulations won’t go into effect until 2008.

If you’re nerdy about this stuff, I’ve pasted a couple of the FSC’s 2257 update FAQ’s (link to .doc) after the jump. As soon as I know more about the DoJ’s “new and improved” regulations, and where to comment, I’ll let you know.

(more…)

Book turned in one minute ago; it’s complex and hot. I love it, desperately.

Fuck, rent tomorrow…