Primfeed, Social Media Platforms, and Censorship

Primfeed, the new kid on the block, seems to be going great guns. People are jumping on the bandwagon, and according to the latest announcement from the owner and developer, Luke Rowley, there have been some staggering numbers of users signing up and images being uploaded. Hats off, Mr. Rowley.

Nevertheless, I've already had some issues with censorship which make me wonder just how much time and effort I should invest in this platform, recalling with great distress other blogs on other platforms where I have lost everything, not just images but my time and effort in curating the materials. Once bitten, twice shy. Thrice bitten, ah, screw it, I'm going to find something else to do with my life.

I tweeted about this. Luke Rowley saw my tweet and contacted me, inquiring about my issues. As per his instructions, I IMd him in-world and he got back to me in a short period of time, clearing my confusion over the rules of the platform. I commend him on his customer service as I can't imagine how busy he is. I had a thirty year career in I.T. and have developed my own systems over that time, so when I look at Primfeed, I think about all the moving parts, the lines of code, the testing, the debugging, and the pulling your hair out at 2am because something is malfunctioning. Thank God, I'm retired!

Some Thoughts
I suppose first off: full disclosure: I'm an old man, well, an older man with a love-hate relationship with social media. It is a time suck, but maybe my problem is more about personal guilt as to how I spend my time. Is liking and commenting the best I can do with my life? My tombstone: I wish I had spent more time on social media arguing with strangers about politics.

Primfeed is an image platform for Second Life. I see a community developing, likes, follows, reposts, etc., the common fare of any social media. Notifications become our intermittent reinforcement, and we (mindlessly) return, looking for our fix.

This isn't just about Primfeed. I have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. under more than one identity, compartmentalizing my life into personal, business, and Second Life. Any one of those things takes time; the bunch of them can take a lot of time. Just what is the return on my investment of time and energy?

Before I go on, let me give a little history.

Tumblr
This picture site was started in 2007. (Wikipedia) In 2013, Yahoo bought it for $1.1 billion. In 2016 when advertising sales goals were not met, Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value. In December 2018, Tumblr banned pornographic content. By March 2019, it was estimated the site had lost 30% of its traffic. Tumblr was sold in August 2019 reportedly for less than $3 million.

I had an investment in Tumblr and lost everything in December 2018 when they banned anything pornographic.

newTumbl
In 2020, a plethora of other websites sprung up to fill the gap in pornographic images created by Tumblr: BDSMlr.com, reblogme.com, Mastodon-based offerings, and newTumbl. On June 7/2022, newTumbl pulled the plug, supposedly because it could not make a profit. FYI: BDSMlr continues but has an annoying number of pop-up ads unless you buy a premium account for $20 per month.

I had two blogs (image galleries) on newTumbl but lost everything on June 7, 2022, when the site shut down. (See my article in References below for a more detailed look at this platform.)

Flickr
Flickr was and still is popular in the Second Life community as an image platform. However, a number (many?) had free accounts. In the spring of 2021, Flickr introduced a new policy for free accounts: only "safe" content was allowed, no Moderate or Restricted. Any violation of this policy saw not just individual images being deleted but entire accounts.

WARNING: If you have a free account, I can't recommend strongly enough that you upgrade to a pro account. ($9.49 USD per month or $72.99 USD annually. It's not what I would call exorbitant.) I know several people who have had their free account summarily terminated because one of their pictures has been reported. I find this odd but apparently the Flickr community squeal on one another. I thought Flickr was scanning its repository of images, looking for offending materials, but I've had former Flickr users tell me they had been in contact with Flickr support and discovered somebody came across one of their images, took exception to it, and reported it. Really? These purveyors of moral standards take it upon themselves to turn supposed ne'er-do-wells into the authorities?

I had a free Flickr account, but when they changed their TOS in 2021, I thoroughly read the fine print, decided termination was too big of a risk, and deleted my account. I'm not a photographer and felt paying for a pro account was not worth it for me; I am merely a hobbyist. I still have another free account but I only use it to log in and look at stuff. I never like or comment; I just look. (See my article in References below for a more detailed look at this platform.)

Where am I now?
Actually, I'm not. After losing three investments, I am more than just hesitant to start anything else. Oddly enough, this journal at Google Blogger continues humming along uninterrupted since 2019. (I've had another blog for my business in service since 2010.) Out of all the platforms I'm discussing in this article, Google remains tried and true. It seems to be the only thing I can reliably count on.

Twitter's Free-For-All
Elon Musk buys this platform and in declaring himself a “free speech absolutist”, seemingly removes all content moderation; anybody can say anything. Good? Bad? There was quite the hue and cry with some advertisers pulling out of the platform, complaining their ads were being displayed next to questionable materials like neo-Nazis. From a cursory search on Google, it would seem the company is no longer profitable. How long is this going to be sustainable?

An odd observation: While the hue and cry was about allowing "deplorables" to spread their "alternatives facts", I have to remark that at no time in my use of Twitter have I ever had anything censored. Maybe Twitter allows neo-Nazis to speak their mind, but Twitter also allows me to speak my mind. While some are against neo-Nazis, I never listen to them. Maybe Twitter allows them to say whatever neo-Nazis say, but I just don't pay any attention. They have freedom of speech; I have freedom of listen.

Primfeed and the future
I'm sure the creator, Luke Rowley, will find it presumptuous of me to discuss the future of his endeavor. Nevertheless, I feel the need to ask myself some questions of where I go with this platform.

How is Primfeed going to sustain itself? How is it going to be profitable? I've looked over the information page on Primfeed Pro and can't help feeling the perks for a pro account are insufficient to convince the average user to buy in. The 4-week cost of L$1,680 or $$6.72 USD (exchange at L$250 = $1 USD) is an insignificant amount of money, the cost of a couple of coffees, but do I care if pictures are only at a resolution of 1500 x 1500 as opposed to a pro resolution of 10000 x 10000?

Will Primfeed be forced, like Flickr, to change its policies to generate more revenue or run the risk of going bust? Heck, right now, I have to wonder how much Luke Rowley, the creator, has invested out of his own pocket to get this website off the ground.

Primfeed is an SL image platform. I didn't say image platform; I said SL image platform. I posted an RL image to the gallery and had it removed. In re-reading the TOS, I see the Public Gallery is only for SL images. But I asked about RL photos in general. Luke Rowley responded:

it really depends on what your profile is about. Primfeed is requiring you to have 80-90% of your profile to be SL related, so if you don't post only RL pictures, and your main content is SL, then you should be fine. - Luke Rowley, 2024-07-21

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but this strikes me as open to interpretation. While seemingly okay right now, will this policy evolve over time? Even though I'm writing a blog about Second Life, there are many times I use an RL image to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. Why? I've said over and over again, that while we are playing in this virtual fantasyland with avatars, new identities, and anonymity, we remain irrevocably our RL mind. In talking about Second Life, I'm also talking about real life.

Final Word
Let me be clear: I think Luke Rowley has done an admirable job. Considering the problems SLers have had with Flickr's free accounts, he may very well be offering a viable alternative to all those looking to publish their photos. I wish him luck. I hope he succeeds.

I have a free account on Primfeed. I log in to look but I don't see any reason to post. I'm not really a photographer, only rudimentary at best, and I don't feel any great urge to present my supposed artistic chops to the world. My main gig is writing a blog; I'm literary not pictorial. Somehow, Primfeed doesn't seem to be for me. For two weeks, I tested the waters and posted images with links to my blog. I had virtually no hits. People may have glanced at my pictures and even liked them, but they did not click on the links to read my articles. Primfeed is a picture platform like Flickr; it is not necessarily a word platform. But like most social media platforms, Primfeed works within itself, and people don't usually click on links to go outside that platform.

Where does Primfeed go from here? Where do I go from here? Like the Public Gallery, we need to keep a close watch on things as they're going to scroll by in the blink of an eye!


UPDATE 2024-07-23
Shortly afrer I published this article and posted the link on Twitter, I got the following Twitter response from Luke Rowley

Luke Rowley @lukerowley_sl

Hey,

I appreciate the article and the time you took to write it, and I will answer a few points to explain why, and how Primfeed will evolve in the future.

Primfeed Pro may not be worth the features currently for everyone, but the current pricing is set in mind that, in a few months / years, more features will be added to Primfeed Pro and the price will never change.

I've been building EasyBloggers for almost a year now, and the original pricing hasn't changed, but the system got a huge amount of new features and updates that you can find here: https://kynno.app/release-notes/easybloggers

Money wise, Primfeed and EasyBloggers allow me to work full-time on both projects, so they are not going anywhere soon!

About the SL content policy: I can understand it's not for everyone, but I truly believe that Primfeed has its full potential in bringing a true SL experience, something different from what other social media may bring to the table.

I don't want to do any censorship, any SL type of content is welcome to Primfeed, but if you decide to join Primfeed and use it, yes, your profile must be mainly about Second Life.

Primfeed might not be best for article type of content currently, but @InaraPey seems to have an overall positive experience?

Thank you so much for the recognition of my work, Hugh!

References

To Blog Or Not To Blog (1,000 words, 4-minute read) - Jun 21/2023
On June 7, 2023, without prior warning, newTumbl shut down, and I lost my blog comprising not just pictures, but my time and effort in curating all that material.

Flickr: What is the risk of having my account terminated? (1,400 words, 6-minute read) - Oct 26/2021
On Monday, October 25, 2021, I clicked on the bookmarked URL for D’s Flickr and was met with a Page Not Found error. My friend is the admin of a Flickr group, and I discovered her name had disappeared. I contacted D, and she was surprised and shocked by the news. Was this a computer glitch? What else could have gone wrong? She said she was contacting Flickr.

2024-07-23

Flickr: What is the risk of having my account terminated?

On Monday, October 25, 2021, I clicked on the bookmarked URL for D’s Flickr and was met with a Page Not Found error. My friend is the admin of a Flickr group, and I discovered her name had disappeared. I contacted D, and she was surprised and shocked by the news. Was this a computer glitch? What else could have gone wrong? She said she was contacting Flickr.

On Tuesday, the following day, in checking other friends, I discovered L’s Flickr account had vanished.

I had an interesting chat with N, a well-known photographer who uses Flickr. She had her Flickr account deleted back in 2020. She requested an investigation. She found out why and even which particular photo was deemed unfit for Flickr, justifying the termination of the whole account. Rather than appeal, a complicated process, N created a new account and started over.

I can’t help thinking of Tumblr, and its mass transition to a non-porn platform, adversely affecting millions of people. Which platform can any of us depend on? Are we all taking a risk using any of these services?

Flickr: Terms of Service
For years, I’ve seen the fine print for services and software which says I can’t hold them liable if I use their stuff and anything goes wrong. It’s an interesting idea: I engage somebody to do something for me but they’re not responsible if they screw up.

On the other hand, how many of us actually read the rules to find out just what we can and can’t do?

Under Terms of Service, I find Community Guidelines which lists Things not to do, prefaced with:

Here's the deal: We like to give second chances. However, when we discover you stepping across any of the lines listed below, we will take action, which may mean deleting your account with or without warning.

I see what I suppose are standard things:

• Don’t violate copyright laws.
• Don’t harm children.
• Don’t be creepy.
• Don’t upload content that is illegal or prohibited.
• Don’t use hate speech.

... etc.

I make specific mention of “Don't forget to moderate your content” as it merits its own explanation page.

Photos and videos should be categorized as:

• Safe - Acceptable to a global, public audience
• Moderate - Partial nudity, like bare breasts and bottoms
• Restricted - full-frontal nudity and sexual acts; photos only–videos cannot contain restricted content and are deleted if reported

This also notes that accounts themselves are categorized using the same safety levels, indicating if the content has been properly categorized or not. It’s not clear to me if this represents grounds for the termination of an account. In the beginning, I posted a tasteful nude of my Second Life avatar with the default of Safe, all naughty bits hidden. A while later, a bot switched the category to Moderate. In that case, I wasn’t terminated. I then noticed the category of my account was Moderate, meaning I had incorrectly classified something, so I went through changing various things to Restricted and ended up with my account listed as Safe.

I also make specific mention of “Don’t forget to set the appropriate content type” as that, too, gets its own explanation page.

The content type categories are as follows:

• Photos / Videos
• Illustration/Art / Animation/CGI or other non-photographic images, or
• Screencasts / Screenshots - what's a screenshot

I had no idea this content type categorization even existed, and I had to hunt around to figure out where to see it and where to set it. Under settings, you can specific the default categories for searching pictures. Under Organize, you can set the category of an image. Oddly enough, you can’t see the category on the page of the image itself. In reading one of the forums, a user said this used to be visible but is no longer. There was also a message from the CEO of Flickr welcoming Second Life photographers and seeming to say the screenshot category is no longer required.

How can my account be deleted?
Good question. I’m not sure I have a clear-cut answer for that. During my chat with N, she explained there are self-appointed arbiters of taste, and there is always the possibility that some random person could file a complaint about any image, triggering an investigation by Flickr. Okay, I slowly say, wondering about differences of opinion. I’ve seen some pretty graphic sexual images from SL photographers: oral sex, penetration, and money shots and so far, those people’s work is still online. What did D and L do to merit being terminated? Am I going to someday offend some stranger’s sensibilities and find my Flickr gone in a flash? In a pre-emptive strike, I’ve taken to classifying all of my photos as Restricted, thinking I’m not going to get my wrist slapped for being overly cautious.

An Observation: Sex vs Violence
Just now, I scanned through a number of photos, checking their safety levels. A photo of a scantily clad woman is rated as Moderate while a Halloween photo of Victorian England street scene where Jack the Ripper is about to stab a woman with a knife is marked as Safe. Sex bad, violence good. It is what it is, and we must accept the culture we live in and follow the rules.

Nevertheless, I’m reminded of George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can't Say On Television where he replaces the word kill with the word f**k and retells a movie cliché: Okay, sheriff, we’re going to f**k you now. But we’re gonna f**k you slow.

Yes, sex is more of a corrupting influence than violence.

Final Word
It would seem that Flickr can terminate any account without warning. According to the Terms of Service, it would seem there may be no recourse for the user. As of this moment, I now personally know three people who’ve had their accounts deleted.

Why am I using this service? If I’m posting anything which bumps into the Community Guidelines, specifically sex related, am I using the right service?

I see thousands of SL users who have posted thousands of photos, representing an unquantifiable amount of time and effort who are all susceptible to being terminated. Now, I’m sure anyone could argue we all face such condemnation in society, that is, we should not cross the line of accepted so-called normal behavior, but is there a question of a difference in taste? Old saying: One person’s pornography is another person’s erotica. What offends them doesn’t offend you.

Recommendations:

• Restricted
  By default, when you set up an account, the Safety Level is Safe. Under my settings, I've changed this to Restricted. Now, when I upload, I don't inadvertently make a mistake. To be quite frank, I do not understand the visibility of the different levels. While I get the Safe means a wider audience, how big of a difference does it make for my viewership?
• Restricted by reference
  While I publish an image which is innocuous, I may include links in the description to other things, like my blog, where I may have restricted content. Consequently, the image should also be restricted.
• Moderate
  Let me repeat Flickr's own words: Partial nudity, like bare breasts and bottoms. Would you walk down the street like that in real life?
• Private
  By default, photos are public. By setting this to Private, I have a chance to review what I'm doing before "publishing" my image by manually switching to Public.
• Backup
  I must have my own backup of all my images. Flickr's ToS specifically says it's not a cloud service so do not rely on it to store your images.

And I add that none of us know whether at some point, some self-appointed arbiter of good taste takes exception to our work and calls in the Flickr police. Good luck to us all. Too harsh? Let me remind you that Flickr is a private company and can do whatever the heck it wants. When we sign up, we agree to their Terms of Service, and if we violate their rules, they have the right to boot us off their platform. Ignorance is not an excuse; the onus is on us to read the ToS and Community Guidelines.

After Tumblr, I discovered newTumbl. After Flickr, will I discover newFlick?

References

Wikipedia: Flickr
Flickr is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and is a popular way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos. It has changed ownership several times and has been owned by SmugMug since April 20, 2018.

Flickr: Terms of Service
If you violate the Terms of Use, Flickr at its sole discretion may (i) require you to remedy any violation thereof and/or (ii) take any other actions that Flickr deems appropriate to enforce its rights and pursue available remedies.

Flickr: Community Guidelines
When we discover you stepping across any of the lines listed below, we will take action, which may mean deleting your account with or without warning.

2021-10-26